The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has congratulated Huay Pu Keng’s community-based tourism practice and Koh Mak’s low-carbon destination effort for having won the Green Destinations Story Awards at ITB Berlin 2023.
The Green Destinations Story Awards, held annually at ITB Berlin, showcase and celebrate the most inspiring projects for sustainable tourism development based on tales submitted to the annual Green Destinations Top 100 Stories competition.
For this year, two destinations in Thailand won top places at ITB Berlin 2023. The story on Huay Pu Keng in Mae Hong Son province, titled “Discovering the First and Only Karenni Village in Thailand That Made the Transition Towards Community-based Tourism,” won first place in the category of Thriving Communities.
The story was submitted by the Fair Tourism Foundation. Meanwhile, the story on Koh Mak in Trat province, titled “The Journey to Become the First Low Carbon Destination in Thailand”, won second place in the category of Governance, Reset & Recovery. The story was submitted by the Designated Areas for Sustainable Tourism Administration (DASTA).
TAT Governor Yuthasak Supasorn congratulated both agencies and local communities on these destinations receiving the global awards. He added that these two stories underscore Thailand’s direction towards more sustainable and responsible tourism, the offering of meaningful tourism experiences to tourists, and the government’s Bio-Circular-Green or BCG Economic Model.
The TAT governor further stressed the dedication of the TAT to promote sustainable tourism communities and destinations around Thailand. He noted that TAT has recently added a new category of “Low Carbon and Sustainability” to the 14th Thailand Tourism Awards, with the goal of elevating the nation’s tourism standard towards high value and sustainability. (NNT)
