Amazing thailand making an amazing recovery
Thailand is a friendly and welcoming country, where safety, security and the well being of international visitors is paramount. With the current world situation, we know these are tough economic times and the world tourism fitures may be affected. As for Thailand, after the reopening of suvarnabhumi international airport last december, the number of arrivals at the same airport has already reached 1 million since late january this year. To stimulate the tourism sector, the royal thai government agreed to an exemption of tourist visa fees for a period of three months, effective since 5th march that is last week. Furthermore, the airports of thailand or ao t has reduced a least 20% on their landing and parking fees for airlines. Tourism remains a primary pillar of Thailand’s national economic development, helping to distribute income nationwide and directly creating 2.4 million jobs. Thailand has been at the forefront of tourism development worldwide with innovative marketing programmes and unique products. For the year 2008, Thailand welcomed around 14.24 million international visitors, that is a decrease of about 1.5 percent over 2007, in addition, the figures for the latest arrivals from the south show a substantial increase which brings the total arrivals to 14.6 million. Even though the world economy had been affected by the oil and global financial crisis plus, there was a sharp drop in the number of visitors in December due to the closure of suvarnabhumi international airport. The result is that there has been a decline in arrivals from key source markets like East Asia while strong growth in arrivals from the middle East (+8%), ASEAN(+7%), and Oceania (+5%). Arrivals from europe totalled 3.7 million in 2008 that is only 1.5% decline. The three biggest european markets for thailand are the UK, Germany and France. For Germany last year, Thailand received a total of five hundred and five thousand visitors. In the recent past, there have been strong growth in the number of German repeat visitors, independent travellers, business travellers, students,a nd especially retired people. The average lenth of German has now risen to 16 days from 14 in the past. Therefore, the result for last year was rather satisfactory.
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