China Southern Airlines has established the first direct air link between Bangkok and Urumqi, the capital of China's Xinjiang region.
The carrier, China's largest airline, last Friday began a thrice weekly service between both ends with a stopover and no aircraft change at Lanzhou, the main city of northwestern China's Gansu province.
The route, the first connection between the home of the Uighur ethnic group and a Southeast Asian city, was launched with no fanfare and timed ahead of China's Spring Festival travel rush, which this year runs from Jan 24 to March 3.
The route opens a new channel for travel flow from northwestern China to Thailand, one of the top overseas destinations among Chinese tourists.
A China Southern Airlines official told the Bangkok Post yesterday that bookings for the Bangkok-Urumqi service were almost entirely by Chinese tour groups.
The airline earlier ran charter flights between Urumqi and Bangkok before upgrading them to a scheduled basis to meet strong demand.
The direct service introduced last week means the travel time between Urumqi and Bangkok is cut to about six hours from more than 10 hours previously, when passengers had to take connecting flights from major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.
The airline hopes to attract Thais wishing to visit Urumqi, a major hub on the old Silk Road, once the word gets out.
Urumqi forms part of the carrier's expanding routes to China from Thailand, linking more than 10 Chinese cities with three Thai destinations: Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Phuket.
The cheapest ticket for China Southern Airlines' Bangkok-Urumqi route is 19,890 baht all-inclusive in economy class.
According to the first-ever MasterCard Asia Pacific Destinations Index out yesterday, Chinese tourists can't seem to get enough of Thailand, with visitor numbers surging over the past year at one of the fastest clips in the Asia-Pacific region, Reuters reported.
In a year that saw the Thai government grapple with an outbreak of the deadly flu-like Mers virus and the bombing at Ratchaprasong intersection, Chinese tourists helped turn Bangkok into the region's most-visited destination in 2015, the survey said.
All three Thai destinations in the 10 most-visited list -- Phuket ranked fifth, Pattaya eighth -- recorded more than 10% year-on-year growth in international arrivals, outpacing other locations like Singapore and Kuala Lumpur (ranked second and fourth).
In 2016, the Thai government expects Chinese visitors to make up an even larger portion of the record 32 million people forecast to visit.