Airport Link a Potential Tourism Bonanza
Published: 9/08/2010 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: Business
The long-awaited opening of the Airport Rail Link on Aug 23 will substantially enhance the convenience of visiting Bangkok but a number of critical missing links impede connectivity with the city’s mass-transit systems.
The Rail Link will be a blessing for independent travellers, especially backpackers, seeking to avoid the taxis and touts at Suvarnabhumi Airport. In addition to helping decentralise and decongest Bangkok toward the suburbs, it will also help the capital join the league of regional cities such as Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong which have city-airport mass-transit links.
Hotels in the vicinity of the Rail Link stations and terminals at Phya Thai, Rajaprarop and Makkasan will gain a significant competitive advantage, especially in the Rajadamri area, as well as those along Phetchaburi, Asok and Rachadaphisek roads.
Providing easy access right under the Suvarnabhumi terminal, the Rail Link is smooth and efficient. The cars are spacious with plenty of room for luggage. Visitors will also enjoy panoramic views of Bangkok, including greenery, housing estates, temples, mosques, malls and office towers.
But at least three problems will impede what would otherwise have been a seamless flow of passengers between the Rail Link, the BTS SkyTrain and the MRT underground rail line as they commute from the airport to various destinations, and vice versa:
-
The BTS-Rail Link interchange at Phya Thai: There is no escalator down from the BTS station to the level of the connecting walkway to the Rail Link station. The existing escalator only goes up. Those going down must use steps, a problem if one has luggage. There are no luggage trolleys at the station either. Besides, a small part of the walkway from the SkyTrain station to the Rail Link station is being built but is projected to be completed by the launch date.
-
The MRT-Rail Link connection at Makkasan: This should have been possible from the Makkasan terminal to the Phetchaburi MRT station, but it does not exist. An MRT executive said a walkway was awaiting approval, and would take three months to build once approved. Hence, those getting off at the Makkasan Rail Link terminal cannot access the Phetchaburi MRT station.
-
Lack of a single commuter ticket between the airport Rail Link, the SkyTrain and the MRT is the biggest obstacle. Arriving visitors heading for say, the Hua Lamphong rail terminal, will have to first buy the Rail Link ticket, then a SkyTrain ticket and then an MRT ticket separately at each interchange.
Surapong Laoha-Unya, chief operating officer of the BTS SkyTrain, acknowledged that this has long been an issue, for both technical and administrative reasons. Not only are the ticketing technologies entirely different, but one company (BTS) is private while the other is a quasi-public organisation, which means two entirely different mindsets, procedures and systems.
Mr Surapong said a common ticket between the SkyTrain and the MRT had been in the works for three to four years. Now that the Rail Link is due to open, there is a new sense of urgency and a solution is expected sometime next year.
After the Rail Link is officially opens, tickets will cost only 15 baht per trip per person until the end of 2010. The system is expected to lose money for years, although some of the cost may be offset by advertising in rail cars and stations, especially at the airport and Makkasan.
Once these issues are sorted out, however, the benefits for Bangkok’s tourism industry will be phenomenal. Mr Surapong said the BTS, which opened in 1999, was well aware of the tourism advantage and projects clear increases in ridership after the Rail Link opens.
He noted that visitors had benefited from thousands of discounted BTS passes sold to the tourism sector between 2002 and July 2010, including 342,152 sold to hotels along the SkyTrain routes, 568,968 to tour operators and 93,025 to the Tourism Authority of Thailand and the Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau. In 2009, sales to tour operators totalled 81,244 passes, hotels 45,415 and the TAT and TCEB 18,000 passes.
Mr Surapong said the Rail Link would also help boost sales of the SkyTrain’s one-day pass which costs only 120 baht and can be used for unlimited trips to tourist spots along BTS routes.
“Visitors with little time to spare don’t like sitting in traffic,” he said. “The Rail Link will help all the mass-transit systems boost sales, especially to the growing numbers of visitors from new markets such as India.”
Bron: Bangkok Post