Martha Stewart Coming to Thailand
As part of a new campaign to boost female tourism to Thailand the Tourism Authority of Thailand has enlisted domestic diva Martha Stewart to help draw in the ladies. With a budget of 10 million baht ($312,000) the Tourism Authority has high hopes that Martha can help turn around the lagging female tourism numbers by getting the ladies interested in Thailand once more.
The plan is to have Martha Stewart film several of her highly rated cooking shows in the kingdom starting in September. Stewart, who has long held the title of domestic diva, was also named America’s most powerful woman in a 2001 survey by Ladies Home Journal. Thailand, for it’s part, hopes that Martha’s demographic, which is women aged 25-45, Will follow their diva faithfully and plan a trip to the Kingdom.
Thailand surely has a lot going for it with it’s great food, exotic culture and abundant beauty. Stewart is sure to make some impact on the ladies doing what she does best and with a great theme to start from it should be easy. Thailand is an easy sell as long as their isn’t an uprising going on and I’m sure the ladies that Martha influences into coming won’t find it hard to get their boyfriends and husbands to come along either.
Ford To Build New Factory in Thailand
Thailand may have it’s troubles but American Car Manufacturer Ford still believes in the Kingdom. Ford announced this week that they will be building a new $450 million plant in Rayong. The plant will build state of the art passenger vehicles for the Asian market starting with the next generation Ford Focus. This new plant will be a flexible facility producing a range of vehicles and fully integrated to support body assembly, paint, trim and final assembly withthe majority of needed components coming from Thailand’s supplier network. This alone will bring a further $800 million to the table.
It’s estimated that the new plant will bring over 11,000 new jobs to the local community with 2,200 being directly employed by Ford. Ford currently produces Ford Fiestas and Mazda 2s for the Malaysian market at their Auto Alliance Thailand plant which is a joint venture with Mazda. This factory also supplies Fiestas to the ASEAN region, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Ford is the only U.S. manufacturer that didn’t succumb to the recession and ask the government for bailout money and with moves like this it is easy to see why Ford will remain a big player in the U.S. market while the other manufacturers are falling apart.
Even with Thailand’s troubles still looming in the background it seems there are positive steps being made for Thailand’s future. Hopefully one day all the people of Thailand will see there is much more to be gained by becoming united and looking out for one another rich and poor. If Thailand’s people can truly come together then Thailand will become a force to be reckoned with .
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