For Nithee Seeprae, TAT Deputy Governor for Digitalisation, Research and Development, digital technology will inevitably drive the Thai tourism industry – it’s only a matter of time. Which is why he’s hard at work promoting tourism-driven digital platforms like ThailandCONNEX, intended to serve as an intermediary connecting tourism operators across Thailand by using technology and digital innovation.
He has every reason to be optimistic – Mr. Seeprae believes that apps, blockchain, and social media will all have a role to play to promote Thailand to the world, he tells us: “that’s the most powerful promotion for Thailand: the voice of our customers.”
We recently talked to Mr. Seeprae to find out what digital initiatives the TAT has in store. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You just launched ThailandCONNEX in February this year; what are its goals and how much of those goals have been achieved?
The ThailandCONNEX application was created by DEPA, the digital economy promotion agency of the Thai ICT ministry. They would like to support the Thai private sector with a new marketing tool, and create more competitiveness for the Thai private sector in terms of digital tourism.
They created this platform for business-to-business purposes, to become a new marketplace for Thai tourism stakeholders to promote their products to foreign travel agencies. The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) plays a role in promoting and marketing the platform.
Creating a platform by itself is not too difficult – if you have some budget, you can create one anyway. The difficult part is that you have to make it strong enough to be acceptable to the private sector.
So we’re introducing this platform to overseas travel agencies, so they can try to use and see how convenient it is for them to try a lot of tourism products, to make deals.
At this stage, TAT is now recruiting Thai travel agencies to offer promotions and deals on the platform for these overseas agencies. The goal is to attract good buyers and sellers with high-quality products. We’re educating Thai travel agencies to use the platform, and promote it to overseas agencies through its 25 overseas offices and various media outlets, including social media.
Image courtesy of the Tourism Authority of Thailand
Are you piloting the application with only particular locations or particular travel agents? Or have you already launched it for all travel agents who can use it?
Right now, there are around 100 or 200 travel agents selling the products inside the platform. But in the near future, we hope that we can have more variety, at least 10,000 products inside.
Can you tell me how ThailandCONNEX uses customer data? After all, TAT’s digital outreach already collects a lot of data from travel agents, also from tourists. How does the project use data to promote or improve tourism in Thailand?
Right now we understand that data is very important in terms of creating marketing plans, or any marketing campaign or project, because we have to know our customers – the data we collect can reveal their behavior, their insights, and what they’re interested in. We can use that data to develop our products and services to match their expectation… or maybe go beyond expectations!
We can get to do more spending in Thailand; we can send them the value of experiences in Thailand, and of course, hopefully they spend more time in Thailand and return. Best of all, hopefully they express their impressions to their friends on social media. That’s the most powerful promotion for Thailand: the voice of our customers.
Can you tell me the role that influencers play, in terms of promoting tourism in Thailand?
In terms of marketing communication for the Thailand brand, most of our target audience believes in influencers. They still can influence our target audience to follow them in any activity that they try, and they’re trusted on their opinion on any activity, good or bad. So when we want to communicate to promote our country, we also need influencers to come and show the experience in Thailand, and what impresses them here.
So influencers are one channel that we can communicate our country to tourists. We analyze and we categorize them on different levels – there are global-level influencers, like Blackpink or Jackson Wang. We invite them to come to Thailand, and show them how Thailand is beautiful and how delicious Thai food is. Of course, we also do local in-market influencers, so we use both the local and also the global level.
Do you feel that social media, like TikTok and Facebook, are very influential in promoting Thailand to foreign tourists, or is it diminishing in importance?
Nowadays, people can be “media” by themselves. They can create content on their own, and instantly show that they already have a good or bad experience while traveling. So social media is definitely more important these days; at TAT we hope to leverage user-generated content to go viral in social media.
The most powerful types of social media these days come in the form of short videos; TikTok has become a really strong platform, really popular right now because it’s in real-time and you don’t really need good production value to go viral.
Can you tell us about how Tourism Thailand is utilizing blockchain and other cutting-edge technologies to promote Thailand to the world?
It’s still in our long-term plans. We have to accept that the blockchain still needs study; its utility in tourism is still not very clearly understood, but we believe that we can adapt this technology to the tourism industry. Maybe in terms of authentication, or its use as a data bank, or as a smart contract.
We might use it like a non-fungible token (NFT), to add more value to local community products like handicrafts. If we can use it like an NFT, it can be a smart contract for the local people, and they can gain more income from using that kind of technology.
In terms of digitalization, we try to adapt every new technology that is coming in the near future, like AI or augmented reality, using it to recreate the activity for tourists. We may also try to use the metaverse. For tourism – we can offer a new immersive experience for tourists.
How can you make sure that digitalization serves as many stakeholders in tourism as possible?
We have a strong objective to achieve a digital transformation for the tourism industry. So we try to educate our stakeholders, make them aware of how digitalization leads to efficiency, and we change their mindset to accept more digital services. And we train them in skills to use digital marketing tools for their own business. If they can quickly understand it, maybe we can develop the tourism industry to become a digital industry.
From the point of view as Tourism Thailand’s main proponent of digital technology, do you feel that digital tourism solutions are meeting resistance from other tourism professionals? Do you think people are still skeptical of digital tourism?
Of course, it’s normal in any changing time – the ones who don’t want to change, or something they still don’t understand, most of them will still resist. But we try to create an understanding among the tourism private sector. We start by using quick win projects, to try to make them more familiar with digitalization.
