Thailand recorded almost two million international visitors in January 2023 as the number of Chinese tourists has tripled, said governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT).
Yuthasak Supasorn said there were more than 1,900,000 foreign arrivals from Jan 1-29, with most tourists or about 240,000 from the United States, followed by Russia, South Korea, India and China respectively.
He said the figure was satisfactory, particularly the Chinese tourists, which increased threefold from fewer than 30,000 in the first half of January to more than 80,000.
The situation is in line with the forecast of growing Chinese market in terms of arrivals.
This year, the TAT is expecting 25 million international visitors and the domestic tourism to tally up to 250 million trips, generating tourism income of 2.38 trillion baht or 80 per cent of that in the pre-pandemic year 2019.
It targets to welcome more than one million tourists from each of four countries in the same region for the whole year, including five million from China. (TNA)
