But, either the Tourism Authority of Thailand can’t read or just doesn’t care.

An article in today’s Nation talks about what needs to be done to improve Tourism in Thailand but I don’t think that the Tourism Authority of Thailand is paying attention.

Tourism Authority of Thailand Boon Phawate Festival Parade

The article is entitled End political conflict say tourism bodies but it discusses other than political issues.  Issues that the Tourism Authority of Thailand should be paying attention to but I fear they really don’t have a clue about tourism marketing.

Another of the many “official” tourism agencies in Thailand, The Tourism Council of Thailand (TCT), cited the three main factors that could have an impact on tourism:

The TCT said political conflict was one of three major factors that could hit the tourism industry this year. The other two are disease and global terrorism.

Those three are kind of very broad strokes that definitely would have an impact on any country’s tourism.  The current global economy should be added to that list too.  But, they left off a couple items that are more specific to Thailand.

The people that are actually working in the tourist industry, Association of Thai Travel Agents (ATTA), seem to understand things better than the Thai Government agencies appointed to bring tourists to Thailand.

Aside from the political conflict, the council also urged the new government to work on three other issues: improving infrastructure, reducing tourist scamming and creating new products and attractions.

An organization finally understands why foreign tourists are not coming or are not returning to Thailand.  Too bad that this will fall on the deaf ears of the Tourism Authority of Thailand.

A recent study showed that 70 per cent of tourists who came to Thailand were so-called “free individual tourists” and that they were disappointed with bad infrastructure, even in major tourist destinations like Phuket and Chiang Mai.

New tourism products and attractions are also needed to draw tourists into the Kingdom.

Talk about hitting the nail on the head!

Infrastructure problems are not only in Phuket and Chiang Mai – they exist throughout the kingdom.  Most of the problems are due to piss-poor planning (or no planning at all).  Thai‘s tend to think only about today and don’t give a shit about what happens tomorrow, or next month, or next year.

Thailand has become The Land of Scams and absolutely nothing is ever done about it.  “The Grand Palace is Closed”, jewelry scams, jet-ski scams, and on and on, continue to flourish with no intervention from the Thai Police (I wonder why) and no action taken by the Tourism Authority of Thailand.  Must be honor amongst thieves.

Lack of new tourism products has been mentioned in numerous articles at The Nation and Bangkok Post specifically when talking about getting quality tourists and when focusing on the China and South Korea markets.  Again, nothing is being done.  The Tourism Authority of Thailand continues to promote the same old stuff time and time again.  Even their “Amazing Thailand” slogan has been around for about 14 years.

“The country has been short on new product development for five years. Malaysia and Indonesia are making moves and will soon be ahead of Thailand,” said Kongkrit.

In addition to the above, the Tourism Authority of Thailand continues to focus on promoting to local Thais.  I understand that promoting from within needs to be done, but that should not be the entire focus of TAT.

Instead of TAT spending 20 million baht for a one day conference that will result in absolutely nothing, they would have been better off spending that kind of money cleaning up beaches, finding out which companies are pumping raw sewage into the sea, and identifying the Bangkok, Pattaya, and Phuket scam artists.

The Tourism Authority of Thailand should also invest some baht into a camera and hire a photographer instead of stealing photos daily from other web sites.

Tags: economy global terrorism infrastructure political scam artists scamming TAT tourism authority of thailand tourism council of thailand