TCEB outlines six priorities
June 18, 2012 by Wanwisa Ngamsangchaikit
Filed under News, Thailand
BANGKOK, 18 June 2012: Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau proposed a budget of Bt302 million, 17 June, during a presentation to the Thai cabinet’s mobile meeting in Chonburi.
According to TCEB board member and acting president, Thongchai Sridama, there are six projects worth Bt302 million in the 2013 plan.
They are: Electric car races; World Expo 2020; Chiang Mai MICE City; Electronic marketing; creating an exhibition brand; and training personnel for a unified market in 2015.
Thongchai Sridama
“The projects will support the government’s policy to drive the country’s tourism revenue to Bt2 trillion by 2015,” Mr Thongchai said.
The Formulac EF01 Electric Race Car project is a series of racers for electric cars that attempts to emulates the success of Formula 1 and could draw as many as 100,000 spectators.
It will cost Bt40 million to host the car races.
A budget of Bt50 million will be allocated to the World Expo 2020′s advance publicity project.
TCEB also plans to spend Bt80 million on promoting Chiang Mai a MICE city (2013 to 2015) mainly to build brand for “Chiang Mai Creative MICE City” after the opening of the city’s new convention centre.
“TCEB will encourage MICE organisers to select Chiang Mai to host events once the centre is fully operating,” he said.
TCEB plans to spend Bt32 million to promote MICE business through online and the internet focusing on the MICE industry.
“The project is expected to draw more trade show organisers by reducing costs by 20%.”
A budget of Bt90 million will be set aside to build brand for Thailand’s exhibition industry based on the theme “Thailand A Truly ASEAN Exhibition Platform” which will be launched in two months.
The campaign is very close to the “Truly Asia” branding used by Malaysia although that is a general campaign for all sectors of tourism not just events, while TCEB is linking the message to ASEAN.
TCEB will spend Bt10 million to organise training and seminars in the lead-up to the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015.
The budget has still to be studied in more detail before it is finally given approval by the Cabinet in time for the 2012/2013 fiscal year that starts October 1.
The Bt302 million is just for the six projects budget.
TCEB should get an allocation of Bt882 million for the next fiscal year, compared to Bt801 million in fiscal year 2011/2012.
Maybe they should finish the Chiang Mai Convention Center and find a management team first.
By stating they have six “priorities” this woefully incompetent and leaderless organisation shows itself as not worth a baht, let alone the millions being begged for. They should work out what their actual “priority” is and focus on that, instead of this buck shot excuse for a strategy. If they cut back on the freeloading and travel to worthless trade shows and chose just one area of interest they might make themselves relevant, unlike their tragic neighbour upstairs.