On 23 December, 2015, Ms. Elena Slobodian, from Russia Federation arrived Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand as the country’s 29 millionth visitor this year. The 29 millionth tourist, also dubbed ‘Thailand’s Luckiest Visitor’, was greeted with a warm welcoming ceremony by senior executives of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), Airports of Thailand (AOT), the Immigration Bureau, Thai Airways International and True Corporation.
Ms. Elena Slobodian was pleasantly surprised to receive two economy-class return tickets on Thai Airways from her original destination to Thailand, valid for one year; a voucher for a five-night stay at luxury accommodation; a mobile phone with a 4G sim-card and seven-day Internet usage for use during the trip; as well as the “Thailand’s Luckiest Visitor” certificate from TAT.
The “Thailand’s Luckiest Visitor” activity was launched in June this year to recognise and reward every millionth visitor to the country. With strong support from the public and private sectors, the campaign has attracted considerable international attention and enhanced the value of the Thai tourism brand image.
According to the preliminary figures released by the Ministry of Tourism and Sports, Thailand welcomed a total of 28.3 million visitors during 1 January – 16 December 2015. This generates 1.357 trillion baht tourism revenue.
In 2014, Thailand welcomed a total of 1,596,542 visitors from Russia, generating 112.7 billion Baht to the Thai economy. Russian travellers spend 4,557.13 Baht per day with an average stay of about 15.49 days per person travelling in the kingdom.
From the total number of Russian visitors to Thailand in 2014, a total of 914,286 were repeaters and the remaining being first-time visitors. In addition, nearly one million or 960,769 visitors are non-group tours or FITs and the rest travelled as part of a group tour. Their purposes of visit to Thailand are for holiday (1,543,814), meeting (2,989), incentive (4,703), convention (1,164), exhibition (1,302), and others (42,570).
