The Tourism and Sports Ministry has pledged to improve three fundamentals to drive the tourism industry in 2018.
Tourism and Sports Minister Weerasak Kowsurat told 30 tourism operators and travel bloggers he met last Friday that the first of the three priorities is to compile a list of attractions and destinations across the country that have fallen into disrepair.
The ministry will then look into how to fix them.
He said anyone can provide suggestions on attractions and methods to improve them.
The ministry will discuss the suggestions and come up with a plan to solve the problems as soon as possible.
The second fundamental is human resources, as the ministry has found that people working in the tourism sector need to improve their skill set.
The ministry plans to work with educational institutions to provide training courses and create a curriculum specifically to enhance tourism skills.
Tourism Minister Weerasak Kowsurat.
The third fundamental is consultancy. The last plan is to establish a tourism clinic, which will provide consultancy and tourism knowledge to businesses and entrepreneurs on how to operate their businesses and deal with obstacles.
The ministry will kick off this initiative by inviting public and private organisations to do more corporate social responsibility activities such as planting or rubbish collection at tourist attractions in order to raise hospitality awareness.
"The ministry will soon establish a new tourism committee that will work specifically to solve problems in the tourism industry," Mr Weerasak said.
He also assured the local tourism industry that he will work with other government bodies to improve logistics and transport systems, such as airports and public toilets.
Moreover, the ministry will encourage business operators to develop and use a range of online platforms to market their services.
Entrepreneurs will be asked to make local products and sell them in communities as a way to draw visitors to less-travelled areas.
One of the pilot projects planned for January will be to have tourism delegates attending the Asian Tourism Forum in Chiang Mai not bring their own materials, but rather allow locals to prepare everything for the conference.
The ministry earlier said it attempted to push the entire tourism industry to meet the Global Sustainable Tourism Council Index, which is focused on convenience, cleanliness and safety.
On Dec 21, the country received its 34 millionth tourist. Many hundreds of thousands are expected to arrive for their year-end vacations in the last few days of 2017.
The ministry predicts that Thailand will reach 35 million total tourist arrivals in 2018 and that the number will reach 40 million annually in the next 4-6 years.
