The Thai tourism industry continued its strong performance in the first six months of 2012, with total arrivals of 10,496,789, up 7.60 percent over the same period of last year, the country's tourism authority said on Wednesday.

The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) said in a report that the most important contributor to the growth was arrivals from China which, for the first time, crossed the one million arrivals mark in the six-month period to record a total of 1,124,234, up by a robust 28.87 percent over the same period in 2011.

China was followed by Malaysia, Russia and Japan. East Asia recorded 5,486,941 arrivals to Thailand, accounting for 52.27 percent of total arrivals.

For 2012, TAT has set a "Conservative" target of 20.5 million total international visitors, which will be exceeded if the international economic and geopolitical situation remains stable, it said.

Despite last year's flood crisis, Thailand' tourism business registered a record-high revenue of 734.59 billion baht, up 23.92 percent over 2010. The largest number of foreign tourists were from Malaysia, at 2.47 million, followed by China, 1.76 million.