Suwadee Pachanyangkun, President Thai Tourism Credit Union (TTCU)

TravelDailyNews: Since when is the TTCU active? How many members have you got ?
 

Suwadee Pachanyangkun: We took our inspiration from existing cooperatives in countries such as Japan where SME in the travel industry wanted to have a stronger positioning. We have been active in Thailand for a year and a half now  in February 2013. We already have amembership of 145 members despite the fact that we did not promote ourselves a lot due to our limited resources. This can then be considered as a promising result. We hope to reach a new level of 200 members before the end of the year.

  

TDN: Who are these members? 
 

S.P.: Our members are mostly tour operators, small hotels, restaurants, guides and also one insurance. I believe that we could attract in fact more companies from the travel insurance field but also handicraft. Our target is to create a B2B network of people putting in common resources. We share those resources collected from our members to reinvest them in projects. For example, like an internet platform to sell products and services to each other with special conditions or to do together digital marketing.

 

TDN: Would you describe yourself as an exchange platform? 
 

S.P.: Yes, we do have this kind of internal B2B selling platform which allow our members to buy at favourable prices packages and services complimentary to their own activities. Each of our member is able to move to our exchange platform on line. All the benefits will at the end of the year being redistributed. 
 

TDN: Could you expand to other countries?
 

S.P.: We are in fact looking at expanding the concept to other ASEAN members and enlarge the services that we offer to our members to other countries of the ASEAN. This is a long term commitment from our association.