This week Thailand launched an interactive online portal for meetings, events, conventions, and exhibitions. Meetinthailand.com had a soft launch at the end of last year when Image Asia Events, the company behind the website, began collecting business profiles to help meeting planners and buyers interested in holding events in areas of the country including Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Pattaya, Phuket, and Koh Samui.
The are now more than 600 searchable listings of exhibition and convention centers, destination management companies, restaurants, tour operators, and over 300 hotels with meeting facilities.
The site offers Toolkits for Buyers and Suppliers. The buyer’s toolkit offers an automated request-for-proposal feature, and a “Wish List” option to save vendors of interest to investigate further. There is also an “Interactive Checklist” so that buyers can decide on their must haves, including dates and locations, and check them off when a supplier meets the requirement. The Supplier Toolkit enables businesses to improve their company profile with updated information, photos, and video tours.
Users can search vendors by type (including conventions and exhibition venues, hotels and resorts, and government- and association-owned venues, and also by location. Although the search engine came through with most of our queries, we found after our test failed to find something in a particular search category, the site sent us to a list of external DMCs for help.
Meetinthailand.com was launched just as Canada announced an agreement to increase flights to Thailand for the first time since 1989, and Chiang Mai, Thailand, was named third in the top 15 best city destinations by Travel+Leisure magazine.
