TAT UK office twitters for travel
Tourism Authority of Thailand’s UK office says it is working on a new web strategy as it seeks to promote Thailand as a “value destination” rather than focusing on a previous “Thailand is chic” theme.
TAT’s UK marketing manager, Joanna Cooke, was quoted by the London-based Travel Weekly, yesterday, saying the new site “will have an active Facebook and Twitter presence as part of the rethink.”
She said a Facebook profile would focus on festivals, which the TAT office is promoting and would steer clear of trying to sell holidays through the site to ensure it did not compete with the UK travel trade.
TAT brands itself “Tourism Thailand” rather than by its official name or the slogan”Amazing Thailand”.
Twitter is often used by consumers to make comments both positive and negative about their holiday experiences in Thailand. The TAT UK office hopes to balance negative comments with its own specific messaging providing a more positive spin.
According to the Travel Weekly report, the TAT UK 2009/2010 marketing campaign will move away from promoting Thailand as a “chic” destination and instead focus on value (low prices).
A price-led brochure has been uploaded to the site, along with commissioned photography featuring local people with price boards that tout low competitively priced services.
Positioning Thailand for its bargain pricing is a response to reduced spending in the UK, particularly on holidays. Consumers are looking for bargains and tend to finalise bookings at the last-minute to pick up cheap deals. Travellers will also be taxed heavily on long-haul travel, 1 November, when a restructured airport passenger duty comes into play.
TAT UK also presenting its promotional message on 120 London taxis, while 50,000 brochures have been inserted with the national newspaper, Mail on Sunday. It has bought into an outdoor branding campaign with four selected tour operators.
UK visitors to Thailan, from January to August were down 7.6%, although performance in individual months, April, July and August, were all up on last year. August was up by nearly 10%.
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Greetings from Tim.
Hi Darika
Thanks for the advise…also great to feel your passion for what you believe.
Kind Regrds
AJ Wood
Andrew,
Good Lord. When did TAT ever appear in the “chic” column? Tacky? yes. Extravagant to a fault? You bet. But chic? Coco Chanel was chic. Gloria Swanson was chic. Even I was chic once. But never the clumbsy, bungling TAT. Honestly, I think it is refreshing to see them attempting to adapt to contemporary technology for a change, which is more than anyone can say for most government offices. And it is especially nice to see them make attempts to live within their means for a change. Elizabeth Taylor is chic AND she Twitters. So why not TAT.
By the way, next time you travel abroad, sleep another half hour and skip the “duty free” debacle at S’bhumi. Prices are lower at Emporium and Central and those fine merchants and do not become involved in extorting money from their customers.
This is all well and good. However, encouraging tourists to visit Thailand because it is ‘cheap’ typifies the long tried and tested failures of our TAT promotions. We KNOW that ‘when’ you get to Thailand, daily costs ARE low. But this promotion only makes people ‘ki nieow’ before booking, making life harder (and time wasted) for travel agencies…….
Tourists have to learn that it costs money to be picked-up at the airport, staying in hotel rooms, eating the daily breakfast, going on tours, using the local resources (water, electricity etc). BUT, after this has been paid for, the daily costs are truly what makes Thailand such a wonderful holiday destination….
You getting it yet?…
Out with the Chic in with the Cheap.A shame.
The airport shoplifting scam was widely published in the UK the use of Twitter and Facebook to put a ‘positive spin’ on the negative comments appear to be rather a weak response.
Passing through the airport recently I was amused to be given a free voucher for Bt1,000 discount if I spent Bt5,000 in the duty free shops. A good marketing exercise.
Be careful though….when I purchased a small gift of chocolates for friends, because it was a small amount I paid cash. The cashier did not give a receipt. I refused to leave without one and checked the contents of the bag very carefully.
AJ Wood
So now we know who the lone Kingpower customer is! Now, Andrew, are you sure those chocolates were really for friends?
But you make a serious point, a receipt and checking your Kingpower bag is a must, because you can be sure the scam is dormant and not dead.
And not a single word about the 50 pound travel punishment announced on this very site. If TAT calculated how much that will amount to in terms of annual arrivals then it would see a huge threat to Thailand, because the UK is a valued source market. Typical TAT, behind the curve and pretending it just invented social media. It is social media that is destroying Thailand’s tourism market, with documentaries etc. and that is where the energies should now be spent, finding a credible reaction to the facts about jet skis etc., not some twittering and feeble attempt at being modern.
Just two 50 pound travel fines on UK outbound to Thailand equates to one lost job in Thailand. The folks who make the beds only get just over the equivalent of one tax gobble. TAT needs to wake up sooner rather than later, because thousands of jobs depend on the inept bureaucrats in their silk suits.