Thailand rated No. 1 travellers’ destination despite civil unrest

INCREASE: Countries facing potential terrorism attacks and subjected to various disasters have proved that such barriers did not affect the tourism trade but marked as top destinations, “Asia Travel Intentions Survey 2007” report reveals.

Visa International Asia Pacific (Visa) and the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) have released the ‘Asia Travel Intentions Survey 2007’ which reports that of those intending international travel in the next two years, 52% were considering Asia as their next travel destination.

This is a 9% increase on the previous year’s survey results and an 18% increase over the results in 2005.

The annual joint research issued by Visa and PATA surveys more than 5,000 international travelers from 10 key travel markets worldwide and looks at the travel intentions of the respondents as well as the drivers and barriers to their travel.

For the first time, India was included in the study this year, reinforcing the country’s growing status as a potential inbound and outbound tourism source, as evidenced by 4.4 million visitors to India and 8.3 million outbound Indian travelers in 2006.

Around two-thirds of those surveyed had already visited Asia, 47% of whom had been to Thailand. In fact, Thailand was again rated as the number one destination on travelers’ holiday lists, followed by Japan and China.

Despite international media attention on Thailand’s civil unrest in the weeks before the survey was conducted, 50% or more of those interviewed in each of the 10 markets surveyed chose Thailand as their most likely holiday spot.

Thailand’s reputation as a relaxing place where people can enjoy the local culture, natural beauty and friendly people continued to increase in the minds of those looking to travel to Asia.

Perceptions of Indonesia were again influenced by safety concerns, namely the 2004 Tsunami and potential terrorism attacks. More than half of all respondents (56%) believed that Indonesia was still severely affected by the December 2004 Tsunami while 50% identified the country as subject to terrorist attacks.

China was the main destination identified as being affected by bird flu (58%), followed by Vietnam (37%), Thailand (35%) and Indonesia (34%). One emerging trend observed from the 2007 survey was a desire for travelers to participate in environmentally and culturally-sensitive travel.

Almost nine out of ten respondents said they would prefer to choose tourism products that showed concern about the impact tourism had on local cultures and customers and also protected the natural environment.