The Bangkok trade programme is pitching golf alongside wellness, gastronomy, culture and multi-region travel to encourage longer stays across Thailand.
Thailand Golf Travel Mart 2026 brought international buyers, Thai tourism sellers and media together for golf, trade meetings and product development.
- Thailand Golf Travel Mart 2026 brought together 49 international buyer companies and 63 Thai sellers at Topgolf Megacity in Bangna.
- TAT is encouraging golf itineraries that add wellness, gastronomy, culture, shopping and travel across multiple Thai regions.
- Thailand has more than 250 golf courses, with TAT presenting distinct golf settings across the North, South, Northeast and the Bangkok-Central-Eastern corridor.
- The programme opened with a networking golf tournament at The Royal Gems Golf and Sports Club in Nakhon Pathom before the September 15 trade meetings.
(NEWS) BANGKOK, Thailand, 2026-Sep-16 — /Travel PR News/ — Thailand is using golf as the starting point for a broader style of holiday rather than treating the sport as a standalone reason to travel, with the Thailand Golf Travel Mart 2026 bringing 49 international buyer companies together with 63 Thai sellers in Bangkok to build itineraries that combine courses with wellness, food, culture and travel across several regions.
The main business session, held at Topgolf Megacity in Bangna on September 15, connected overseas golf specialists with Thai golf courses, hotels and resorts, destination management companies and other tourism businesses. The event is organised by the Tourism Authority of Thailand as its annual B2B marketplace for the golf travel sector.
The mix of buyers illustrates the international reach TAT is seeking. Participating companies came from North America, Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Oceania and Northeast Asia, while the Thai side represented tourism businesses from across the country rather than a single golf destination.
Golf becomes the anchor for longer Thailand trips
The central message of this year’s mart is that a golf holiday can extend well beyond time on the course. TAT is encouraging trade partners to package rounds with Thai massage, recovery and wellness programmes, gastronomy, cultural experiences, shopping and other activities that can lengthen stays and spread visitor spending across more destinations.
Kittipong Prapattong, TAT Deputy Governor for Digitalisation, Research, and Development, placed golf within the authority’s “Value over Volume” approach and its “Healing is the New Luxury” positioning. In his product update, he argued that golf can serve as one element in a wider journey built around recovery, food, culture and Thai hospitality rather than the trip ending when the final round is played.
That approach is particularly relevant in a country with more than 250 golf courses and year-round playing opportunities. Instead of presenting Thailand as one uniform golf market, TAT divided the country into four broad settings to help buyers think in terms of different landscapes and trip styles.
The North was presented around highland courses set among valleys and mountain scenery, while the South combines coastal and links-style golf with established wellness products. The Northeast offers courses shaped by reservoirs, waterways and river plains, and Bangkok, the Central Plains and the Eastern Seaboard form the country’s most concentrated golf zone, with a large choice of championship, resort and leisure courses.
Transport links support multi-region itineraries
The trade pitch also depends on making it practical to combine destinations. TAT highlighted improving road connections serving the Eastern Seaboard, Kanchanaburi and the Northeast, alongside U-Tapao International Airport as an aviation gateway for the Eastern Seaboard.
For tour operators, those connections create scope to build trips that move golfers between different regions while adding beach stays, spa and wellness time or cultural stops around the rounds themselves. That is the commercial objective behind the mart: to turn Thailand’s course inventory into broader travel programmes rather than isolated golf bookings.
The afternoon business sessions mixed pre-arranged appointments with open networking, giving buyers and sellers time to negotiate products and explore new programmes. A parallel media testing session introduced golf technology, driving-range and practice solutions, green-energy golf carts, golfer wellness services and information on courses around Thailand.
A tournament opened the trade programme
TGTM 2026 began on September 14 with a networking tournament at The Royal Gems Golf and Sports Club in Nakhon Pathom, around 35 kilometres west of Bangkok. Buyers, sellers and media participants competed in an individual stroke-play event using the System 36 scoring format before an evening networking programme.
The tournament gave participants a direct golf experience before the formal trade meetings, while the second day shifted the focus to product development and commercial discussions. The programme concluded with an evening networking function at Topgolf Megacity.
For Thailand’s tourism industry, the significance of TGTM lies less in the number of meetings held over two days than in the type of itineraries TAT wants those meetings to produce. Golf already provides a reason for specialist travellers to visit; the 2026 strategy is to use that interest to encourage additional nights, more regions and a wider mix of tourism businesses to benefit from each trip.
If trade partners respond by pairing courses with wellness, food and cultural experiences, Thailand’s golf product could become less dependent on single-destination packages and more closely integrated with the country’s broader leisure offering. TGTM 2026 is the marketplace where TAT is asking buyers and sellers to turn that idea into bookable programmes.
