FOR years bereft of marketing representation, Thailand has now been lumped together with Malaysia as a source market under the purview of Ong Sun Yan, the Philippines’ Department of Tourism’s (DoT) marketing director based in Malaysia.
The heightened focus on Thailand dovetails nicely with a three-month ASEAN tactical campaign started this quarter by the DoT to raise regional awareness of the Philippines as a holiday destination.
Lily Libosada, senior tourism operations officer, Team Asia Pacific, DoT, said that unlike the regular marketing campaign It’s More Fun in the Philippines, this tactical initiative, incorporating advertising and sales promotions, was targeted specifically at ASEAN markets and would only be active till early 2013.
Libosada explained that the growing spotlight on ASEAN markets was to aid the DoT in achieving its target of 4.5 million arrivals, which has been affected to a large extent by China’s ban on group travel to the Philippines.
Thailand is a small yet steadily growing source market for the Philippines, accounting for 24,012 or one per cent of the January-July 2012 tourist arrivals, up 7.1 per cent over the same period last year.
