Monday afternoon, October 26th 2009 at the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) building in Bangkok.

Mr. Suraphon Svetasreni, Tourism Authority of Thailand Deputy Governor for Policy and Planning had a special interview session to discuss the progress and success of the Ultimate Thailand Explorers project. The UTE project has been running since September 1st, 2009, beginning with an invitation to travelers from all over the world to participate in the event by submitting video clips for a chance to become one of the five finalist teams.

The five teams selected from an online, global audience will be provided with once-in-a-lifetime opportunities: 6 expenses-paid days exploring the attractions in five of Thailand’s world famous holiday destinations: Bangkok, Phuket, Pattaya, Chiang Mai, and Koh Samui.

Each day the teams of competitors must visit the many fantastic attractions and activities at their chosen destinations and then share their experiences with the online community by uploading videos, photos, and stories on various websites including, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and Blogs. This is intended to inspire other global travelers to visit Thailand.

The team with the highest votes from the final event will be named The Ultimate Thailand Explorers and win cash and prizes, including a package holiday, worth a total of $15,000 USD.

In regards to the success of the project Mr. Suraphon said “It’s beyond what we have expected and planned. For the first 6 weeks TAT had predicted the amount of participation will be around 300 teams and the number of website visitors will be around 2,000-3,000 people per day. We also thought that the online publicity will create around 2,000 global news stories. After 6 weeks, the online community around the world gave a lot of interest to the project which created a greater amount of publicity and reached around 20,000 online clipping news (The Australian campaign, The Best job in the World reached around 30,000 online clipping news within a period of 56 weeks) and the average amount of website visitors averaged 4,000 people per day, on some days it reaching as many as 14,000 people. Within this past 6 weeks, there were altogether 200,000 website visitors from around the world, which is the highest number TAT ever had with an online project.”

From this unexpected success, we had 356 teams submitting and joining the competition, most teams applying from U.S.A, India, Canada, Australia, Germany, and England. Until now, the campaign has created awareness through Online Social Media and Social Networking with the amount 7 million views.”

Mr.Suraphon also said that “ The project itself uses various online strategies including social media marketing and social networking, viral marketing, and e-mail marketing, but the most important thing is that we also have a team to monitor feedback day by day. This is first time for TAT to do marketing through social networking such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Youtube and we receive very good feedback.”

“Another factor that helps in creating successful online publicity is the fact that contestants in each team have their own large network in the online world, so each team promotes themselves through their own networking, making people come in and view their videos on the website of the event. Some teams use strategies such as creating websites and blogs to promote their videos, which creates a lot of trends through social networking.

“The TAT expects that this project will help travelers and tourists receive information from actual places in Thailand through the real story telling and broadcasting from experiences and perspectives of the five finalist teams who will be traveling in Thailand. All the information and stories each team will present to the global audience will help in creating a good understanding, inspiration and encouragement, as well as help give a new perspective to all the travelers around the world; the highest goal of the campaign is to create trust in global travelers to travel to Thailand again” Mr. Suraphon said in the end.

To help promote the event and boost participation in the campaign, the TAT would like to invite all Thai citizens to participate in voting to choose the 5 Finalist teams who will travel to and compete in Thailand and to also help select the winners who will be crowned the Ultimate Thailand Explorers. Registration for voting can be done through the website www.ultimatethailandexplorers.com; the voting period for the Semi-Finalist round will last from October 19-November 12, 2009. After the voting period ends, two lucky voters will be select from a lucky draw and will receive prizes include a holiday package, an HTC mobile phone, and many other prizes worth a total of $2,500 USD per prize package.

For further Media Information please contact Ms.Phaewta Lowajinangkul
Email: PR@Ultimatethailandexplorers.com
Mobile: 089-517-3181

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