"Mario Maurer" picked to be presenter of Thai tourism for 2nd year

BANGKOK, April 20 (TNA) - The state-run Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has picked a top young Thai superstar, Mario Maurer, to be its presenter to promote the domestic tourism for the second consecutive year in 2016. TAT Governor Yuthasak Supasorn told a press conference of the decision on April 19, aimed to attract as high as about 10 million international visitors to the Thai Kingdom by the end of this year. Yuthasak said the new TAT campaign, themed "Experience Thailand with Mario", is focused on wooing more Chinese tourist arrivals in Thailand and on expanding the Thai tourism market to other three fellow member countries in the ASEAN Community (AC), including Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Yuthasak also introduced six new short Thai tourism films to be promoted through globally-connected online social media, aimed to reach targeted groups of young travellers who are in the Thai superstar's fan club. Besides, Meet & Greet activities will be, later this year, held in China's Guangzhou and Beijing Cities, as well as in three ASEAN cities of Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Manila in the Philippines and Jakarta in Indonesia. According to the governor, as the TAT's presenter in 2015, Mario Maurer helped create the "T-Pop" fever and attract up to 5 million Chinese fans to the country, hiking the number of Chinese visitors to Thailand to 7.9 million from 2015 to mid-2016, up 71 per cent year-on-year and earning the country as high as 390 billion baht. The TAT governor projected that the expanding base of the Thai superstar's fan club to the three ASEAN fellow countries should boost the number of tourist arrivals from the three states to Thailand to at least 1.5 million. The German-Thai superstar, meanwhile, said he is happy to have been chosen as the TAT presenter for the second consecutive year and he will do his best and is ready to work harder, including studying dialects of the three ASEAN fellow countries, to invite more people of the countries to visit Thailand. (TNA)