The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has targeted to raise theproportion of the country’s tourism market by luxury travellers to 30percent by next year from 20 percent currently.

After thegovernment laid out a road map for 2016 tourism with a target to bringin more "quality" tourists, the TAT planned a marketing strategy toincrease the proportion of luxury tourists, particularly from Europe,Thanet Petchsuwan, TAT Director for Europe, Africa and the Middle East,was quoted by the English language newspaper The Nation.

Theagency’s key strategy is to emphasise "luxury Thainess" as a way todifferentiate Thailand from its rivals across the world. To that end, itwill select several five-to-six-star private companies to attend theInternational Luxury Travel Market in December in Cannes, France.

Theluxury tourism market recorded the highest growth last year at 48percent, compared with general tourism growth of 24 percent, the papercited data from the research organisation IPK International's "WorldTravel Monitor".

Last year, there were 46 million luxury tripsacross the world, sharing 4.6 percent of the total travel market. Themarket share was 3.9 percent in 2009. Short-trip spending last year was750 EUR (about 28,000 THB) per day and long-trip spending 500 EUR perday.-VNA