Atta Ready for Suvarnabhumi Airport

According to Association of Thai Travel Agents president, Apichart Sankary, ground facilities that will provide fast and efficient transfers for passengers to Suvarnabhumi Airport are crucial factors.

Suvarnabhumi Airport can surely become Asia’s

aviation hub but it needs to establish infrastructure to deliver passengers from the city to the airport conveniently and fast. The train from downtown must deliver service quality and so must the ground staff working at the airport,” he said.

Mr Apichart made the comments as Thai Airways International completed its first landing at the new airport this morning, 29 September.

Atta will establish an office and parking area at the new airport and is requesting space from King Power Company, which is responsible for the area. It requires about 150 sq m for its meet-and-greet services and around 200 to 300 sq m for the operational offices responsible for collecting and keeping data documents. “In additional, we are requesting a tour bus parking area from the Airports of Thailand Public Company possibly as big as 3 to 4 rai, enough to accommodate 100 tour buses,” Mr Apichartsaid.

Aatt has a parking area for up to 50 buses at Don Muang Airport.

TAT held a crisis meeting this morning to assess cancellation and decided the travel show will go on as planned. The show must go on. That’s the final word from the Tourism Authority of Thailand following a meeting this morning where officials did a fast damage assessment of the TTM due to open next early next week.

The show must go on

Officials confirmed to TTR Weekly there had been cancellations from some US and Canadian buyers. It is very likely that sellers from Yunnan and Guangxi provinces will not attend despite already having confirmed booths. TAT officials acknowledged that there could be more cancellations, but nothing like what this particular event suffered just a week after the September 11 2001 terrorist attack in New York. The 2001 TTM, which was held in Pattaya, lost about 20 percent of its confirmed buyers.

There have been some minor casualties

Best Western Asia Pacific confirmed today that it will not host the TTM golf competition, due to the fallout from the coup that successfully ousted caretaker prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. There are still about 20 buyers left on the golf list prepared to one day before the TTM opens. This publication will now host golf and dinner. As of this morning 209 buyers confirmed attendance and 369 sellers affirmed their commitment to attend.