Bangkok: TAT Governor explains in detail the problem of the "Half-Half Thailand" registration failure. The Minister of Tourism is preparing to call for talks with relevant parties and plans to issue a gift to apologize for causing Thai people to feel bad. Ms. Thapanee Kiatphaibool, Governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), said that after opening registration for the Half-Half Thailand project on July 1, TAT was aware of the problems with the registration system. From the first day yesterday until today, there were 5.9 million people who registered for the project.
According to Thai News Agency, two main problems emerged: the bottleneck in supporting users occurred when both Amazing Thailand and ThaiD applications crashed. The ThaiD application could support 100 users per second, while the Amazing Thailand application could support 600 users per second. However, due to the large number of users, the system crashed in the morning. Later, the verification step via the ThaiD application was removed and registration was made directly via Amazing Thailand to alleviate the inconvenience to users immediately. However, users are still required to verify their identity via the ThaID system when checking in at the hotel that uses the privilege.
Another issue found is the delay in receiving OTP because TAT has opened a new email domain and there is a high volume of emails from sending a large number of verification emails immediately. Therefore, the emails are temporarily blocked according to Google's requirements. Google's AI protection system identifies it as spam, so the emails to registered Gmail users are blocked.
The TAT has now contacted Google, the parent company in the US, and expects to resolve the issue within 7 days. However, in the meantime, the TAT has adjusted its internal settings, causing the email service provider's system to gradually unlock the receipt of emails from @tat.or.th. As a result, the number of registered users who have verified their identities has increased.
For hotel bookings, if the public finds that prices on the Amazing Thailand app are more expensive than other platforms, they can send a report to the TAT staff for investigation. It is confirmed that hotel bookings on the Amazing Thailand app for the Half-Half Travel project are already cheap. Hotel prices of operators participating in the project must be the prices set during the rainy season, which is the low season. The TAT's back-end system is monitoring the prices of participating hotels. Compared to last year, hotel prices must be +- no more than 10%.
In cases where hotel operators have temporarily closed bookings, the operators have been notified that the system is faulty, and the TAT's back-end system has been notified to fix it as well. If any operators have problems, they can file a complaint immediately. There are 32 call centers ready to receive complaints from operators and the public.
Mr. Surawong Thienthong, Minister of Tourism and Sports, said that he is aware of the problem and is preparing to call the TAT and related agencies to discuss ways to provide relief to those who have problems registering in this batch of 500,000 people. As for what it will be, we have to wait and discuss it, but the format may be a gift or souvenir given when checking in at the hotel as an apology for what happened. If there is any progress, we will inform you.
For the registration situation of the Thai Half-Half project on July 2 at 1:00 p.m., there were 38,942 registered entrepreneurs, consisting of 3,885 entrepreneurs who registered and completed the documents and 35,057 entrepreneurs who applied but did not submit the documents and did not complete the information.
For the general public, 373,638 people have successfully registered, 862 have booked accommodation and paid for their rights, leaving 499,148 rights remaining, divided into 299,489 rights for major cities and 199,659 rights for tourist cities. Number of users by province, in order: 1. Bangkok 2. Surat Thani 3. Kanchanaburi 4. Ang Thong 5. Narathiwat. And the top 5 most popular destinations are: 1. Chonburi 2. Prachuap Khiri Khan 3. Chiang Rai 4. Chiang Mai 5. Nan.