The announcement was made during the Resmässan, an annual travel and tourism trade show, held between November 8 – 10, 2002 in Stockholm, Sweden. Both honours are based on the first-hand experiences of Swedish visitors to Thailand who voted via the website developed by the organizer of the Resmässan.
During January to June 2002, Scandinavian visitors to Thailand totalled 212,238. Of these, 125,573 were from Sweden. According to preliminary information tabulated by nationality, Swedish visitor arrivals at Bangkok International Airport totalled 8,341 in October 2002, a strong growth of 14.37 over the same month of 2001.
Scandinavia is one of Thailand’s best source of visitor arrivals in Europe. The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) recently opened an overseas office in Stockholm to cover the Scandinavian countries. Finland, Russia, and a number of Eastern European and former Soviet Union countries.
During the past few months, the Thai tourism industry has received a number of high profile awards from highly recognized international publications. Thailand was voted by readers of Condé Nast Traveller magazine as the second best long-haul holiday destination after Australia. In the same survey, Phuket and Samui were voted 7th and 10th Best Island Resorts, respectively.
In the second Annual TIME Readers’ Travel Choice Awards, Bangkok was voted as the 2nd runner-up in the Favourite Holiday Destination category. In addition, Thailand was honoured as the “Destination of the Year” in the TTG Annual Travel Awards 2002.
