TCEB and THAI Form Marketing Collaboration Attracting MICE Travellers from Asia, Europe

26 December 2022: Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau (TCEB) and Thai Airways International Public Company Limited (THAI) sign a deal on 2023 marketing collaboration through trade shows and road shows. The target is quality meeting and incentive travellers from Asia and Europe. The two parties expect the collaboration will attract at least 500,000 travellers and generate 33 billion baht in revenue.

The collaboration between TCEB and THAI is aimed at promoting Thailand as a preferred meetings and incentive travel (MI) destination, both quantitatively and qualitatively, for corporate markets and, thus, driving the national economy along with the development of the MI sector. The two parties will involve in joint marketing to create new business opportunities and international markets.

Mr. Chiruit Isarangkun Na Ayuthaya, President of Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau (TCEB), stated that “TCEB and THAI will join hands to promote MICE industry in 2023. We will focus first on overseas market of meetings and incentive travel. This sector has been a huge market source of travellers for Thailand since the middle of this year. Our targets are both short-haul market in the Asia Pacific region and long-haul one in Europe. The particular focus is the markets where THAI and THAI Smile Airways operate flight services, for example, Europe, India, Australia, Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Lao PDR, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar. The collaboration will also entail forming partnership to support other key MICE events. It is expected that the collaboration will create confidence and incentives and make it easier for travellers to choose Thailand”.

For the road shows, the first target is CLMV group comprising Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Vietnam. These markets, particularly Cambodia and Vietnam, show sign of speedy recovery. In response to the assessment of potential market conducted jointly with industry stakeholders, it is found that Australia is a high-spending market, thus, the planned road shows in Sydney and Melbourne in May. More pro-active marketing activities are in the pipeline for TCEB overseas representatives to tap into India, Singapore, Europe and UK, while plans for China are prepared for immediate action once the circumstances permit. Currently, TCEB has overseas representatives in 7 potential markets – Australia, UK and Europe, North America, India, Singapore, Japan and China. Sale calls and business networking activities are undertaken to keep the clients in these markets updated on Thailand.

TCEB and THAI are confident that the collaboration will help revive the meetings and incentive travel markets to achieve 60% growth when compared to the year 2019. Based on the projected growth figure, an estimated 500,000 travellers generating 33 billion baht in revenue is expected. In line with the prospect, TCEB and THAI are designing new campaigns for 2023 to help speed up Thai MICE industry to return to normalcy as soon as possible.