On 6 October 2007 Thavorn Hotels and Resorts (THR) Team completed annual autumn trip to the 13th International Trade Fair for Tourism “Otdykh/LEISURE 2007” held on 25 - 28 September 2007 in International Exhibition Centre "Crocus Expo" in Moscow. This year THR has been represented by Mr. Banlang Botcharoen Assistant Group Managing Director, Ms. Isaree Naetsunee - Director of Sales, Ms. Julia Razgon - Sales Manager (Russia&CIS) and Mr. Ruslan Tufatulin - Marketing Communications Executive. The trip was very eventful, productive as scheduled and encompassed 5 cities both in Russia and CIS: Almaty, Astana, Moscow, Yekaterinburg and St. Petersburg.
With 1038 exhibiting companies (583 International and 455 Russian) Otdykh LEISURE 2007 was again an excellent tool to promote tourism services to the rapidly growing market and look for new business opportunities.
During this trip besides the favourite autumn event in tourist industry THR has also zeroed in on leading regional centres in Siberia – Yekaterinburg and Kazakhstan (CIS) – Almaty, Astana as well as two major traffic hubs in Russia - Moscow and St.Petersburg. Implementing this trip THR set the goal to introduce and promote Thavorn Hotels & Resortsto potential buyers and update business partners with latest information to encourage agents for more production and solidify friendly relationship.
The choice of the cities was not fortuitous. The scale of figures sets Russia and CIS as a key market. Announced figures of USD 16 billion Russian tourists spent in 2005 place them amid the highest spenders in the world. We see progressive positive tendency for the number of tourists’ arrivals from Russia and CIS. According to statistics from TAT the number of arrivals increased sharply (78%; 190834 tourists) in 2006 against actual number of arrivals in 2005 (107017 tourists), 44% tourists revisited Thailand (71% increase against 2005). From 01 January 2007 to 30 June 2007 the number of arrivals 138563 exceeds the number of arrivals of respective period in 2006 for more than 50%.
Kazakhstan views positive tourist industry development trend for these years. According to Statistics Agency reports tourist companies’ revenue increased by 16.8% at large soaring up to KZT 30553.4 mln, their contributions to the budget made KZT 6526.5 mln that is 37.6% more against 2005.
The current tendency backed up with information from TAT and our partners makes us expect even better results during the next season. | 
