THAILAND TRAVEL NEWS: Travel agents representing inbound travel operators from China and Japan have joined with domestic travel agents to urge the Thailand Government to introduce urgent measures to halt declining tourism arrivals.

The Thai-Chinese Tourism Alliance Association (TCTA) and Thailand-Japan Tourism Promotion Association, together with the Association of Domestic Travel (ADT), on Tuesday submitted a complaint letter to Thailand’s deputy-chairman of the Committee on Tourism and Sports, Tosaporn Thepbutr.

Mr Tosaporn said the complaint letter stated that although the government had announced tourism as a national priority, to date no concrete measures have been implemented by concerned-agencies to boost the country’s tourism industry.

The letter went on to call for Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to intervene and resolve the problems.

Mr Tosaporn said inbound tourism figures for June had fallen from 165,000 last year to just 27,000 this year, or a drop of 33.45 percent year-on-year.

Mr. Tosaporn said that with the exception of tourists from Iran and Hong Kong, inbound arrivals for all other nationalities had plummeted.

“The causes for the sharp drop in tourist arrivals is attributed to the closure of Suvarnabhumi Airport by the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) protesters in November and December, and recent domestic political turmoil, combined with the current outbreak of the A(H1N1) flu,”

He said based on the current figures, the earlier estimate of 11 million tourists for 2009 by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) is unlikely to be achieved.

By John Le Fevre

Thailand Travel News for June 18, 2009