"Green Season" campaign expected to boost Thai tourism by 10%

BANGKOK, May 17 (TNA) - The state-run Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) will launch a new campaign late this month to boost the domestic tourism in the "Green Season" period by about 10 per cent quarterly. TAT Governor Yuthasak Supasorn told journalists of the update on May 16, stating that TAT will work together with all relevant parties in both the public and the private sectors to launch the new campaign, including hotels and communities nationwide, as well as airlines. Yuthasak said that the "Green Season" campaign is aimed mainly to stimulate the domestic tourism in the second quarter of this year, when it is the country's rainy season and the so-called annual "low-season" tourism period internationally, through a variety of package-tour programs, with reasonable prices, to serve both Thai and foreign tourists for their choices nationwide. Besides, the "Green Season" campaign will comply with the Thai government's tourism stimulus measures through tax incentives, by which Thai people are allowed to have their spending on tourism-related goods and services during domestic tours deducted from their personal income tax in 2019. According to the TAT governor, the "Green Season" campaign, which is expected to boost the domestic tourism growth by 10 per cent year-on-year in the second quarter of this year, is a further step of the TAT's continual tourism promotional moves in 2019, after the Thai Kingdom earned about 885 billion baht from tourism-related businesses in the first quarter of this year. The TAT governor acknowledged that the about 885 billion baht-tourism-related revenues in the first quarter of 2019 represented a 5 per cent year-on-year growth. The TAT governor mentioned that most of Thailand's tourism-related revenues during the first three months of this year, or about 600 billion baht, came from the spending by foreign tourists, thanks to, among other factors, the government's waiver of the fees from the Visa on Arrival (VOA) for tourists from 20 countries and one special administrative region. (TNA)