The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has set up a number of international telephone “hotlines” to help foreign visitors get updated 24-hour tourism information and have their queries answered about any aspect of travel and tourism to and within Thailand.
This Global Number Services project is an extension of the TAT Call Centre, which is based in Bangkok. According to monitoring statistics, over 80 per cent of the calls are from Thai tourists or domestic calls. Foreign tourists end up incurring significant costs in calling the TAT Call Centre.
TAT Governor Suraphon Svetsreni said, “As part of the lessons we have learnt from the recent political unrest, we decided it was important to set up a number of international call centres abroad too. This will not only help during emergency situations, but also in answering the hundreds of very routine enquiries that we get.”
The Governor said the international call centres will help foreign tourists access Thai tourism information conveniently, quickly, and at less cost.
At present, this pilot project provides a 24-hour service in English and Japanese for major markets; such as the United Kingdom, Sweden, USA, Japan and Australia.
Dialing numbers for these countries:
Sweden
Tel: +46840838833
United Kingdom
Tel: +442033550430 or 02033550430
USA
Tel: +15166196810 or 5166196810
Japan
Tel: +81345209521 or 0345209521
Australia
Tel: +61280147129 or 0280147129
The calls will be charged at the local rate for the callers regardless of whether they are calling from a landline or mobile phones.
TAT expects to receive over 3,000 calls per month (equivalent to about 1 per cent of tourists from Japan, UK, Sweden, USA and Australia who travel to Thailand each month).
In addition, the information can be provided via an Internet enquiry or video live chat. Tourists can log-on to http://www.tourismthailand.org/ and click on the “1672 tourist hotline” icon on the lower right-hand side of the web page. After selecting the language, visitors will be asked to fill in basic details such as their name and e-mail address.
