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Phuket Welcomes Charter Flights from Italy 
Phuket Welcomes Charter Flights from Italy
Blue Panorama,
an Italian charter flight airline, began operating a new route to Phuket
for the winter season to increase the number of visitors from Italy.
Blue Panorama Airlines has been operating direct flights connecting Rome
and the tropical paradise of Phuket since its inaugural flight on 29
December 2008. To support this new development, the Tourism Authority of
Thailand recently hosted an Agents Education Trip (AET) and
Familiarization Trip (fam trip) for 15 agents to travel to Thailand
during 27 January – 5 February, 2009. The itinerary featured the three
destinations of Phuket, Bangkok and Ayutthaya.
The objective of
the familiarization trip is to promote Thailand as a travel destination
for the Italian Market and to restore confidence in travel to Thailand.
Additionally, a Media Education Trip (MET) was conducted for 14
top-level Italian media representing television, radio and daily
newspapers. Participants took part in the Bangkok to Phuket trip during 5
– 12 February 2009.
With flights being offered every Wednesday
until March 2009, the newly-launched Rome – Phuket – Bangkok route is
expected to play an important role in encouraging more Italian tourists
to travel to Thailand. In addition, another route serving Milan –
Bangkok - Phuket operates every Thursday until March 2009. If the
service receives positive feedback, it will continue to operate until
August. The first flight from Rome was timed to co-incide with a
Christmas Day welcome and was launched on 24 December. The first flight
from Milan started on 26 December. Though, this is the first service to
Thailand following the 2004 tsunami incident, the route is expected to
contribute to 500 tourist arrivals to Thailand per week.
The
charter flights serving the Phuket-Italy route are mainly aimed at
providing services for package holidays. Excess seats are sold off on a
flight-only basis. By offering a more restricted service than the major
scheduled or low cost airlines, the cost of these seats is highly
affordable.
In 2007, the number of Italian visitors who travelled
to Thailand was 159,498, or a 16.54% increase over 2006, out of which
140,999 arrived at Suvarnabhumi International Airport and 17,571 in
Phuket. Visitor arrivals to Thailand at Phuket International Airport
during January-August 2008 totalled 829,083, an increase of 5.24% from
787,827 arrivals during the first eight months of 2007.
Source: http://www.tatnews.org/tat_news/detail.asp?id=4202
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