The
Tourism Authority of Thailand has designed a five-pronged strategy to rebuild
domestic tourism after the severe flooding.
Thawatchai Arunyik, deputy governor for
domestic marketing, said the first measure, intra-regional travel, is set to
start this week and run until the end of January. People will be encouraged to
visit nearby attractions rather than go across regions. That would continue to
augment business in communities.
The authority will not focus on already
crowded destinations such as Pattaya, Hua Hin and Kanchanaburi.
Four plans are set for next year, as the
flooding will have completely disappeared by then. It will begin with
cross-region travel by encouraging people from all parts of the country to
visit the Central region and Bangkok.
"TAT also will invite 10 travel agents
from each province or more than 700 agents in January to see attractions in the
Central region so they can develop packages afterward," he said.
TAT later will boost niche markets like
medical and corporate in unaffected regions, particularly the Northeast. The
plan is expected to start in January.
Health and healing will also get attention in
the coming year in order to assist people to release stress and ease their
pains.
Expat associations in major cities, including
Pattaya, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Hua Hin, Samui and Phuket would be asked to help
promote domestic tourism as well as to communicate with their people overseas
about the tourism situation in Thailand after the flood.
"We call this project 'Local to Global'.
We'll ask Scandinavians in Hua Hin, Japanese in Chiang Mai, Germans in the
Northeast and Europeans in Pattaya to help invite tourists to Thailand after
the flooding," he said.
TAT plans to spend Bt70 million on the
strategy. All 35 TAT offices nationwide are involved in the preparations.
Chumpol Silpa-archa, a deputy prime minister
and the tourism minister, ordered organisations to prepare special relief
campaigns and implement them immediately after the flood crisis dissipates.
TAT predicts that the flooding would cause
domestic travel to drop by 2 per cent or 1.8 million trips from the forecast 91
million trips this year. However, TAT has not yet revised the projection as it
is waiting for the situation to settle down first.
SUCHAT SRITAMA
THE NATION
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