ATTA records 7% gains in January

BANGKOK, 7 February 2012: Clients travelling on tours handled by the Association of Thai Travel Agents’ member companies increased 7.16% in January despite travel alerts and the aftermath of last year’s flooding.

The association tallied 261,441 international trips requiring meet-and-greet services at Suvarnnabhumi Airport in January up from 243,971 in the same month last year.

ATTA released its latest data, Monday, based on fees member agencies pay to the airport to provide a meet-and-greet service for international clients. Read more

Turnaround ends in a whimper

BANGKOK, 22 December 2011: Travel agents in Thailand saw their business improve by 44.13% during the first 11 months of the year according to data from the Association of Thai Travel Agents.

The association measures tourists,handled by member companies, who enter the country at Suvarnabhumi Airport. During the first 11 months arrivals soared to 2,612,728 from 1,812,735 visits, during the same period last year, a healthy improvement of more than 44%.

Comparisons with 2010 are tricky. It was not a good year for travel agents due to political upheavals and violent street battles between the military and red shirt protesters that accelerated the negative trend that set in 2008.

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Building tourism beyond Phuket

BANGKOK, 19 October 2011 – Five Andaman coast tourism associations will launch a joint marketing campaign to build length of stay.

Co-operating in the venture are provincial associations from Phuket, Krabi, Phang Nga, Trang and Ranong. They will mainly target inbound travel agencies.

According to Krabi Tourism Association president, Ittirit Kinglek, the campaign will target mainly European and Scandinavians markets to build length of stay. Read more

Pegasus names VP

BANGKOK, 9 September 2011 – Pegasus Solutions announced, Wednesday, the appointment of Rachel Grier as its new vice president of business development Asia Pacific.

Ms Grier will work on sales for Utell® Hotels & Resorts representation service, as well as building business for Pegasus’ RezView® NG central reservations system (CRS).

Prior to joining Pegasus, she held senior roles with Intercontinental Hotels Group, across Asia and the Middle East. Read more

JALPAK makes a comeback

BANGKOK, 1 August 2011 – Following the closure of the outbound travel agency, JALPAK Tour and Travel Thailand, last June, JALPAK’s management announced last Friday the company would make a comeback with a new  enterprise to be named TEM PAK.

The initial news was released last week through the Thai-language daily, Than Settakit.

TEM PAK (TEM- Travel Experience Maximizer) will be set up in a new office close to the Silom Road business district in downtown Bangkok. Read more

ASEAN works on tourism work standards

BANGKOK, 27 June 2011 – Thailand’s Ministry of Tourism and Sports is working on a standard tourism curriculum in the lead up to what is called ASEAN Mutual Recognition Arrangements on Tourism Professionals in order to prepare for the introduction of the ASEAN Economic Community 2015.

The standardised curriculum is an initiative to ensure the country’s tourism professionals can compete for jobs when the job market opens in 2015, according to ministry’s permanent secretary, Sombat Kuruphan.

The tourism curriculum is an agreement that accepts the qualifications of tourism professionals throughout ASEAN member countries and will ultimately allow them to work in any of the member countries almost with the freedom attained in the EU. Read more

Technology and the travel agent

SINGAPORE, 31 May 2011 — Technology continues to be the driving force in the travel industry determining how travel agencies do business and how travellers source and book travel, the latest Abacus International poll states.

Celebrating its 23rd year serving travel agencies in Asia, the company explores the journey of “technology’s impact on the Asian travel industry claiming it has constantly forced travel agencies to reinvent themselves to gain a competitive edge.

“Since air travel began, technology has provided the solid foundation on which travel agents build and develop their businesses. It is central to how they operate and communicate; and with today’s increasingly tech savvy travellers, it is the number one priority that helps them gain a competitive advantage.” stated Abacus International president and CEO Robert Bailey. “Globally, the travel industry is spending billions of dollars on technology, and Asia accounts for about a third of this.”

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Thai agents enjoy better business

BANGKOK, 8 April 2011- Association of Thai Travel Agents’ members handled 827,797 international tourists at Suvarnabhumi Airport during the first quarter of 2011 representing an increase of 11.07% over 745,270 visits during the same period last year.

ATTA released its latest data, earlier this week, which is based on fees member agencies pay the airport to provide a meet-and-greet service for international clients.

The top tourist market for ATTA agents was Russia providing 174,040 trips. It represented an 84.21% increase over 94,480 trips during the same period last year.

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Tour company forced to share

BANGKOK, 8 April 2011 – A tour operator agreed to share transfers for passengers disembarking from a cruise ship at Phuket after taxi drivers blockaded the port exit, last Wednesday.

Sea Tours, the company hired by the cruise ship Silver Spirit confirmed it had agreed to allow independent taxi drivers to provide transport for 50% of all the passengers who had bought  half-day sightseeing tours.

Trouble broke out last Wednesday morning, when furious taxi drivers blocked the port exit with their cars. They delayed the start of a half-day sightseeing tour that was pre-sold to cruise passengers.

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Travelport improves networking tool

Hong Kong, 17 March 2011 – Travelport launched an improved networking site, Wednesday, called Travelport, Opinions for travel agents resident in Asia.

The free online networking tool connects 7,600 travel industry members, worldwide, who have already signed up.

The tool will allow agents to create and search hotel reviews and post questions to destination experts around the world as well as access hotel related media including 110,000 images and 2,500 videos.

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