Thailand: Amazing still

Posted: Tue 27 Jul, 2010 12:00 AM

A bomb explosion in Bangkok’s Ratchadamri area over the weekend is hoped to be just an isolated incident, with no noticeable long-term impact on visitor arrivals to the country. Last week, figures released by the Tourism Authority of Thailand show that there was an increase of 13.7% in international arrivals between January and June, as compared to the same period last year (7.52-million as opposed to 6.61-million).

Phuket and other beach destinations in the Kingdom continued to see an upswing, with arrivals from the Middle East coming out tops with +22.1% for the first half of the year, followed by arrivals from South Asia (+16%), Europe (+15.9%), Asia (+12.3%) and the Pacific (+11.9%).

According to the Airports of Thailand, international traffic to both Phuket and Chiang Mai was strong during the first half of the year with disembarkations from international flights increasing by more than 49% and 26% respectively to those destinations over the January-to-June period.

Said John Koldowski, deputy chief executive officer and head, office of strategy management, PATA: “Asia continues to star during this recovery phase, adding more than 13-million additional international arrivals to its inbound count during the first half of the year (a growth rate of around 11.4%). The Kingdom of Thailand, despite a number of pressures from both internal and external sources, is outperforming even this remarkable rate of growth. Not only does this highlight the remarkable resilience of tourism generally, it also demonstrates the extremely strong appeal of Thailand as a desirable destination for international travellers."

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