The Department of Tourism plans to boost Thailand’s tourism through promoting community-based tourism with better facilities in local attractions and villages.

Visitors to a temple in Bangkok, Thailand (Photo: Xinhua/VNA)

The Director-General of the Department of Tourism, Anan Wongbenjarat, opened a community-based tourism network seminar on Thursday at the Tawana Bangkok hotel, where he gave a lecture on the department's roles on tourism development.

Mr. Anan said his department this year will further promote community-based tourism and its standards, namely tourism management by community members; economic, social, and livelihood management; cultural heritage conservation and promotion; sustainable natural resources and environment management; tourism services quality; and public relations promotion.

The Tourism Department is aiming to push Thailand as a global quality tourism destination with a balanced growth based on Thai-ness, using tourism growth to encourage social and economic growth, as well as better income distribution to villagers.

The department will also be working with community tourism attractions and tourism villages to improve existing facilities to better accommodate visitors.

The Tourism Department is expecting gross income from tourism in 2019 will be at 3.41 trillion baht, a 10 percent increase from 2018 projection at three trillion baht. 

(Source: NNT/VNA)