Secondary destinations take spotlight in TAT’s 2019 action plan

Driving visitor flows to provinces with less than four million annual trips and alleviating the negative impacts of tourism will be the key challenges that the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) seeks to address next year under its Action Plan for 2019.

Yuthasak Supasorn, TAT governor, said during a press conference earlier this week that the organisation seeks to better balance the economic value of inbound visitor arrivals with the socio-cultural and environmental impacts of tourism growth.

Promoting secondary tourist destinations has been identified as a new focus for TAT in 2019, coming on top of its existing three priorities – gastronomy, content marketing and environmental awareness.

Secondary tourist destinations
Travel routes will be created to boost the identity of and distributing visitor flows to secondary tourist destinations. TAT will work with the public and private sectors and local communities to review their willingness to receive visitors and assess their marketing needs.

Potential target groups include senior citizens and female travellers, who are showing good growth in terms of both volume and purchasing power; the millennials, who are adept at using social media to communicate powerful messages; and working executives, who will be targeted by a “Travel on Weekday” campaign to reduce the impact of peaks-and-troughs in daily and seasonal demand.

Gastronomy
Gastronomy will be a means of reaching out to local communities and experiences. Recent projects like the Michelin Guidebook 2019 will be used to promote Thailand as a gastronomic destination, with a second book expected to be launched this November.

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