New Year’s spending reaches over Bt13b in Thailand

BANGKOK, January 2 (TNA) - New Year celebrations have generated over 13.1 billion baht tourism-related revenues across Thailand, especially in the Thai North, in which the number of tourist arrivals has been slated at nearly 500,000. Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT)’s Deputy Governor for Domestic Marketing Tawatchai Aranyik acknowledged the upbeat Thai tourism during the New Year festivity on Tuesday, confirming that all tourist destinations throughout the country were crowded with both Thai and foreign visitors, totally at more than 2.3 million, bringing the average hotel occupancy rate to as high as 95 per cent. Tawatchai said, apart from the most popular northern region, where up to over 485,000 international tourist visited generating more than 3.5 billion baht tourism-related revenues, the central Thai region welcomed more than 360,000 international tourists during the New Year celebrations generating some 1.6 billion baht tourism-related revenues, followed by the Thai South at over 350,000 international tourists earning the region over 3.2 billion baht tourism-related revenues and the Thai East and Northeast at more than 200,000 international tourists each, earning the regions some one billion baht and 600 million baht tourism-related revenues respectively. (TNA)