Amazing Thailand Grand Diwali Festival 2026

The festival is part of a wider change in how The Mall Group approaches tourism. Under the concept "Tourism Transformation: From Volume to Value", led by Chief Marketing Officer Ms. Voralak Tulaphorn, the company is focusing less on how many visitors arrive and more on how much value each visit creates. The aim is to give travellers reasons to come, stay longer, share their experience and return.

This focus comes as foreign spending at the company's shopping centres continues to grow. From January to September 2026, shopping by foreign tourists across The Mall Group's centres rose 15% year-on-year. Indian visitors were among the growing segments, with spending up 10% over the same period.

"For The Mall Group, tourism marketing starts with understanding what is valuable enough for people to choose to travel to us," said Ms. Voralak. "Destinations around the world are no longer competing only for visitor numbers. They are competing for the time and attention of travellers who have the whole world to choose from."

That thinking shaped the festival from the start. Rather than targeting Indian tourists alone, The Mall Group designed it around the wider Indian community connected to Thailand: Thai-born Indians, Indian expatriates living and working in the country, and visitors travelling from India.

Sukhumvit was a natural setting. Thais, foreign residents and expatriate communities from many countries live, work and do business there side by side, and it is also where many international visitors stay, dine and shop.

“We do not see resident communities and tourist markets as separate," Ms. Voralak said. "Communities stay connected to their home countries, and their recommendations travel to family, friends and wider networks back home. That is what lets us create reasons for people to come, spend time and return."

Diwali itself made the idea easy to put into practice. The festival brings people together through food, music, art, fashion and lifestyle, and it gave the Indian community in Thailand a platform to share its heritage with Thais, international residents and tourists alike.

In this way, the festival brought together the three principles that guide The Mall Group's destination marketing. The first is to curate experiences that connect people with the life of the city. The second is to bring culture to life, turning it into something contemporary that people can touch and take part in. The third, and the one that ties the others together, is to build a destination ecosystem, where each experience links to the next so that visitors have reasons not only to come, but to come back. For Ms. Voralak, all three begin in the same place: close to home.

"We believe that becoming a global destination starts with being meaningful to the people of our own city, and then connecting that appeal with people from around the world," Ms. Voralak concluded. "When we understand both local communities and global travellers, we can create experiences that are distinctive, meaningful and worth making part of a journey."

The Mall Group is launching a special campaign, With Diwali beginning on 8 November, marking the year's peak travel and shopping season for Indian visitors, a special campaign will run from 1–30 November 2026. Shoppers who spend THB 8,000 or more per day at Paragon Department Store and EM DISTRICT will receive a THB 500 M Cash Coupon, while those who spend THB 100,000 or more per day at EM DISTRICT will receive a THB 3,000 EM DISTRICT Cash Coupon.

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