BANGKOK, 1 October 2014 The Tourism Authority of Thailand is confident that the number of Chinese arrivals to the country will exceed this year’s target.
TAT’s East Asia director Srisuda Wanapinyosak on Wednesday led a team of representatives from Airports of Thailand Public Company Limited, the Immigration Bureau, the Association of Thai Travel Agents (ATTA) and the Thai-Chinese Tourism Alliance Association (TCTA) to welcome a group of 180 Chinese travellers from Shanghai who flew to Thailand for their Golden Week holiday during October 1 and 7.
Mrs. Srisuda said that the number of Chinese visitors to Thailand has been rising lately although statistics showed an 18.9% on-year decrease in Chinese arrivals during the first eight months of 2014 because of the political crisis in the first quarter of the year.
She believed that the improvement in the Chinese market was partly attributed to the Thai government’s visa waiver for travellers from China and Taiwan while the Golden Week holiday was another factor that helped draw more visitors to Thailand.
The TAT’s East Asia director expects between 400,000 and 500,000 Chinese visitors will visit Thailand during the fourth quarter of this year — the number that will raise this year’s total number of Chinese arrivals to 4.3 million which is higher than the initial estimate of 3.98 million.
