Record-breaking Thailand on the boil
Arrivals into Thailand from Australia and New Zealand grew strongly in 2012.
Australian arrivals were up 12.1% to 930,599 and New Zealand numbers lifted 12.2% to 113,509.
Overall, Thailand has achieved record-breaking visitor arrivals, crossing the 22 million mark for the first time in 2012, up almost 16% over 2011.
Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) governor Suraphon Svetasreni said that the primary contributor to this result was global, regional and local peace and stability.
Six countries, five of which are within the Asia-Pacific region, are now producing more than one million annual visitor arrivals.
These are Malaysia, China, Japan, Korea, India and Russia.
Of these, China (2.7m) and Malaysia (2.5m) are now generating more than two million annual arrivals each.
European visitors showed a good growth rate of 10.1% to 5.6 million. Russia is the largest source market from Europe with arrivals of 1,317,387, up 24.9%.
UK is the second highest source market from Europe with a total of 870,164, up 2.9%, followed by Germany 681,566, up 10.0%.
Arrivals from the Americas showed a good growth of 13.4% to 1,080,148. The main market, US, increased by 12.5% to 767,420.
In 2013, TAT is predicting 24.5 million arrivals.
Ian Jarrett
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