TRAVELLERS TALES

TAT bends back in plotting the future

DON ROSS

Unfortunately for its creators, the Thailand Unforgettable campaign will be best known for how quickly it was forgotten.

Launched last September as a farewell gift from former Tourism Authority of Thailand governor, Juthamas Siriwan, the travel industry panned the theme as pedestrian following in the footsteps of that other campaign flop Unseen Thailand. Fortunately, a very brave incoming governor, Phornsiri Manoharn, canned the campaign even though the shadow of her predecessor looms in the lofty corridors of TAT's headquarters. Unlike all other retiring governors, Ms Juthamas remains in residence wielding considerable influence as a highly respected consultant from an office suite on the top floor.

Within days of taking over the top job, Ms Phornsiri announced she was taking the TAT back to the good old days of "Amazing Thailand."

Did lightening strike the office sill? Not exactly but there were rumblings and hurried meetings where we are told the former governor made it known she was not amused.

Facing off with your former boss might be fun, but in the context of the TAT it is considered nothing short of amazing.

So did a brave new governor make the right choice? Most travel executives seem to think so. Associations and executives of the national airline came out in praise claiming the "Amazing Thailand" campaign was the single most successful branding exercise carried out by TAT.

We might even conjecture that the original campaign was only dropped in the late '90s to allow TAT to spend another 150 million baht going through the tedious process of selecting an advertising agency and then developing a new campaign from scratch. Enter the negative statement era of unseen and unforgettable.

Of course, the new governor embarks on an unprecedented gamble cancelling a campaign that was launched at huge cost during the World Travel Mart last November. She has to tweak a resurrected "Amazing Thailand" campaign for an entirely different 2007 environment ensuring it is ready for re-launch at the Asean Tourism Forum in Singapore next week.

She can gain some encouragement from a widely distributed electronic travel industry daily news letter "etravelblackboard", which reports a survey of Australian tour operators confirmed "Amazing Thailand" was the single campaign they still remember and recognise.

Well we say it every day, don't we and no doubt Ms Phornsiri, behind her office door, whispers "amazing" particularly after a meeting with her minister or consultants.

No matter how long you live in Thailand you will utter "amazing" possibly more than once a day. I say it most days when I cycle to work, along what must be one of the city's safest roads.

I also mutter it when an office building security guard allows me to park my car in the slot for senior citizens. I'll exclaim amazing when I can secure a senior citizen's cheap fare on Thai Air Asia too.

No other word describes the response visitors are most likely to utter during a typical holiday in this country. Fortunately it is usually reflects a positive sentiment prompted by the way Thais offer us hospitality and kindness in contrast to most other destinations that are too busy counting dollars and cents.

Wow it's amazing could be the response to heritage reflected in the city's temples, or we might call Thai cuisine "awesome" and a spa could be "cool".

There's not a dull moment even as we ponder last week's newspaper headlines. Just when we think a story has run its course, it has an amazing resurrection.

Yet some times amazing is a response to subjects that baffle common sense.

I ponder over the 500 road deaths over the New Year and wonder how newspapers can call it a season of good will and family merriment. The daily death toll in excess of 100 deaths surpassed casualties in Iraq. It's amazing how truck and bus drivers flee the scene and yet we never consider recruiting them for the Asian Games. There is nothing faster on two legs.

On the upside, if you are a regular at a certain pub, you can telephone in your beer order to catch the happy hour deadline, while you wait in a traffic jam just a five-minute walk away. You can forget your spectacles, wallet and credit cards, they will be waiting for you next time you drop by for a beer.

People make us say "wow it's amazing" and they are the real tourism assets far more than the beaches and heritage, but often forgotten by policy makers. They complete the extraordinary mix that keeps tourists returning year-after-year, yet they rarely feature in advertising campaigns.

The only hitch in reviving the Amazing Thailand brand is that TAT's own statements that it has very little cash for a global launch.

That's quite amazing.

The agency was given just over 3.5 billion baht to spend during its fiscal year October 1, 2006 to September 30, 2007. That is about seven percent off the previous year's budget.

Even more amazing is the 364 million baht chunk that drops out of the budget in salaries for 923 employees who occupy a 20-storey building. Competitor, Hong Kong, manages the same task with 226 staff, a level it has maintained since 2004. Spain does the same and it has to cater to more than 50 million tourists a year.

TAT's international marketing division that introduced the now expired Thailand Unforgettable campaign has about one billion baht to spend or five percent more than last year, while the domestic tourism division has to make do with a mere 480 million baht.

Wherever your roam in the TAT corridors, you will sneak in an appropriate "amazing" under your breath. Marketing gurus at TAT spend 248 million baht on sales, another 461 million baht on advertising and public relations and 131 million baht designing a media campaign that is identical to the one used every year for a decade. They spend the same huge sums in the same TV media outlets year after year. Never a question, never a review.

In contrast, the so called department of the future that handles IT has to work with a paltry B10 million a year.

TAT spends 400 million baht organising a tourism fair that this year will not have a single bargain on the table, if we believe the incoming governor. That is amazing. Then search for the research and data budget and discover it hardly gets a mention.

This is the last item in the product and planning budget with an allocation of just 30 million baht for a vital activity that every private travel company and hotel depends on to prepare their marketing strategies.

TAT executives admit to scratching for funds to the point they cannot supply reliable, timely data on tourist arrivals, spending and length of stay.

What is amazing is how the Bank of Thailand, Kasikorn Research Centre and all the other agencies that issue forecasts and statements on tourism revenue reach their conclusions.

KRC stated last week that the New Year's Eve bombs would knock an eight billion baht hole in tourism revenue in the first quarter of 2007. Really and they worked that out without knowing the exact tourist arrivals and revenue earned in 2006.

It is amazing that the tourism industry, which is the country's single largest employer, has to base all of its research on estimates. Last week the TAT was making estimates for 2008, based on estimates for 2007, which in turn were based on an estimate for 2006. The agency lives in a world of "targets", "estimates" and "preliminary" figures. As I write this column there is not a single firm figure on tourist arrivals in 2006, length of stay or daily earnings. We guess.

Pacific Asia Travel Association positions arrivals in 2006 at approximately 13.2 million, while the new governor mentions 13.65 million (preliminary estimate). That is before we arrive at the more complicated calculations of how long a traveller stays and how much they spend.

The challenge for the new governor is to demonstrate that when she provides figures that they are in fact reliable and timely. Is that so amazing?

Don Ross's email: info@ttreport.com

Horizons News
Bangkok Post
Thursday January 25, 2007