BANGKOK: — In a move to boost revenues, Thai Airways International has revised its strategy and is focusing more on Europe than on Asia, which is more sensitive to the swine-flu outbreak.

One of the tactics is to promote its newly opened route from Bangkok to Oslo, where its load factor is as high as 80 per cent.

THAI executive chairman Wallop Bhukkanasut said the airline was planning to introduce promotions to other European countries as well.

Yesterday, the carrier held an anointing ceremony for its two newly acquired Airbus 330-300 aircraft, one of which is being registered as HS-TEN under the royally bestowed name of Suchada and the second registered as HS-TEO under the name Chutamat.

Four more aircraft are scheduled to be delivered this year and two more next year, Wallop said.

The new aircraft will be used on the Japan and Australia routes.

With the Thai tourism industry suffering badly from the global recession, domestic political instability and the type-A (H1N1) influenza outbreak, the government has decided to put the sector on its national agenda and allocated an additional Bt70 million to help rebuild it.

Earlier, three organisations – the Association of Domestic Travel, the Thai-Chinese Tourism Alliance and the Thai-Japan Tourist Association – warned the government about the sector not having enough funds to fight the downturn. According to the Tourism Authority of Thailand, arrivals have already dropped by 19 per cent and the agency is revising this year’s target to 12 million visitors.

However, the TAT is confident that it will be able to make a mark in some emerging markets like the Middle East and India as well as China in the second half of the year. It recently launched a marketing strategy that focuses on travellers’ interests instead of geographical segmentation.