Tourism Authority of Thailand’s (TAT) regional office in Mumbai, announced the appointment of Hayley’s Leisure Holdings Pvt. Ltd. as their marketing representative for the Sri Lankan market effective January 1, 2017 in keeping with TAT’s renewed focus to energize the marketing and public relations activity in Sri Lanka.
The mandate of Hayley’s is to represent Thailand by introducing new marketing concepts and its expertise in public relations in the targeted markets. Soraya Homchuen, Director of Tourism Authority of Thailand, Mumbai Office said “Sri Lanka is an important, growing market for us and we remain committed to our mutual progress and development.
With a shared objective to always deliver superior customer value, we believe this partnership will help us grow closer to the Sri Lankan market. She further added, we believe Hayley’s will bring in the dynamism and its expertise needed for to drive the growth in 2017 and beyond”.
TAT was the first organization in Thailand to be specifically responsible for the promotion of tourism. TAT supplies information and data on tourist areas to the public, publicizes Thailand with the intention of encouraging both Thai and international tourists to travel in and around Thailand, conducts studies to set development plans for tourist destinations, and co-operates with and supports the production and development of personnel in the field of tourism.
Visitor arrivals to Thailand in January - April 2016, totaled 11,682,144, with a growth of 14.12% over the same period of 2015, visitors from East Asia totaled 7,630,739 (+17.26%), Europe 2,526,784 (+8.89%), the Americas 502,627 (+13.76%), South Asia 459,157 (+8.72%), Middle East 226,973 (+11.36%) and Africa 51,566 (+6.44%). If we were to look at South Asia’s contribution; India topped the list with arrivals of 351,869, up 11.22%. Other SA countries reporting increases were Nepal (+47.95%) and Sri Lanka (+2.38%).In January 2017, there were 219,360 Sri Lankan arrivals.
For this year, TAT will be focusing more on attracting quality tourists. Therefore, TAT is targeting tourism revenue with a growth of 8% or around 2.41 trillion Baht (68 billion USD) this year. Of that total, 1.56 trillion Baht (44 billion US dollars) will come from international markets and 850 billion Baht (24 billion US dollars) from domestic travel.
Hayleys Leisure Holdings being a company under the ‘Aviation’ sector of Hayleys, headed by Johann Wijesinghe with over 35 years’ experience in the Leisure and Aviation Sectors, of which more than 20 years were in the Aviation industry at Sri Lankan Airlines, where he held many senior positions both in Sri Lanka and overseas, and finally as the Head of Worldwide Cargo and also has extensive experience in the hotel industry, having served as the Director, Marketing and Sales at The Lanka Oberoi. He comes armed with invaluable insights and knowledge to this partnership as does Gerard Victoria - Director Hayleys Leisure Holdings. Johann commented on this new venture by saying “this is a two-pronged effort for us to bring out the best of Thailand and to ensure our long term friendship with Thailand continues to grow as we promote outbound tourism to such a dynamic destination such as Thailand. We believe there is enormous potential as Sri Lankans find Thailand some-what foreign but, yet there is an unmatched a sense of comfort in travelling to Thailand due our cultures, cuisine, weather, geographic terrains as well as the friendly and polite people of Thailand that have being welcoming Sri Lankans with open arms for centuries. These are all aspects we will focus on in our marketing campaigns to bring out the similarities whilst introducing the many aspects of Thailand that are either off the beaten path or only an expert can guide would know”.
As a first step in this process, the TAT website - http://ift.tt/GXswbk will be used as an essential tool for you to get to know the many facets of Thailand; “Where to go” featuring attractions and accommodation options, “Things to do” featuring from hot-air ballooning to kite surfing, “What’s on” featuring about Thailand, What’s new, special festivals etc.. to a “Trip planner” that lets you simply pick out your interests and plan according to your schedule and if that’s not enough a whole host of e-services such as deal alert email, send an e-card, send a complaint, download an e-brochure or simply give feedback on the website, making it as safe, convenient website that can save you the trouble of lengthy online searches and your precious time.
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