French browse Thailand pages

Thailand topped destination searches on a popular French travel website, suggesting bookings from the French market are poised to make a dramatic recovery.
Tourism Authority of Thailand interpreted the website’s findings as an indicator that French travellers have regained confidence in Thailand due to the high volume of page searches on online booking engine. It topped popular destinations such as Italy and New York in page views.
The findings came from popular travel website Le Quotidien du Tourisme.com, which reported in an online posting, earlier in June, that Thailand ranked top in all destination searches according to its online statistics. Thailand chalked up 1.359 billion page views in the three months from March to May 2014.
The searches were made during the height of Thailand’s recent political turmoil when travel confidence plummeted.
The page views indicator showed Greece was in second place with 1.351 billion page views, followed by Corsica with 1.238 billion page views, New York with 1.222 billion page views, and Italy with 1.201 billion page views.
Page views do not indicate the level of bookings made but they do show interest in a destination is rising as visitors to the webside check out travel opportunities.
The Tourism Authority of Thailand’s governor, Thawatchai Arunyik, welcomed the assessment: “We would like to assure everyone that the country remains peaceful and safe and can now offer a much greater variety of fun and entertainment and exotic outings in all major tourist destinations.”
France is Thailand’s fourth largest source of visitor arrivals from Europe, after Russia, the UK and Germany. In 2013, the French travel market delivered 614,455 trips to Thailand, an increase of 6.66% over 2012.
From January to April 2014, Thailand welcomed 267,251 visitors from France, an increase of 8.18% over the same period of last year. TAT projects visits from France will reach over 636,400 by the end of the year.

Sourced: ttrweekly