Korakot Chatasingha, General Manager Australia, Thai Airways
Each year, 600,000 visitors travel from Australia to Thailand.
We carry 60 per cent of them. Our key areas of innovation focus
around hospitality and service.
Thailand is now well positioned to take advantage of the growth
in travel to Asia and to that end Thai Airways, with the support of
the Thai government, is rapidly expanding the international airport
at Bangkok. Phase 1, increasing capacity to 45 million passenger
movements, is now complete. Phase 2, to take that further to 60
million capacity, is underway, and Phase 3 - 100 million capacity -
is planned. This would make Bangkok one of the busiest airports in
the world.
With regards to service, we are now offering an in-the-air
massage service on Royal Silk Class as well as on the ground in our
premier lounge. Our first class lounge was voted best in the world.
All of our 777-300 aircraft are equipped with inflight video
entertainment which enhances the travelling experience for both
business travellers and families.
We work closely with wholesale tourism operators and are now
driving a program to establish Thailand as a luxury destination as
well as a traditional tourist destination. Thailand is known as a
value-for-money destination; now we are promoting ourselves as a
premium travel destination, with the aim of attracting high net
worth customers. We are also promoting Bangkok as natural stopover
place and the starting point and return port of call for further
exploration into Vietnam and Cambodia.
With the Thai government, we are also embarking on an initiative
to establish Bangkok as a first choice for conferences and
conventions in Asia, while in Australia we have recently
established an e-ticketing link with Virgin linking Thai Airways to
thirteen destinations in Australia.
- Korakot Chatasingha, General Manager Australia, Thai
Airways
