As part of its global tourism campaign, the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) is proactively launching initiatives to target the market in China.

Now that Thailand has a new prime minister, the tourism industry is seeing a positive outlook, with TAT starting to put major efforts in encouraging more Chinese tourists to the country, as China remains one of the largest markets for Thailand.

TAT plans to aggressively focus on tourism traffic from China using all kinds of strategies in the form of public relations and advertising, sales promotions, as well as alliances with related partners in the industry. In addition, as part of this plan to tap this potential market, TAT will soon set up a new office in Shanghai.

The Golden Star (International) Group Company Limited in Bangkok is cooperating with the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) Shanghai Office to invite 60 tour operators and 20 members of the mass media to Thailand.

The guests are from Shanghai precinct in China, where there is a population of approximately 200 million people. They will come to visit Thailand in Bangkok, Pattaya, and Kanchanaburi provinces during 23-28 February 2009.

The objective of this event is to stimulate the Chinese market by targeting the Shanghai region, as it is a major crucial market, and also to build confidence and a good image of Thailand.

In 2007, Thailand welcomed for the first time over 1,000,000 tourist arrivals from China, and during the first seven months of 2008, there was a total of 614,725 arrivals from January to July, a 22.4 percent increase for the same period of 2007.