Tourism Council seeks THB200m to improve skills, set up hotelier database
The Tourism Council of Thailand (TCT) asked the government on Wednesday for a 200-million-baht fund to set up a so-called “tourism clinic” to improve the skills of service sector staff and create a communal online database of hoteliers and those in the entire tourism sector.
Speaking at a press event, TCT chairman Chamnan Srisawat also asked for general governmental support to help restart a large number of businesses affected by the Covid crisis, as well as a "subsidy" for some 5,000 buses owned by tourism-related transport companies each month to maintain incomes and employment of the drivers and crews.
A lecturer speaking at the event, Phakakrong Theppharak of Rajamangala University of Technology Srivijaya, cited a local tourism market confidence score of 47 on 100 in the final quarter of 2021 as being very low in recent years, though it was higher than that of the third quarter when the outbreak hit Thailand the hardest.
She said the score had been expected to reach 63 in the first quarter of 2022, which is regarded as positive.
Precisely 342,024 foreign tourists came to Thailand in the final quarter of 2021, with the entire year seeing 427,869 visitors, generating around 37.73 billion baht in income for the domestic tourism industry.
Pre-Covid tourist spending was reported to be Bt80,926 per person per trip.
The last year has seen 6 per cent of tourism businesses shutting down and the hotel occupancy rate plunging to 32 per cent, while the remaining 57 per cent of hotels that did remain operational suffered from no profits.
