Tourism
Competition drives down hotels’ earnings
About 10.5 million foreign tourists visited the Kingdom during the first half of this year, up 7.6 per cent year on year, led by 1.1 million Chinese nationals

About 10.5 million foreign tourists visited the Kingdom during the first half of this year, up 7.6 per cent year on year, led by 1.1 million Chinese nationals, according to the Tourism Authority of Thailand. The agency plans to boost its forecast for full-year 2012 to 20.5 million arrivals generating revenue of Bt846 billion for the Thai economy.
Even while facing risks from the worsening financial crises in Europe and political uncertainty at home, amid other negative factors, the statistics look impressive, and this should mean handsome profits for the hotel industry, which generates 30 per cent of Thailand’s tourism revenue. However, because of the large supply of rooms, hotels cannot raise room rates, and compared with hotels in neighbouring countries, Thailand’s are operating with the lowest average rates.

About 10.5 million foreign tourists visited the Kingdom during the first half of this year, up 7.6 per cent year on year, led by 1.1 million Chinese nationals
According to data from the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), Thailand was the most outstanding destination in Southeast Asia in the first half.
Of 36.79 million visitors to the region, Thailand attracted 10 million, even as the global financial crisis made long-haul travel from Europe and North America less attractive. In the period, Singapore drew 5.92 million tourists, Malaysia 9.43 million and Vietnam 3.36 million.
Tourism
Interprovincial travel in Thailand amid COVID-19 controls
The State Railway of Thailand (SRT) is suspending 57 additional train services from 26 January, 2021, as part of the nationwide effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19. These include ordinary trains, local trains, and suburban trains in the North (13 routes), Northeast (18 routes), South (12 routes), and East (14 routes).

This update includes the latest announcement from the State Railway of Thailand regarding the suspension of 57 additional train services from 26 January, 2021.
(more…)Tourism
TAT launches virtual tours to 4 top destinations in Thailand
Once inside an attraction, visitors can move around using the cursor, while some of the attractions have information about its historical background or details of items on display in both English and Thai.

Bangkok, 25 January, 2021 – The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has launched a virtual reality tour of top attractions in four of Thailand’s leading tourism destinations comprising Bangkok, Phuket, Chiang Mai, and Surat Thani.
(more…)Tourism
Wish you were here: how the pandemic harmed tourism-dependent economies
Before COVID-19, travel and tourism had become one of the most important sectors in the world economy, accounting for 10 percent of global GDP and more than 320 million jobs worldwide.

In 1950, at the dawn of the jet age, just 25 million people took foreign trips. By 2019, that number had reached 1.5 billion, and the travel and tourism sector had grown to almost too-big-to-fail proportions for many economies.
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