The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) and listed companies on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) are set to launch a campaign to boost business events and group tourists in secondary provinces.
TAT and public companies are kicking off a campaign called "CSR & SET in the Local" today at CentralWorld, with the aim of encouraging groups of independent tourists and travellers for meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions (Mice) from public companies to visit second-tier provinces.
TAT governor Yuthasak Supasorn said the collaboration with SET and listed firms will hopefully drive business to local communities.
He said the TAT and SET want to encourage companies to play a big role in sustainable tourism by increasing travel to secondary destinations, which should help generate income at the grassroots level.
This year the government has been promoting 55 second-tier provinces that receive less than 4 million visitors per year, through tax incentives.
Under the "CSR & SET in the Local", both the TAT and SET will provide information on packages and CSR activities for companies or organisations that are planning to have business meetings or leisure activities in provinces.
The collaboration is expected to further strengthen domestic tourism in the remaining two months this year as well as in coming years.
In August, the TAT started the Travel Thailand in Style, Reduce Plastic Waste campaign in collaboration with various stakeholders in a bid to reduce tourism-related waste by up to 50% by 2020.
The TAT partnered with PTT Global Chemical and the Ecoalf Foundation in launching the "Upcycling the Oceans, Thailand", making it the first Asian country to join the global ocean clean-up effort.
The agency has been carrying out its Local Link campaign, which was created to boost tourism in provinces.
Under the campaign, the TAT has selected 50 communities and arranged them into different 10 categories such as royal initiatives, agriculture, gastronomy and adventure.
Travel companies with local expertise such as Localalike, Siam Rice, TKT Ecotour and Andaman Discovery are joining the project.
Promoting tourism in less popular provinces is aimed at improving the ratio of domestic and foreign visitors at major cities compared with secondary cities to 65:35 from 70:30, with 10 billion baht in revenue for the grassroots level projected this year, Mr Yuthasak said.
From January to August this year, Thais made 101.3 million trips in the country, a 4.1% increase from same period last year.
Some 91 million trips were made to the main provinces and 54.1 million trips to second-tier provinces. This represented growth of 3.9% and 4.6%, respectively.
During the first eight months of this year, total revenue in domestic tourism grew by 9.1% to 694.8 billion baht.
