Managing director Neil Cumming said the website began in 2004 and attracted more than 15,000 surfers per day, mostly in Europe, the US, Japan and Singapore.

The Bangkok-based website features 200 hotels throughout the country, with 1,000 pages of content on hotels, tourist information and packages for English and Japanese speakers.

Cumming said the political turmoil in Thailand had not spooked inbound travellers very much. He said advance bookings were still increasing, because most travellers were "free individual tourists" who were usually not as concerned about such issues as business travellers and incentive-programme tourists were.

The Tourism Authority of Thailand says more than 65,000 Chinese and Singaporean tourists have cancelled their travel plans to Thailand because of the political chaos.

The website showed sales of Bt700 million last year, and Cumming predicted that would increase to Bt1.2 billion this year, while the number of rooms reserved was expected to reach 300,000 this year, up from 240,000 last year.

The website's main competitors include www.sawasdee.com and www.asiarooms.com.

Suchat Sritama

The Nation