The Tourism Authority of Thailand must love giving numbers to the Bangkok Post and The Nation because all that the “journalists” do is write down the numbers verbatim and question nothing.

In another article from the Bangkok Post, TAT expands online marketing, the Tourism Authority of Thailand is once again tooting its own horn but the notes are all sour to me.

Tourism Authority of Thailand Mothers Day

The article starts out:

The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) says it will use more technology and the internet to increase the effectiveness of its marketing and promotion campaigns.

I almost lost my coffee reading that pile of crap.  The Tourism Authority of Thailand does not have a clue on how to market and promote Thailand.

The Bangkok Post also included a screen shot similar to the one above with this caption:

The TAT’s Amazing Thailand Facebook page has attracted 201,392 followers to date.

First off, they do not have that many “followers”.  People listed there clicked the “Like” button but may not necessarily follow Amazing Thailand.  Also, in the screen shot the picture on the left of flowers comes from this blog at OKNation and the 4 pictures together as one comes from Manager.co.th – a Thai company.  The Tourism Authority of Thailand has once again used someone else’s photos and did not give proper credit.  But, the Bangkok Post didn’t mention that.

“More online campaigns should be launched as international tourists look up information from the internet,” said Thapanee Kiatphaibool, the TAT’s director for the marketing information technology group.

More?  I haven’t see any except for some cheesy videos on Youtube and the same old Amazing Thailand generic ads shown in Europe.

“We will also apply customer relationship management (CRM) on many channels such as websites, social networks, mobile applications and games. Good CRM will help us collect data to create more targeted marketing campaigns in future,” she said.

Still have yet to see any niche marketing – like for golf, seniors, weddings, etc.

Ms Thapanee said the TAT would do country-specific marketing campaigns. For example, the TAT has collaborated with local travel agents in China to promote Thailand destinations on well-known blogs.

Looks like they are paying for Chinese folks to blog about how wonderful Thailand is.

At present, page views of most national tourism organisations worldwide are decreasing because tourists and internet users prefer to gather information on social media or blogs. Therefore, the TAT is focusing more seriously on social media.

Where did this data come from or is this something that the Tourism Authority of Thailand just made up to look good.  No one checks and no one questions.  TAT does not have any idea of what social media is.

“Our Facebook page has links to all TAT portals. This helps draw visitors to our website and we hope that will motivate them to travel in Thailand,” Ms Thapanee said.

Number 1 – you have numerous Facebook pages in addition to the Amazing Thailand page.  Amazing Thailand is the only one that posts in English but seldom do they post anything worthwhile about tourism in Thailand. Most posts just say “Good morning” or “Today is Friday, what are you gonna do this weekend?”.  Completely worthless and hardly a good use of Social Media.

Number 2 – The other 50 or so TAT provincial Facebook pages and the Sukjai Thailand Facebook page only post in the Thai language and either don’t answer questions posted by foreigners or they give incomplete or incorrect information.  Why so many pages and why only in the Thai language?  The Tourism Authority of Thailand does not want foreigners here.  Even the TAT Contact Center Facebook page and their web site is entirely in Thai.  How does this help Foreigners?

Here comes the Bullshit!

This year, the TAT expects the number of page views for its website to increase by 20-25% to 58-59 million and unique IPs will rise by 18-20% to 7.5 million. In July, TAT website drew 6.45 million hits and unique IPs of 927,673, compared to 4.422 million page views and 665,568 unique IPs in June.

I don’t care which stat program you use – AWSTATS, Webalizer or Google Analytics – they all produce bogus numbers.  I have websites and Google may say that 50 people per day visited while AWSTATS says 500 and Webalizer says 2500.  They are all incorrect.

What they don’t say is how many of those “visits” were from search engine bots – probably close to 50%.  A better use of the numbers would be to see how many visitors are actually foreigners and where are they coming from.  The main Tourism Authority of Thailand web site is in Thai and English, so a good percentage are most likely Thais.

The TAT will highlight applications via iPhone, iPad and Android-based devices, focusing on the wedding, medical and golf markets.

Looks like TAT may get around to doing some niche marketing after all, but I doubt they will do it right.

The agency has invested 10 million baht in social media. It has 253,010 fans and followers via Twitter and Facebook, up from 112,801 last September.

I don’t see how they invested anything since both Facebook and Twitter are free to use.  Must be money spent for all the T-shirts and Sukjai dolls that they give away while violating Facebook’s Promotions Guidelines.

So, more bullshit numbers from the Tourism Authority of Thailand that no one challenges.

Tags: amazing thailand awstats bullshit facebook followers google analytics like TAT tourism authority of thailand webalizer