and developing a campaign to satisfy the needs of tourists. Thank you once again.
Now, our next speaker is Mr. Koga, who is serving as Vice President of a hotel in Thailand. Thailand is one of the rapidly growing ASEAN countries and is placing an emphasis on tourism promotion as well as inbound. Mr. Koga, please.
Mr. Koga : My name is Shin Koga and I am from Thailand. I'm very happy to have been invited to this symposium and to be given an opportunity to talk about tourism in our country.
In Thailand, foreign currency had long been obtained by rice export but in the past decade, tourism has taken its place. Last year, the number of tourists to our country totaled 6,950,000, a 12.73 % increase from the previous year. Of the 6,950,000 visitors, 4,358,000 were from Asian countries and that was a 17.8 % increase from the previous year. This may be due to the easy access from neighboring countries. The most outstanding increase was seen in Chinese visitors, which showed a 47.2 %o increase from the previous year. Tourists from Japan rose by 17.78 % to 814,000. In terms of individual countries, Malaysia ranked high due to the easy accessibility through the national border, with 810,000 of them visiting via land. However amongst all the countries, Japan boasts the greater number of tourists traveling to Thailand .
Income from tourism in 1995 amounted to 168,800,000,000 bahts or 6,752,000,000 US dollars.
Now, I'd like to explain about tourism promotion in Thailand.
In reference to the government sector, we depend on the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) considerably. It has a head office in Bangkok with 22 branch offices throughout the country, each one being involved in tourism promotion within the local community. Until last year, I was working in a region about 2 hours ride from Bangkok. The TAT branch office there annually hosts a large event in May to promote tourism in cooperation with the tourism industry. They invite approximately one hundred people from five countries in Asia, who are engaged in tourism. They are entertained with a golf competition, sightseeing and a party in which the local and the TAT governors also participate. The TAT has 17 overseas offices too, including one here in Japan which is promoting tourism in Thailand.
The Board of Investment (BOI) of the Thai government adopts a scheme of preferential treatment for the construction of hotels necessary for the tourist industry by way of a partial tax remission. At present electrical power in Thailand is insufficient, therefore additional power is purchased from Laos. Since electricity in the tourist industry is indispensable, the BOI allows the members of the Thailand Hotel Association to purchase electricity at lower prices. While these measures are not obvious, they show that the government is extending its assistance to the tourist industry.
Emphasis is also being placed on the development of new sightseeing attractions. Along with this, the infrastructure is being improved and a second airport in Bangkok is being planned. Bangkok is infamous for its poor transportation services, but the ongoing construction of a sky train will certainly change the situation, in addition to a subway construction project.
Increasingly, tourists visit Thailand as a gate-way to Indo-China for sightseeing in Myanmar and Laos. The number of tourists visiting nearby Kunming, China, is also increasing. These are all results of joint promotion by the TAT and Indo-Chinese nations.
Next, I would like to talk about our private sector. There are several tourism organizations in Thailand, such as the Association of Thai Travel Agents, which comprises travel agencies, the Thai Hotel Association (THA) to which my hotel belongs, and the Thai Incentive Convention Association (TICA) operated by the TAT sponsors and the Thai government. These organizations, TICA in particular, are designing various activities all over the world to attract incentive conventions.
