Bangkok and Sukhothai have been nominated by the Culture Ministry to compete as Unesco Creative Cities in November.
The two are among four shortlisted by the Culture Ministry and the Designated Areas for Sustainable Tourism Administration (Dasta) for the 2019 Unesco Creative Cities Network (UCCN).
Thaweebhong Wichaidit, director-general of Dasta, said Sukhothai was selected because of its abundance of local handicrafts, namely Sangkhalok ceramic ware and silverware, dubbing the area the City of Crafts and Folk Arts.
Bangkok was nominated as a City of Design.
Since the first nomination in 2015, Thailand already won two Unesco Creative Cities: Phuket as the City of Gastronomy and Chiang Mai as the City of Crafts and Folk Arts in 2015 and 2017, respectively.
Mr Thaweebhong said Suphan Buri and Nan were dropped from consideration.
“Even though two were not picked by the ministry this year, we will keep improving communities to be ready and re-submit them once again for the next contest in two years,” he said.
To prepare Nan for the next competition, Dasta and the Tourism and Sports Ministry on Wednesday signed a memorandum of understanding with Chulalongkorn University for the development of creative tourism in community-based destinations in the province.
It will use 54.4 million baht to run the project which will cover Nan and destinations along the Andaman coast.
The development of creative tourism in Nan consists of eight sub-projects to prepare the community to provide tourism products for new generation travellers, especially independent tourists from China.
He said such tourists from the mainland tend to travel to Luang Prabang in Laos and stop at Nan.
For the Andaman coast, projects will focus on multicultural dimension thanks to several ethnic groups and mixed-race population from southern Myanmar’s Myeik province.