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The milestone was reached when a Chinese national, Huang Junyi, arrived at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport on December 5, 2016, following a flight from Guangzhou. This means that the country has now beaten its previous full-year record of 29.88 million visitors, set in 2015.
Huang was greeted by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) and Thai Airways and presented with a prize of two economy class return tickets to Thailand and a five-night hotel stay in the kingdom.
“This has been an amazing year for tourism in amazing Thailand as shown by the huge numbers of visitors,” said Yuthasak Supasorn, governor of the TAT. “We have reached 30 million and the high season has only just kicked off. We know that more people will be coming to enjoy the cool weather and holiday festivities.”
Earlier, the TAT has stated that it is not measuring its success based purely in terms of volume but rather based on the value visitors bring to the country. The tourism board is projecting that international tourism revenues would increase 11.7% to $46 billion in 2016.
In order to further boost arrivals in the high season, the country has now launched several initiatives to encourage international tourism and spending, including the waiver of tourist visa fees for visitors from 19 countries from December 1, 2016, to February 28, 2017, and halving of the price of visas-on-arrival. Additionally, to encourage domestic travel, a long New Year holiday of four days, from December 31 to January 3, has now been confirmed.
Source: travelnewsdigest.in