The 14th Thailand Travel Mart Plus ended on 5 June, 2015, after a successful three days of business discussions, familiarisation tours and educational forums designed to raise the profile of the “2015 Discover Thainess” brand campaign, create more networking opportunities for small and medium sized enterprises, promote new provincial and regional destinations, and encouraging interest in niche-market products.
The event was attended by 378 buyers from 52 countries who interacted with 372 exhibitors.
On 5 June, the last day of TTM+, TAT organised an event to unveil a strategy to better position Thailand as a Muslim Friendly Destination. In the morning session, 95 buyers and media catering to Muslim clientele from 13 countries heard comprehensive lectures about the readiness of Thai tourism products and services to cater to the Muslim market. TAT also launched a new Mobile App as a handy guide for Muslim tourists to find places of interest. In the afternoon session, the buyers and media met with 92 Thai tourism operators to discuss business opportunities. The visitors were also taken on tours covering 10 routes nationwide to survey products, facilities and services for Muslim tourists.
“This year’s TTM+ was carefully designed and structured to send a message of confidence in the full-scale recovery of Thai tourism after the downturn of 2014 and further energise the 2015 Discover Thainess campaign going into the second half of the year. We believe this strategy has worked well. The response from buyers, sellers and media has been more than satisfactory,” Juthaporn Rerngronasa , TAT Acting Governor, said.
She said that the keen interest by buyers from China will ensure that Thailand meets its quantitative visitor arrivals targets in the years to come. Hence, this will require TAT to shift its attention towards better nationwide dispersal of tourists and growing their average length of stay and daily expenditure. Both these latter strategies are being met by the launch of new promotions focussing on the “12 Hidden Gems” and strategies directed at niche-market segments; such as, culinary tourism, health and wellness, weddings and honeymoons, sports tourism, marine tourism, green tourism, etc.
