The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) is holding a ‘Japan loves Thailand’ festival in Phuket in a desperate bid to pull back Japanese visitors, whose numbers to the southern resort island have plummeted by 70 percent since the December tsunami.
Held in conjunction with the Phuket-Japan Association, the festival, to be held on 27 June at the Royal Phuket City Hotel, hopes to revive the island’s tourism fortunes and act as publicity for the southern island.
Visitors to the event will be able to see Japanese cultural and artistic performances, learn how to tie a kimono, and engage in traditional Japanese games. There will also be booths offering Japanese food and beverages, laid on by local Japanese restaurants and Japanese students.
According to Mr. Kazushi Miyashita, head of the Phuket-Japan Association, since the tsunami struck on 26 December, the monthly total of Japanese visitors to the island has not exceeded 5,000, compared to a pre-tsunami level of over 15,000.
More: mcot.org
Related Travel Information
The speaker of the South Australia Parliament says the Member for Unley Mark Brindal complied with the rules of Parliament when he reported on his study tour to Thailand in 2003.
Checks by the Auditor-General and the Speaker of State Parliament confirm Mr Brindal did not breach any rules over his taxpayer-funded trip to Thailand in 2003.
Speaker Bob Such has checked Mr Brindal's reports and says they are comprehensive.
He has also requested that parliamentary staff devise a more specific application form to get more details about an MP's itinerary when they want to take a taxpayer-funded trip.
But Dr Such says Mr
Japanese travel warning for Gold Coast 'unfair
The Queensland Premier and tourism leaders are surprised by an official advisory, warning Japanese visitors to be wary of crime on the Gold Coast.
Japan's Foreign Ministry website has listed a series of recent assaults and robberies of Japanese tourists in Surfers Paradise.
The warning advises tourists not to leave valuables in locked rooms, or open a wallet in front of people and to keep a tight grip on hand and shoulder bags.
Daniel Gschwind from the Queensland Tourism Industry Council says it is a damaging message.
"Clearly it's not helpful if a destination like the Gold
The largest company for tourism in Europe on Friday said that the explosions which took lace in the Egyptian Sharm al-Sheikh resort on Saturday pushed only 3% of its clients to cancel their flights to the city or change their bookings.
Folker Boucher, chairman of the German TUA company said that 3% of those already booked clients had actually changed their travel plans to Egypt following the explosions in which more than 60 persons were killed. He said that this number of changes in the booking might change to 5%.
Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit on Friday urged his EU, US
Flights to London have been unaffected by the Thursday bomb attacks, and travellers from Thailand to the United Kingdom should not be inconvenienced.
Methanee Sukmak of JP Travel said none of her agency's customers had cancelled trips and her business was not affected. Travellers to the UK are aware that Thursday's attacks were in central London only, while airports were far away from the city centre, she said.
''If a bomb went off at an airport, that would be another story,'' said Ms Methanee.
In any case, July is the low season for Thais going to Europe, she said. Traffic between Thailand and
Some 200 leaders in the tourism industry in Central Luzon met here on Thursday to discuss ways to get a larger share of Japanese, Korean and Chinese tourists in the region.
Renewed focus on Asian tourists came as Japan, Korea and Greater China (Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China) ranked second, third and fourth, respectively, in Philippine tourism’s major markets, Department of Tourism reports showed.
These tourists contributed shares of 17 percent, 16.6 percent and 14.2 percent, respectively, to the 1.9 million arrivals in the country in 2003, and 2.05 million arrivals from January to November 2004.
Reports from the World Tourism Organization
