Brought to you by Thailand Travel Mart Plus
The Thailand Travel Mart Plus (TTM+), Thailand’s leading annual B2B travel show, which was held between 5-7 June, has ushered in a fresh era of business opportunities for buyers looking for new Thai destinations.
This year, the theme of the “New Shades of Emerging Destinations” is designed to encourage visitors to explore the new shades of Thailand in the 55 provinces identified as emerging destinations or the “hidden gems” throughout the country.
This is part of Tourism Authority of Thailand’s (TAT) strategy to promote provincial destinations which are already popular with domestic tourists and increasingly preferable by international visitors.
As a testament to the show’s success, the first day of business networking session saw a total of 339 buyers from 51 countries and 370 sellers, including 10 from the Greater Mekong Subregion countries.
For the first time, the buyers list includes 13 companies from Brazil along with new buyers from Chile, Argentina and Colombia.
First time buyers have also been invited from other new source-markets; such as, Lebanon, Latvia, Estonia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Slovakia, Ukraine and Israel.
The sellers list includes exhibitors, mainly from the Southern and Central regions of Thailand. In order to help buyers home in on the emerging destinations, the directory of sellers includes a special listing of the 20 exhibitors from this segment.
Srisuda Wanapinyosak, TAT Deputy Governor of International Marketing (Europe, Africa, Middle East and Americas) said that this year’s TTM Plus features some important changes in the trade show component to ensure enhanced business opportunities for both buyers and sellers.
She said: “We recognise that in this era, there are constant changes in everything from customer segments to technology and demographic profiles. The value of travel trade shows needs to be constantly refreshed and enhanced to justify the investment in time and money by both buyers and sellers.
We also have to marry the business objectives of the private sector with our national objectives to create jobs, reduce income disparities and better distribute visitors around the country. At the TTM Plus, all these objectives have been merged. It takes time and effort for emerging destination cities to be recognised and chosen by travellers, and this year’s TTM Plus has set the ball rolling.”
In 2018, the Thai tourism industry recorded a total of 38 million international arrivals, up by 7.54 per cent, generating an estimated US$62 billion in earnings, up by 9.63 per cent over 2017. This year, TAT has set a growth target of twelve percent in tourism revenue from the international market.
