Government promotes community-based tourism

The strategy involves in-depth studies of consumer behaviour, development of appropriate marketing approaches, product and service development, tourism management, and organisation development in order to promote sustainable tourism growth in selected local communities.
Wanasiri Morakul, acting director-general of the Tourism Department, said it was getting Thailand ready to integrate fully with the AEC bloc. The department’s Bureau of Tourist Attraction Development has been organising a series of seminars to improve competitiveness of Thailand’s community-based attractions. The seminars were provided for around 200 representatives of a community-based tourism network from four regions of Thailand – the North, the Northeast, the Central region, and the South.
The seminars focused on the management of community-based tourist attractions, communities’ tourism-related activities, marketing approaches, behavioural analysis of Asean tourists, language proficiency, and the development of products and services available in each tourist attraction. The aim was to capitalise on each community’s unique character to impress tourists coming from within the Asean region.
Running the seminars were selected experts on tourism management and on behavioural analysis of Asean tourists. These included Associate Professor Therdchai Choibamroong, head of the department of tourism and leisure management at the National Institute of Development Administration; Associate Professor Weeapon Thongma, dean of the faculty of tourism development at Maejo University in Chiang Mai; and Sanchai Kiatsongchai, professor of tourism and hotel studies at Rajabhat University Loei, among others.
“Tourists from within the Asean region are the groups that should not be overlooked, because Asean comprises countries with growing economies, and therefore they are expected to have strong purchasing power,” Wanasiri said.
“Meanwhile, the concept of community-based tourism is considered a charm for Thailand on the world market. These seminars, therefore, have perfectly [responded] to the need of the community-based tourism programme.
“The seminars have focused on encouraging local communities to utilise their local resources, which are nature, history, cultural heritage, and local lifestyles, as valuable tourism assets.
“The seminars also gave insights about the behaviour of Asean tourists from different countries, such as the growing economies in the CLMV group [Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam]; the Muslim country group with different lifestyles and needs such as those from Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei; and tourists from more developed countries like Singapore. “These insights are useful for their development of appropriate marketing approaches, and effective communication with different groups of tourists, to create fond impressions of Thailand.”
The department believes the recent seminars had fruitful results. Many governing bodies of community-based tourist attractions across Thailand who participated in the seminars have greater understanding of the concept, will lead to effective implementation of the programme.
The introduction of Thailand’s community-based tourism to the Asean countries with the opening of the AEC will serve as a strong platform for the development of sustainable tourism, the department predicts.