Quote Originally Posted by Chao Na now posting as Bugs Bunny formerly posting as boygeenyus
There has been a ton of over-the-top whining about this episode. I mean, in comparison to places where tourists have been actually singled out for mass murder by terrorist squads (Bali, India, Egypt), the inconvenience posed by the closing of an airport for a week is, really, not so significant. We've lost at most maybe one tourist season.
so-sorry-most-will-not-be-back-and-no-new-one-t16623.html

Quote Originally Posted by On Thaivia.com
Battered tourism sector seeks urgent government help

BANGKOK: -- Amid a sharp drop in tourist arrivals to Thailand, the countryтАЩs tourism agencies were alarmed and strongly urging the government to provide urgent measures to rescue the beleaguered industry.

Tosaporn Thepbutr, deputy-chairman of Committee on Tourism and Sports, said the Association of Domestic Travel (ADT), the Thai-Chinese Tourism Alliance Association (TCTA) and Thailand-Japan Tourism Promotion Association on Tuesday submitted a complaint letter to the committee.

They charged that although the government had announced tourism as a national priority, to date no concrete measures have been implemented by concerned-agencies to boost the countryтАЩs tourism industry. So the premier himself should intervene to resolve the problems.

ThailandтАЩs tourist arrivals sharply drop to a critical level, Mr. Tosaporn said, in June alone, the number of tourist arrivals has dropped from 165,000 in the same period of 2008, to 27,000 in 2009 due to the Influenza A(H1N1) outbreak, or 33.45 per cent year-on-year.

Mr. Tosaporn said that with the falling number of tourist arrivals from almost every nation, except from Iran and Hong Kong, the earlier estimated arrival levels of 11 million tourists projected by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) will be unlikely to achieve the target.

"The causes of the sharp drop in tourist arrivals are attributed to the closure of Suvarnabhumi Airport by the PeopleтАЩs Alliance for Democracy (PAD) in November and December, and recent domestic political turmoil, combined with the current outbreak of the H1N1 flu,тАЭ Mr. Tosaporn said.


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