The Thai Tourism Festival 2011 is expected to be attended by more than 200,000 visitors when it finally opens this week at the Impact Muang Thong Thani Exhibition Center on Wednesday.
The annual tourism and travel exhibition is one of the major events of its kind on the Thai travel industry calendar, and is targeted to both local and expatriate residents in the country.
This year’s event is being jointly staged alongside a second exhibition, the Thailand Travel Mart Plus 2011, which is geared towards international trade visitors. It is hoped that by staging the two events side-by-side, it will be able to add promotional value and boost publicity for regional Thai tourism products, which are well known for their variety and uniqueness.
Organizers say they hope to generate around 150 million Thai Baht ($50,000) from the five-day event.
The major objective of the event this year is to promote the continued growth of domestic Thai tourism, in order to try and meet the goal of 91 million domestic trips set by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), who estimate that the revenue from that would exceed 430 billion Baht ($13 billion).
“We are attempting to showcase domestic tourism’s importance to local economies, especially in these politically turbulent times that have had an effect on the number of foreign arrivals here,” said a TAT spokesman.
The theme of this year’s TTF event is all about sustainable tourism activities, and features a new slogan that hopes to capture hearts and minds “Travel with a New Heart for a Sustainable Thailand”.
A number of promotional activities at the event have been split up into three core exhibitions;
1: The “Auspicious Occasion of the 7th Cycle and 84th Birthday of His Majesty the King” exhibition allows visitors to send messages of goodwill to His Majesty using information technology.
2: Disseminating Tourism Knowledge and Creating Awareness is all about sustainable tourism and will be split into seven separate zones.
3: Travel Linkages Promotions will see mini-exhibits from hundreds of private and public sector travel agents, tourist operators, airlines, diving schools, resorts, golf courses and more.
For more information about the Thailand Tourism Festival 2011, you can contact www.tourismthailand.org
