North left out of tourism loop

Chaing Mai Tourism Business Association says it will take two years to improve business in this northern town that is largely forgotten by mass tourism heading for Thailand’s  more popular beach resorts.

CMTBA general secretary, Vorapong Muchaothai, said the province would spend around Bt50 million on promotions during the fiscal year 2012 to address the shortcomings.

Data shows that less than 15% of all the travellers to Thailand will visit the North and Chiang Mai. Repeat visits are also low and spending is considerably below what Phuket or Pattaya earn from tourism.

Mr Vorapong says the city will be developing a so-called Promenade and the Chiang Mai Convention Centre as key attractions to improve tourism. The renovated Chiang Mai Night Safari is another project that travel officials hope to emphasise at the ITB Berlin trade show 7 to 11 March 2012.

Chiang Mai will have its own pavilion at Europe’s biggest trade show  viewed as the premier show of the year to drive tourism to Thailand.

But Chiang Mai’s fight to gain recognition as a top destination has been long and with few positive results over the years.

The share of tourism revenue from Europe has fallen from 49% in the past to 30%, while Asia’s share has risen from 29% to 49%.

Many blame the failure on national tourism promotions that favour beach resorts pushing tourists to southern islands while ignoring the potential of cultural destinations in the north.

There is talk of turning Chiang Mai into a gateway, but that would require a huge investment by the airport authority to attract airlines to serve the city directly. Airlines have made it clear they will not serve commercially unviable destinations and the Airports of Thailand intransigence in setting fee incentives holds the northern city back from developing an aviation hub particularly to attract Asian airlines.

Overland tourism is touted as the future, but the opening of the R3A Road connecting Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and China runs into serious logistics problems mainly due to Myanmar’s reluctance to remove travel restrictions that limit the usefulness of the route for tourism.

“Chiang Mai tourism this year is below expectations. International tourists particularly Asians cancelled or postponed trips to the province because of massive floods in many areas of Thailand,” Mr Vorapong said.

Even in the best of times the province is cultivating a nightmare where hotels spring up without permits and there is no control over the inventory. At least one of the town’s hotels was embroiled in a nasty health scare that hit national TV in Australia after a traveller died allegedly from chemicals used to treat the bedding against tick infestation.

There are over 40,100 rooms or units in hotels, resorts and serviced apartments in Chiang Mai and every year more are added reducing the net room value to just a few hundred baht a night.

There is a view that the arrival of the mega project Chiang Mai Convention Centre will end the oversupply filling up the rooms with meeting delegates. There is no evidence to show that the marketing of the centre has begun and usually a lead time of two years is required to secure meaningful business from the international market.

There are some annual events such as the repeat of the successful Royal Flora Ratchaphruek, but that has been postponed now to 14 December and will extend to 14 March 2012 in the hope Bangkok residents will consider travel once more when they have restored their homes and livelihoods.

In 2012, Chiang Mai should attract 2.3 million tourist arrivals of which 1.3 million will be foreigners, the CMTBA claims.

It also estimates tourist arrivals could reach 4.2 million visits and generate Bt45 billion but it gives new explanation as to how it reaches that optimistic conclusion.

In truth, Chiang Mai needs an overall and a rethink of where it wants to go in the highly competitive tourism industry. Currently it is exists in the also-run category and shares that space with many other destinations that are also struggling to find a viable sales pitch.

The reality for many visitors to the North is that Chiang Mai has evolved into a mini-Bangkok warts and all. Finding the real Chiang Mai spirit is becoming harder and more costly to discover. Most tourists leave this northern town wondering why they bothered and that shows in the statistics. They rarely return.

The story of statistics is even more confusing as they are contradictory.

Officials say they believe arrivals will soar to 6.1 million in 2013 and earn Bt60 billion in tourism revenue due to elaborate plans such as a mega convention centre. Around , 2.1 million trips  would be international s and 4 million domestic.

But the Ministry of Tourism claims 3,944,415 tourists visited Chiang Mai last year, of which 2,465,328 were Thais and 1,479,087 were foreigners, and together they generated Bt39,507.03 million in income.

That is far in excess of the CMTBA estimates for 2012, which would indicate the association and the ministry are not on the same page when reading a data trail.

Source - ttrweekly