ATTA TRIMS PROJECTION ON ARRIVALS

       The Association of Thai Travel Agents has revised this year's forecast for international arrivals down to 11.5 million due to a pessimistic tourism outlook.
       ATTA president Surapol Sritrakul said the conservative figure was based on surveys conducted among the agency's members.
       "We haven't seen any positive factors or advance bookings for the upcoming high season," he said yesterday.
       Though the number of tourists from Iran, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, India and China is on the rise, arrivals from Europe and the United States are still low. Between January and July, ATTA members catered to 900,000 travellers, a 40-per-cent decrease from the same period last year.
       Figures produced by the ATTA are lower than those of the Tourism Authority of Thailand and the Tourism Council of Thailand (TCT). The TAT recently revised its forecast from 13.2 million to 14 million arrivals because it believes the tourism industry will recover in the high season. Meanwhile, the TCT recently revised up its forecast from 12 million to 13.1 million, expecting tourists to return as political unrest subsides.
       According to Surapol, arrivals are so low that some small operators have been forced to shut down or sell their businesses. "The sector is not expected to recover until the middle of next year, and full recovery will only be seen late next year," he said.
       He added that the government should help tour operators through soft loans. So far only 30 small operators have received financial assistance, even though 300 applied for it. The ATTA and other key tourism associations are planning to ask the Finance and Tourism and Sports ministries for help.
       Surapol said the ATTA would hire two specialists to come up with new tourism schemes as well as marketing and sales strategies.
       Pradech Payakvichain, a TAT consultant, said tourism operators needed new strategies to compete with other countries, especially once the Asean Economic Community comes into effect.
       Thailand is not the only country suffering from a slump in tourist arrivals. According to the International Air Transport Association, passengers in July had declined 2.9 per cent compared to the same month last year, while freight demand was down 11.3 per cent. The international passenger-load factor stood at 80.3 per cent.
       The drop in July passenger demand was a relative improvement compared to the 7.2-per-cent drop in June and the 6.8-per-cent decline recorded over the first seven months of the year. The July capacity was more in line with reduced demand than in previous months and load factors were similar to those recorded in July 2008.
       These developments, however, have come at the expense of yields that continue to fall sharply.