Agents enjoy a travel boom

20 Jul 2015  2035 | World Travel News

BANGKOK  Travel agents enjoyed a whopping 67.94% increase in travel clients arriving at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, January to June this year.
Association of Thai Travel Agents confirmed its member companies handled 2,185,018 international tourists through their airport meet-and-greet service, up from 1,301,080 visits during the same period last year.
ATTA released its data, earlier this week, based on fees member agencies pay to the airport to provide a meet-and-greet service for their international clients.
ATTA president, Charoen Wangananont, said arrivals in the first half of this year showed a remarkable comeback.
inside no 1“The second half of this year should be positive and it is now very likely that agents will handle 5 million trips compared to last year’s of 3.24 million.”
Russia is one of the few markets that continues to decline, but agents are compensating with business from Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.
For the first six months of the year, China was the top supplier for tour companies. The market improved 203.13% from 366,857 visits to 1,112,051 visits, January to June.
There was a decline of 65.99% in Russian visits, but it still ranked second with 107,797 visits compared to 316,962 visits during the same period last year.
The next top five markets were: Vietnam (105,333; +425.46%); India (90,159; +21.82%); and Japan (79,723; +42.22%).
The figures are based on tourists who bought a package from an overseas tour operator that included land content provided by a local company in Thailand.
June figures were equally impressive. There were 343,531 foreign tourists who travelled with an association member company up 199.19% from 114,819 visits during the same month in 2014.
China was also in first place with 185,886 visits growing 470.08% from 32,607 visits.
Neighbouring Vietnam followed in second place with 31,771 visits increasing 720.11% from 3,874 visits during the same month last year.
India ranked third with 15,398 visits improving 23.12% from 12,506 visits.
Japan was in fourth place recording 13,460 visits up 114.78% from 6,267, while South Korea was fifth posting 11,237 visits and a growth rate of 154.69% based on 4,412 visits in June 2014.
The next top five markets were: Taiwan (9,502; +85.22%); Hong Kong (8,698; +694.34%); Russia (7,453; -46.11%); UK (6,164; +167.88%); and Indonesia (2,654; +39.24%).
The association also reported there were 93,244 tourists who used the services of members at Don Mueang Airport (DMK) in June.
The top 10 markets were: China (80,680); Indonesia (4,070); Malaysia (2,824); Vietnam (1,638); India (981); South Korea (842); Japan (576); Taiwan (287); Singapore (183); and UK (174).
ATTA opened its second office at Don Mueang Airport, 1 August, last year, to offer meet-and-greet services for its members.
During Janury to June, there were 549,031 international travellers who used travel companies at the second gateway. This is quite a significant trend as all the airlines using DMK are low-cost airlines and the popular assumption is that passengers are travelling independently of travel agencies. The reality is that many of the low-cost airlines are now accepting bookings from tour operators for group travel.
ATTA members handled 2,734,049 clients at both airports during January and June.
ATTA would be doing Thailand’s travel industry a major favour if it also collected data at other airports, such as Phuket, that are international gateways. It would help to provide a more accurate picture of leisure travellers who booked pre-arranged travel as opposed to a simple head count of people who pass through immigration checkpoints.

sourced:ttrweekly.com 

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