"Routes to Roots" Wins Creative Data Award at CEA 2026

Bangkok, 17 August 2026 - As Thailand's tourism landscape continues to evolve, data from the Ministry of Tourism and Sports show that tourist numbers have declined by 3.05% from the same period last year. Thailand's challenge may therefore no longer be simply, "How can we attract more tourists to Thailand?" but rather, "How can every journey by both Thai and international travelers create greater value?" The goal is to drive Equitable Tourism by distributing economic opportunities to communities, creating local value more broadly and inclusively, and enabling sustainable growth.

The key question is: do we truly understand how tourists travel today? This was the starting point for "Routes to Roots", a collaborative initiative that combines True's anonymized Mobility Data derived from people's mobile phone usage with research and creative thinking to uncover actual tourist travel patterns and turn those insights into new opportunities for Thailand's tourism sector. Most recently, Routes to Roots received the Creative Data Award at the Creative Excellence Awards 2026, organized by the Creative Economy Agency (Public Organization) or CEA.

From "Networks That Connect People" to "Insights That Help Us Understand People"

For decades, the primary role of the telecommunications industry has been to connect people through voice and internet services. In the digital era, another high-potential asset generated by telecom networks is Mobility Data, data on how people move. When used responsibly together with research, this data can be transformed into insights that help address economic, social and urban challenges. This marks another step from "networks that connect people" to "insights that help us understand people" and then applying that understanding to create value for society.

On-Uma Vattanasuk, Head of GCEO Strategic Agenda and Employee Communication, True Corporation Plc., said that "The role of the telecommunications industry today goes beyond building the best network to deliver the best customer experience. It also includes unlocking the potential of Mobility Data, a unique and valuable data asset of the telecom industry, to create public value. True is committed to creating an open space for collaboration among businesses, researchers, government agencies, the creative sector and communities, bringing data and knowledge together to turn data into understanding and understanding into new opportunities. These insights can then inform the design of approaches, agenda-setting and policy decisions that create value for people, communities and the country."

Asst. Prof. Dr. Nattapong Punnoi, Deputy Director of the CU Social Design Lab and Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Chulalongkorn University, said that "The key challenge is not having more data, but using data to see tourism through a new lens, moving beyond provincial boundaries to understand actual travel systems and connections between cities. By analyzing more than 500 million Mobility Data trips, we identified 21 high-potential tourism clusters and developed six pilot clusters that combine data with each area's cultural identity and local assets. This is Evidence-based Tourism Development: turning real-world data into tourism development proposals that can inform policies tailored to the potential of each area, while helping distribute tourists, investment and income more equitably and sustainably across cities and communities."

Meanwhile, The Cloud brought together multidisciplinary knowledge and creativity to translate the study findings into tangible travel experiences across six pilot clusters of destination-worthy cities in different regions. This became "Routes to Roots: Six Trips, Six Routes Exploring the Roots of Thai Culture", connecting people with the identity, culture and stories of each place. For more information, please visit https://www.true.th/blog/routes-to-roots-forum/

In the Photo

Mr. Napintorn Srisunpang, Minister Attached to the Prime Minister's Office (far left), presided over the ceremony and presented the Creative Data Award at the Creative Excellence Awards 2026 to the "Routes to Roots" Project. Accepting the award on behalf of the project were Asst. Prof. Dr. Nattapong Punnoi, Deputy Director of the CU Social Design Lab and Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Chulalongkorn University (4th from right); On-Uma Vattanasuk, Head of GCEO Strategic Agenda and Employee Communication, True Corporation Plc. (3rd from right); and Changnoi Kunjara na Ayudhya, Managing Director of The Cloud (2nd from right) at NEX Hall, Siam Paragon.

About Routes to Roots

"Routes to Roots" was developed through a collaboration between True Corporation and the CU Social Design Lab, Faculty of Architecture, Chulalongkorn University, with support from the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation (MHESI), Thailand Science Research and Innovation (TSRI), and the Program Management Unit for Competitiveness (PMU-C). Building on True's Data Playground for Human Impacts Project, the research team analyzed mobile phone usage data from users who had consented to the use of their data for public benefit. The data were encrypted and anonymized before being used to analyze travel patterns. The study covered approximately 25 million accounts per month for Thai tourists and more than 80,000 accounts per month for international tourists over a one-year period, from August 2023 to July 2024.