The Tourism Authority of Thailand has a new campaign, Local to Global, which proves once again, that TAT is clueless.

An article in The Nation, TAT plans to promote domestic tourism, shows where the Tourism Authority of Thailand has their focus.

Tourism Authority of Thailand Bangkok Floods

Thailand is suffering from a surge in cancellations from foreign tourists, and the Tourism Authority of Thailand puts their money into promoting domestic travel.  Idiots!

The Tourism Authority of Thailand has designed a five-pronged strategy to rebuild domestic tourism after the severe flooding.

The Tourism Authority of Thailand designed nothing and have no strategy.  This is just the same old useless bullshit that comes from the TAT.

Thawatchai Arunyik, deputy governor for domestic marketing, said the first measure, intra-regional travel, is set to start this week and run until the end of January. People will be encouraged to visit nearby attractions rather than go across regions. That would continue to augment business in communities.

This is the brilliant strategy?  Visit the same old shit in your own neighborhood?

The authority will not focus on already crowded destinations such as Pattaya, Hua Hin and Kanchanaburi.

Only crowded with Bangkok evacuees.

Four plans are set for next year, as the flooding will have completely disappeared by then. It will begin with cross-region travel by encouraging people from all parts of the country to visit the Central region and Bangkok.

Is the Tourism Authority of Thailand 100% sure that the flooding will completely disappear by then?  So, phase two is to visit the flooded old capital, Ayutthaya and the currently flooded Bangkok.  Hopefully, all of the trash will be picked up by then and no viral diseases brought by the floods linger in Bangkok.

“TAT also will invite 10 travel agents from each province or more than 700 agents in January to see attractions in the Central region so they can develop packages afterward,” he said.

BIG waste of money.  Bring 770 travel agents to Bangkok?  That is a lot of per diem, air fare, and food.  Plus, one would think that local travel agents, all Thai, would know what the attractions are in Central Thailand.  Most likely this is so the Tourism Authority of Thailand can dictate what areas to promote and what hotels to go to – only the ones that provide kickbacks.

Health and healing will also get attention in the coming year in order to assist people to release stress and ease their pains.

The folks that have suffered from the flooding need more than stress relief – they need financial relief or they ain’t going anywhere.

Expat associations in major cities, including Pattaya, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Hua Hin, Samui and Phuket would be asked to help promote domestic tourism as well as to communicate with their people overseas about the tourism situation in Thailand after the flood.

Now, the Tourism Authority of Thailand wants expats to do their work for them.  Earlier in the year they had a cockamamie plan to have waitresses working in Thai restaurants outside of Thailand to promote for the Tourism Authority of Thailand.  I guess that TAT realizes that their organization, along with the rest of the Thai Government failed miserably to communicate the current situation in Thailand accurately and in a timely manner.

“We call this project ‘Local to Global’. We’ll ask Scandinavians in Hua Hin, Japanese in Chiang Mai, Germans in the Northeast and Europeans in Pattaya to help invite tourists to Thailand after the flooding,” he said.

I guess they don’t want help from me and Tom at Isaan-Live since we are both Americans.  Even though we do more for tourism in Isaan than anyone else, the Tourism Authority of Thailand has a misconception about what nationalities live where.

TAT plans to spend Bt70 million on the strategy. All 35 TAT offices nationwide are involved in the preparations.

The Tourism Authority of Thailand is going to spend $2.3 million dollars on this foolishness.  And, I am 100% sure that the 35 TAT offices will do little or nothing in this 5-pronged attack.  If the Tourism Authority of Thailand knew how to properly use Social Media, they could do a hell of a lot more and it wouldn’t cost a satang.

Chumpol Silpa-archa, a deputy prime minister and the tourism minister, ordered organisations to prepare special relief campaigns and implement them immediately after the flood crisis dissipates. TAT predicts that the flooding would cause domestic travel to drop by 2 per cent or 1.8 million trips from the forecast 91 million trips this year. However, TAT has not yet revised the projection as it is waiting for the situation to settle down first.

This is the head idiot – the one that earlier said that the Thailand Floods would have no impact on tourism.  He is also the one that wants the world to believe that tourism was actually up 7% in October (over October 2010).  He needs to shift his focus to FOREIGN TOURISM.  The drop there in October, November, and most likely for December will be in the 20%-40% range – though I am sure that Khun Chumpol will declare that tourism was up in November and December – after all – it is high season and have to produce good numbers.

This is what the Tourism Authority of Thailand does best – waste money focusing on the wrong market.

Tags: chumpol domestic tourism foreigh tourists idiot local to global TAT tourism authority of thailand tourist arrivals