Thailand’s most important B2B travel trade show, the Thailand Travel Mart Plus Amazing Gateway to the Greater Mekong Subregion (TTM+) 2019 kicked off today in Pattaya.
This year’s show, taking place 5-7 June 2019, has a bigger and brighter format that clearly reflects the new sense of direction in a rapidly evolving and highly competitive global environment.
Under the theme of “New Shades of Emerging Destinations”, the TTM+ 2019 has attracted total participation of 351 buyers, 371 sellers, and around 130 international and domestic media. For the second consecutive year, the event is taking place at the Ocean Marina Yacht Club Pattaya, the biggest marina in Southeast Asia.
The show program began today with buyers, sellers and media registration, a TTM Talk session for all delegates, Thailand media briefing, and welcome reception. The TTM Talk features a line-up of 10 well-recognized experts who cover a broad range of social, cultural, marketing, management, and development topics of critical importance to many aspects of the past, present, and future of Thai tourism. The session held concurrently between 15.00-16.00 Hrs. today.
The business meetings will be held on 6-7 June after which buyers and media will leave on 8 June for a full range of post-tours to different parts of the Eastern Seaboard area.
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The overall focus of TTM+ 2019 is Thailand’s emerging destinations nationwide, 55 provinces with spectacular beauty, heritage, cultural and culinary attractions.
Mr. Yuthasak Supasorn, TAT Governor said, “This year’s theme reflects a strong continuation of our long-standing strategy to promote our emerging destinations with the aim of creating jobs and distributing revenue nationwide, from major cities to local communities, while creating sustainability by balancing the number of visitors to the destinations.
Both international and domestic buyers will find these 55 emerging destinations perfectly suited to the needs of their clients, especially those who seek off-the-beaten-path holidays and repeaters looking for new products. In fact, we are already beginning to see results. In 2018, we recorded six million (6,223,183) trips by foreign tourists to these cities, a growth of +4.95 percent over 2017.”
As of 14, May 2019, the TTM+ 2019 had registered 351 buyers from 51 countries. Of these 185 are repeaters and 166 are first-time buyers. By country, the largest number is from China (65) followed by the United Kingdom (29), India (23), Australia (18), Italy (15), USA (15), Russia (14), and Brazil (13). By region, buyers from the EU, Africa, and the Middle East comprise the largest contingent (136) followed by ASEAN, South Asia, and the South Pacific (95), East Asia (79) and the Americas (41).
The total of 371 registered sellers is dominated by hotels and resorts (278) followed by travel agents and tour operators (23), emerging destinations (20), entertainment (12), the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) (10), NTOs (10) associations (9), and others (9). Of these, 40.89% are from the South, Central Region (30.47%), the East (12.76%), North (5.47%), Northeast (6.77%), GMS (2.6%), and NTOs (1.04%).
The post-tours include the best of the Eastern Seaboard, including village communities, organic farms, silk weavers, gems and jewelry markets, and the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Chanthaburi.
This year, the tours are being extended to include interesting places in neighboring Cambodia; such as Battambang, Chek Battambang, Banteay Chhmar, Soieries du Mekong Silk Centre, Angkor Wat, and Angkor Thom.
