GERMAN tourism authorities are targeting outbound tourists from Thailand, having identified the country as a key Asian growth market given the its rapidly growing middle class.
German National Tourism Bureau, Deutsche Bahn, Magic Cities Germany and visitBerlin yesterday held a joint event in Bangkok, their first-ever post-ITB Asia satellite event, to strengthen connections with the local trade and tap growing Thai demand.
“We are always interested in nations that are developing very fast and have an emerging middle class,” said visitBerlin CEO, Burkhard Kieker. “This is happening all over Asia, especially in Thailand where people are very hungry for travel.
“We were surprised to discover Thais were the second highest spending tourists in Berlin (with an average spend of 546 euros or US$752) after China in (1H2013) according to Global Blue.”
Asian travellers took 89.4 million trips last year, including 2.1 million to Germany, according to IPK International’s World Travel Monitor. China was the largest Asian source market with 818,000 trips. While Thai arrivals to the country were almost 15 times smaller than this, the kingdom exhibits some of the best growth potential from within the region, said GNTB’s Michael Steuer.
“Thais made 55,000 trips to Germany last year, while this is still small compared with China and Japan, it’s a high-growth source market and we’re targeting 100,000 visits (annually) by 2020,” he said.
Germany was the second favourite European travel destination after Switzerland for Thais last year, and Thais contributed more than one-third of visits to Germany from South-east Asia.
