The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), Airports of Thailand (AOT), and the Immigration Department (ID) are to join forces to ensure that visitors are smoothly processed through Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, the country’s main tourist gateway, as part of the campaign to facilitate a post-floods recovery.

A range of measures have been approved to help arriving visitors with language problems, visa-on-arrival processing and faster clearance of queues. “Thailand Welcomes the World”, will run from January-August 2012, and is part of the TAT's “Miracle Year of Amazing Thailand” tourism plan.

Mr Suraphon Svetasreni, Governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand said, “Now, Thailand is working hard to rehabilitate in the wake of massive flooding, so we must make a strong first impression on tourists by giving them a warm welcome as soon as they arrive.”

The first step of cooperation with the Immigration Department will focus on Suvarnabhumi Airport only.
The main activities will include:
- Seventy personnel will be deployed to work in three shifts around the clock to ensure speedy clearance of queues.
- Special help will be provided in Chinese, Japanese and English to help visitors fill out the immigration form.
- Resolving the issue of long queues at immigration and to quicker facilitate tourists.
- Immigration police will be provided a one-day training course to upgrade their service-mindedness.
- Ten golf carts will be deployed to serve the elderly and visitors with disabilities.
- Free Internet corners will be available for visitors searching for Thai tourism information.
- Telephones and cell phones for local calls will also be offered at the airport.
- Documentation on the Thai tourism industry will be distributed to transit passengers to help them convert today’s transit stopover into tomorrow’s more comprehensive holiday visit.

According to the Ministry of Tourism and Sports, over 11.19 million international visitor arrivals entered the country at Suvarnabhumi Airport during January - November 2011, or roughly 70% of the total number of visitors (17.10 million) which is an increase of 21.8% over January - November 2010. Also, the figures of January - November 2011 is more than the whole of 2010, which stood at 10.3 million.

The TAT is hoping that a resurgence in arrivals this month will raise the full year’s arrivals figure to 18.5 million, up by 16% over 2010.

Assuming that there are no further global, regional or local crises, the estimate for 2012 international visitor arrivals is 19.6 million and tourism revenue of 766 billion Baht. In terms of domestic tourism, the TAT expects to see 93.7 million trips and revenue of 453 billion Baht.