The FINANCIAL — The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) and Taiwanese airline, EVA Airways Corporation on January 5 formalized and signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) aimed at working on joint tourism promotion strategies that will boost numbers of visitors from the USA and Canada.
Mr. Yuthasak Supasorn, TAT Governor said, “This MOU will help us to target tourists from the Americas – one of our most important and fastest growing markets. EVA Air is a vital link between North America and Asia as there are currently no direct flights from the USA and Canada to Thailand. By working with EVA Air on tourism initiatives we can help get word out about Thailand’s attractions and boost visitor numbers even more in 2017 and beyond.”
Followed by the MOU signing ceremony, the Project Implementation Workshop between EVA Air representatives and TAT Directors from the North America and Asia markets will be set up in order to discuss their marketing collaboration for long and short haul markets.
EVA Air currently operates 80 flights per week between North America and Taiwan, including 3 daily flights from Los Angeles, 14 flights a week from San Francisco, 10 flights a week from Seattle and five flights a week from Vancouver on the West Coast as well as 2 daily flights from New York and five flights per week from Toronto on the East Coast. The airline also offers daily service from Houston and four flights per week from Chicago in the USA.
Passengers can then connect with flights to Bangkok on any of EVA’s 26 flights per week on the Taipei-Bangkok route, which was recently increased from 17 flights a week to meet the demands of long haul passengers. Of the total passengers travelling on EVA Air’s Taipei-Bangkok routes, about 50 percent are from North America and Europe, according to EVA Air.
Mr. Golden Kou, Spokesman of EVA Air, said “We are delighted that this MOU has marked another significant cooperation between TAT and EVA Airways to promote Thailand as a short haul destination for Taiwanese tourists and long haul destination for travellers from North America.
TAT also has plans to open a new office in Canada which can help offer services to Canadian tourists heading to the kingdom.
In 2015, Thailand attracted 827,110 tourists from the US market, a rise of 12.61 per cent over the previous year. Of the total, 50.44 per cent came from the West Coast and 49.56 flew from the East Coast. Tourists from this part of the world spent US$146.63 per day and stayed around 13.38 days in the kingdom.
From January to November 2016, a total of 1,236,694 tourists have already visited Thailand from the Americas, an increase of 13.36 per cent over 2015. Of these increased numbers of travellers, 859,838 travellers came from the USA, (an increase of 12.32 per cent), and 216,768 came from Canada, (an increase of 7.31 per cent).
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