The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) aims to diversify its marketing activities by opening another five overseas offices during the next three years.
It has earmarked locations in Istanbul, Vladivostok, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires and an as yet unannounced Canadian city, taking the number of overseas offices to 32.
The move is aimed at reducing reliance on the booming Chinese market, according to TAT governor Yuthasak Supasorn said.
"We’ve worked very hard to reduce risk for Thai tourism. Right now we depend mainly on China, and if the Chinese economy suffers the same fate as Russia, how will Thai tourism move on and achieve its target?"
TAT said the offices were chosen to target more high spending markets.
Thailand expects to see a total of eight million Chinese visitors by the year-end, accounting for nearly 19% of all foreign tourist arrivals.
Arrivals from China almost doubled to 6.11 million in the first nine months of this year.
In contrast, the Russian market plunged 47% to just 579,000 visitors during the same period.
TAT has been busy in recent months conducting promotional road shows in untapped overseas markets such as Kazakhstan.
