TAT promotes weekday trips to lonely provinces

TAT promotes weekday trips to lonely provinces

Mr Yuthasak Supasorn.
Mr Yuthasak Supasorn.

The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has unveiled additional plans to encourage locals to travel during weekdays, especially to second-tier provinces.

The move aims to boost visitors and tourism income in 55 secondary provinces, or those provinces that get fewer than 4 million tourists a year, as well as offset the decline in arrivals from the Chinese market.

TAT governor Yuthasak Supasorn said the recent campaign is called "Visit a Secondary City: Must Try, Must Love and Must Care". The goal is to promote low-carbon tourism in second-tier cities.

Mr Yuthasak said young people born between 1980 to 2000 who are tech-savvy prefer to seek new experiences and understand local customs and environments through travel.

"The TAT is focusing its campaign on young tourists, such as school and university students," he said.

The authority is also continuing to work with the Stock Exchange of Thailand to encourage employees working at listed companies to travel to secondary destinations.

"More companies are interested in arranging field trips during weekdays for training, meetings or work to avoid traffic congestion," Mr Yuthasak said.

In addition, the TAT and alliances of airlines, hotels and travel companies are offering more packages designed specifically to encourage niche segments, including female tourists and seniors, to plan weekday excursions.

"All these campaigns are expected to help spread out tourists away from major destinations to second-tier provinces," Mr Yuthasak said. "This should generate income for local communities during weekdays."

The governor said more than 4,000 tourist attractions and over 8,000 hotel units are ready to serve tourists in the second-tier destinations.

With the promotions, the TAT is confident that domestic visitors will total 167 million trips for this year, higher than the initial forecast of 160 million.

Domestic tourism income is expected to remain as planned at 1 trillion baht, up 8% from last year.

Since the authority shifted to focus on second-tier cities, more foreign tourists have flocked to those areas.

Data from the TAT's intelligence centre shows that the 55 secondary destinations hosted 2.2 million foreign visitors in the first nine months this year.

The top five source markets were Laos (513,046), China (235,573), Britain (110,942), Germany (103,912) and France (84,380).

The most-visited secondary destinations (hosting over 100,000 tourists) were Nong Khai, Udon Thani, Chiang Rai and Mae Hong Son.

The cities receiving 55,001-100,000 tourists were Ubon Ratchathani, Mukdahan and Satun.

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