The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) was established on March 18, 1960, the first organization in Thailand to be responsible specifically for the promotion of tourism.

TAT supplies information and data on tourist areas to the public, publicizes Thailand so as to encourage Thai and international tourists to travel in Thailand, conducts studies to set development plans for tourist areas, and co-operates with and supports the production and development of personnel in the field of tourism.

Since the inception of the first local office of TAT in Chiang Mai in 1968, there are now 22 local offices throughout Thailand. TAT has also established many overseas offices the first being the New York office in 1965. TAT has since established 15 more offices in different parts of the world during the past 30 years.

Policy :

1. Promote the tourism industry to be an important instrument in tackling the country’s economic problem, creating jobs for people as well as increasing income for the country. Moreover, promotion should be done to make tourism play a vital role in the development of the quality of life in all regions of Thailand as per the policy of the government.
2. Promote and develop the operation on proactive marketing strategies for increasing the new markets as well as the niche markets. This is in order to attract more quality tourists to visit Thailand. At the same time, domestic travel for Thais should be vigorously encouraged. The positioning of Thailand is to be drawn out clearly, too.
3. Promote cooperation in all levels domestically and internationally on promotion for the development of tourism markets. This aims to get rid of all hindrances in the tourism industry and pave the way for Thailand to be the tourism hub of Southeast Asia.
4. Aim at organization and management development as well as development of the human resources’ ability to create a capable driving force in the operation. Moreover, this aims at strengthening the potentiality on international competition under the good governance as well as developing the strength of the organization on its technical roles as well as knowledge on marketing.
5. Accelerate the development of a tourism technological system for accommodating business activities information (E-Tourism) on the Internet.
   Included here is also the carrying out of electronic commerce as well as applying information technology in marketing. The necessary mechanism on controlling and protection have to be in place to ensure prevention of problems.