THE AMAZING Thailand Countdown 2019 was held at Iconsiam yesterday as a “New Year present” for Thais and tourists, in a joint venture between the capital’s newest luxury shopping mall and the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT).

A PARTNERSHIP between the Thai tourism authorities and Fliggy, the online travel platform of e-commerce giant Alibaba, is aimed at harnessing Big Data to target big-spending Chinese tourists with precision marketing, said Yuthasak Supasorn, governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT).