Tourism ministry improving data to alleviate hotspots

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Thailand’s Ministry of Tourism and Sports acknowledges it needs to supply clearer and more timely data from its offices around the country.

Minister, Somsak Pureesrisak, said Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, had reminded the ministry that one its core responsibilities was to collect in-depth data for each province to allow the government to make clear strategic decisions on building competitiveness in regional tourism.

It is the first public acknowledgement by the ministry that it needs to improve tourism data. Data collection and analysis was one of the basic assignments written into the ministry’s brief when it was formed. It took over the entire process from the Tourism Authority of Thailand.

However, it has concentrated on national statistics. At a provincial level tourism statistics are a year at least behind the delivery of national data.

“Raw data from the provinces will be fed into a database to map out measures to standardise national tourism as our aim is to achieve Bt2.2 trillion in tourism revenue in 2015,” the minister explained.

The collecting methodology will be the same as the World Economic Forum’s Travel and Competitiveness Index.

In that index there are around 25 measures of tourism and three sub-indexes – regulatory framework; business environment and infrastructure; and human, cultural and natural resources.

“The information will cover number of foreign and local tourists in each province, spending and length of stay, hygiene, Internet access, air transport, tourism place standards, and skilled workers.”

The ministry hopes that the data will allow it to create clusters of provinces that can be marketed as a single destination.

Another objective is to spread tourism away from Bangkok, Phuket, Pattaya, Samui, Hua Hin and Chiang Mai that are over used.

Full Story: TTR