Thailand has proved time and again that it is one of Southeast Asia's premier tourist destinations.

Despite calamitous events such as the December 2004 tsunami that devastated parts of the South, tourists are returning in record numbers.

Prof Toemsakdi Krishnamra, director of Chulalongkorn University's Sasin Graduate Institute of Business, has been one of the pioneers of using the Kingdom's natural competitive advantage as a preferred destination to attract several of the world's leading business schools to collaborate on building a very successful English-language graduate business school programme.

In 1982, Sasin began collaborating with two American schools - Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

"Kellogg and Wharton are now recognised as among the world's foremost graduate business schools of management," he said.

Sasin has been able to attract top professors to come annually to Thailand and teach at the MBA and Executive MBA programmes.

"Several professors from Kellogg and Wharton have been coming almost every year since Sasin began operating," said Dr Ian Fenwick, professor of marketing.

Fenwick was director of Canada's largest MBA programme at York University's Schulich School of Business before coming as a visiting professor to Sasin in 1989.

The school has been at the forefront of graduate business school education in Thailand. During the past 24 years, it has produced more than 2,800 graduates who are now working as high-level executives in the public and private sectors.

Its graduates include Khunying Sudarat Keyuraphan, a government minister, and former Stock Exchange of Thailand president Kittirat Na Ranong.

Toemsakdi said the school had evolved tremendously in the past three decades in order to maintain its position as Thailand's premier graduate business school.

At its inception in 1982, the school began offering an MBA programme. In 1984, it launched a part-time Executive MBA programme.

In 1987, Sasin branched out by offering executive education programmes for business professionals. Its original senior executive programme was an annual three-week, full-time residential course.

"The programme features globally recognised faculty [members] from Wharton, Kellogg, Berkeley et cetera, and of course full-time Sasin professors," he said.

Later the school began launching very successful executive education seminars covering a wide range of topics, including general management, strategic planning, branding, services marketing, value, organisational behaviour, accounting and finance.

Toemsakdi said Sasin's collaboration with top US business schools had been used as a model for business schools around the world.

Therefore, the pioneering school has faced tremendous competition in the past decade as business schools in Singapore and Hong Kong began offering similar programmes with top business schools in the United States and Europe.

To ensure Sasin stays at the forefront, Toemsakdi is again drawing on Thailand's competitive advantage as a favoured destination for leisure and enjoyment. "We are building a new executive-education centre in Phuket that will be ready in 2008."

The centre, he said, would attract business people who want to learn new theories and how to upgrade their knowledge and skills from some of the world's top academics - and at the same type enjoy Phuket's natural attractions such as beaches and golf courses.

Toemsakdi expects that Sasin's new centre will be a magnet for businesses all over the region. "We are very bullish about its prospects," he said.