For
the welcome reception this year, there will be a special ceremony to
be held, the wards presentation ceremony for the 2013 “Friends of
Thailand,” which is normally undertaken along with the “Thailand
Tourism Awards.” This will be the first time this event will be
arranged at the TTM+ because this travel trade event comprises buyers
who are made up of individuals, organisations, travel agents, the
media and airlines in which the Awards have been initiated since 1996
to honour their contribution for continuously supporting the Thai
tourism industry.
At
present, the current number of sellers proves this trade event
success. Out of 395 sellers, 309 or 78.23 % are repeat sellers while
86 or 21.77% are new participants. The current registered sellers are
from different segments. For niche market participants in 4
categories - Health & Wellness, Wedding & Honeymoon,Golf, and
Ecotourism — there are 22, 9, 3, and 6, respectively. For leisure
market participants, these come from 9 associations, 5 national
tourism offices (Cambodia, Lao PDR., Myanmar, Vietnam, as well as
Guangxi province in the People's Republic of China), 20 companies
from the Greater Mekong Sub-region, 266 hotels and resorts, 31 tour
operators and travel agents, 12 entertainment/theme park/cultural
products, 6 transportation companies, and 6 other travel services.
On
the other hand, there are 413 registered buyers. The first ten major
buyer nationalities are India (51), UK (38), Thailand (23), Australia
(23), Russia (20), USA (18), South Korea (17), Israel (11), Italy
(10), and New Zealand (10).
The
10 official accommodation hotels taking part in this event comprise:
1. Chatrium Hotel Riverside, 2. Holiday Inn Express Bangkok Siam, 3.
The Imperial Queen’s Park, 4. Mercure & Ibis Bangkok Silom, 5.
Montien Riverside Silom, 6. Novotel Bangkok IMPACT, 7. Novotel
Bangkok Fenix Silom, 8. Pathumwan Princess, 9. Swissotel Le Concorde
Bangkok, and 10. The Sukosol (Siam City).
