The government expects tourism to remain on a growth path, boosted by improved infrastructure and the global economic recovery.
According to Deputy Prime Minister Tanasak Patimapragorn, who chaired the National Tourism Policy Committee's meeting yesterday, the government has set the tourism revenue target at 2.71 trillion baht this year, a 8% rise from 2.51 trillion baht in 2016.
Foreign visitors are projected to generate 1.78 trillion baht in revenue, up 8.2% from 2016, with domestic tourists contributing 934 billion baht, up 7.5%.
The government is committed to increasing the number of quality visitors and generating more spending per person while raising the length of stays to nine and a half days from the current nine.
Average spending per person by foreign visitors stood at 5,200 baht last year, up from 5,100 baht in 2015.
The committee yesterday also acknowledged the country's 2016 tourism income, which rose by 10.9% to 2.51 trillion baht, well outpacing the 2.4-trillion-baht target.
In 2016, the tally of foreign visitors reached 32.59 million, generating 1.64 trillion baht in revenue, while domestic tourists made 148.03 million trips, accounting for 870 billion baht.
Gen Tanasak said the Tourism and Sports Ministry this year will work closely with the Commerce, Culture and Interior ministries to organise tourism activities and promotions.
The Commerce Ministry has vowed to push for greater promotion of geographical indication (GI) and One Tambon One Products (Otop) and craft communities, while the Tourism Authority of Thailand is mapping out tourism routes to those GI and Otop production locations.
Gen Tanasak said the government is also committed to improving safety measures. He cited a report by the World Economic Forum in which Thailand ranked 132nd out of 141 countries for safety and security.
Thailand's safety rank was worse than that of Lebanon, Mali, Burundi or Iran. Two years ago, Thailand ranked 87th in the biennial report.
Nonetheless, Thailand's travel and tourism competitiveness ranking moved to 35th in the world, up from 43rd two years ago.
The top factor that has helped Thailand become more competitive is its tourist service infrastructure, which in the report covers the numbers of hotel rooms, ATM or credit card acceptance and satisfied business travellers.
The second factor is price competitiveness, followed by the quality of the labour force, the prioritisation of travel and tourism (especially from government policy), and health and hygiene.
Meanwhile, the factor for which Thailand scored the lowest is cultural resources and business travel, measured by the total number of international association meetings, world heritage sites, large sports stadiums and cultural expressions.
The next factor is ground and port infrastructure, with the country getting poor ratings for railroad density, quality of railroad infrastructure and ground transport network.