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"Visit China 2001" Travel Fair Launched in Bangkok
Manifesting the fast-growing tourism exchange and cooperation between Thailand and China, a grand tourism exhibition and trade fair to promote Chinese tour routes was launched in Bangkok on July 14.
"Thailand and China have long enjoyed an exceptionally close relationship and recently the ties are growing even stronger through the increasing number of tourist traffic between the two countries," said Somsak Thepsuthin, Thai minister of the Prime Minister's Office who is in charge of the country's tourism in a letter to congratulate the opening of the fair.
"One major objective of the event is to facilitate direct discussions between tourism professionals from the two countries thus to achieve mutual growth," he said.
The event, "Visit China 2001" Travel Fair, is one of the largest-ever promotion campaigns of Chinese tourism products in Thailand, and was attended by over 100 tourism authorities, airlines and tour agencies from both countries.
Xu Qiuchen, a Thai Chinese who chairs the Thai Travel Agents Association (TTAA), told Xinhua at the fair that China, as a country with long history and rich cultural heritage, will be a major magnet for Thai tourists.
"And since China will host the 2008 Olympic Games, I believe tourism in China will head for a bigger boom," he said.
Xu also noted that this travel fair is the first of its kind to involve all the means-- demonstrations, group-discussions, transactions and others -- to promote the Thailand-China tourism cooperation.
According to TTAA, China now is one of the most important markets for Thai tourism and the Chinese tourist arrivals to Thailand last year exceeded 168,000 while Thai tourist arrivals to China also had increased to 130,000. Thailand now ranks number 10 in foreign tourist source countries to China.
TTAA believed this event could increase Thai tourist arrivals to China by 15 percent.
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