While retaining its position as one of the favourite holiday destinations for world travellers, Thailand needs to look differently at safety and security issues. Neglecting this important aspect of tourism might in the long term inflict irreversible damages to the destination’s good reputation.
BANGKOK – Thanks to a joint initiative of the JFCCT (Joint Foreign Chambers of Commerce in Thailand), PATA Thailand Chapter and Skal International Bangkok had organized a one day forum about “Thailand Tourism Marketing- Safety & Security”. A particular sensitive issue as Thailand has been in recent months exposed in media with some negative coverage, reaching from jet ski scam in Pattaya to bus and ferry accidents. But due to cultural sensitivities, the answer does not always seem appropriate.
“Doing nothing is not an option anymore especially as news travel right instantly because of social media”, explained Dale Lawrence, President of Skal International Bangkok. “Speed of news –especially when bad- is incredibly quick: it takes only a few seconds to post an event on twitter, a few minutes on facebook and less than a day on a TV network such as CNN”, highlighted Alexandros Paraskevas, Senior Lecturer in Strategic Risk Management at Oxford School of Hospitality Management. “Proactive planning and providing information is the best way to curtail speculation and misinformation”, he added. “But at least, Thailand takes seriously this issue as proved by this forum. Something that we do not always experience in some developed economies”, he added.
However, the Asian culture of “losing face” when displaying negative events is mostly seen as a major handicap to work on preventive policies. “They are two difficulties in Thailand when using channels of communication; the ‘losing face’ factor is one and is indeed a serious issue which needs to be addressed”, said Andrew Durieux, owner of Coverage Ltd.
“Communication in crisis time is critically important. If there is no work done to prevent potential crisis and then communicate, it can be far more difficult to rectify wrong information. A second factor is the difficulty to many Thai companies to find the right spokesperson with the ability to speak out. Even if the person is good in communication, he still remains submitted to his senior before being able to speak out”, added Mr. Durieux.
Private companies and the government should now be sure that safety and security of travellers are part of Thailand tourism branding. “A few steps can be taken to achieve it: adopting the best practices from other countries in regard to laws and its enforcement; improving the law enforcement; offering support to all tourist activities; rising tourism employees standards; create a disaster act for areas affected by an emergency situation”, told Andrew Durieux.
Of crucial importance would also be the creation of leaflets, videos providing advices to travellers. “Then they are ways to turn something negative into a more positive description. For example, instead of talking about safety warning, why not to talk about how can tourists have a safe trip to Thailand?” described David Beiman, Senior Lecturer in tourism at Sydney University of Technology.
Peter Fretten, coordinating the translators at Lumpini Police Station in the Nana area is convinced that the job could capture the interest of foreign visitors if done by a tourist ambassador. “Why not to use Ong Bak actor Tony Jaa?” he asked.
All the panelists agreed that it would be necessary to identify Thailand weaknesses in terms of security and safety by conducting a large-scale survey of threat perception by visitors. Also statistics about the real scope of criminality should be made available… if they ever existed!
All the speakers at the Forum agreed that a lot has already been achieved. “And more will be done as we are moving into the ASEAN economic community. I can assure that the government is extremely serious at upgrading the management of the tourism industry. Many measures are soon to be implemented and some already have been adopted such as tourism courts”, concluded Suraphon Svetasreni, the Governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand.
The only regrettable element of this very open forum was the fact that the representative of the Ministry of Sports and Tourism did not intervene and even left the event after an hour and a half. Maybe due to the infamous “losing face” syndrome?
Luc Citrinot a French national is a freelance journalist and consultant in tourism and air transport with over 20 years experience. Based in Paris and Bangkok, he works for various travel and air transport trade publications in Europe and Asia.
