Thailand is looking to the US carriers to help with increasing tourism opportunities for US citizens to visit the Land of Smiles. The Tourism Authority of Thailand governor, Yuthasak Supasorn, acknowledged that Thailand’s carriers currently lack the capability of direct flights from the US.
For 2022, Indian travellers have led the way in a reboot of Thai tourism which has seen a profound change in the tourist mix, when compared to pre-2020 demographics.
50 travel agents from the US are currently in Thailand for a 9 day trip meeting tourism operators, mostly from Bangkok. They are being treated to the familiarisation trip by the TAT in the hope more US travellers will put Thailand on their list of travel destinations
The Delta Airlines Asian manager international sales, Akinori Yokosawa, yesterday told the Bangkok Post, that Delta currently have 17 flights per day heading to Asia – from US ports to South Korea, and then five connecting with Bangkok, another with Phuket and one with Chiang Mai.
He acknowledged that airfares on the US carrier were currently around 30 % but that load factors were around 95% at the moment.
He also said that, with China remaining largely closed off for leisure travel, US travellers were pivoting to Thailand as a preferred Asian destination.
For the first 9 months of this year, 225,909 travellers from the US, and 39,950 from Canada, arrived in Thailand.
Currently, most travellers to Phuket come from India, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and the UK. Here’s a report from Phuket Immigration, dated October 30, 2022, and represents the number of international arrivals at Phuket airports from May to the end of October this year.
FACEBOOK/Phuket Immigration
