Social Interaction and Learning of Family Tourist: A Case Study of Designated Areas for Creative Tourism, Sukhothai Province

Abstract

This research aims to study the learning behaviors and social interaction between family tourists and hosts in the context of creative tourism. Including, to study the potential of hosts in order to cater the tourists family groups; also to propose the guidelines to integrate the family tourists marketing development in a creative tourism ways. This research is a qualitative research and in-depth interviewed with 30  hosts, 30 members of family tourists and 5 of acknowledged key informants, 65 in total. The result revealed that there were the social interaction via activities process occurring in the creative tourism destination. This allows tourists and hosts having the opportunities to learn in various ways. The family tourists also agreed that the activities are making their children able to open their vision and to learn with different cultures. The creative activities for family tourists are comprised of 6 characteristics; there are 1) held by the locals, 2) presenting the neat and meticulousness, 3) initiating imagination, 4) relaxing and joyful, 5) fit to all ages and 6)  physical based  activities. The activities are the cultural and traditional activities, presenting local ways of life, the forms concentrate in action of doing and the attributes of social interactions are in 3 dimensions combining with the motivation of interactions,  the process of interactions, and the structure of interactions.  All these 3 parts involve with the condition of interactions; there are factors of area, period of time, ranking, interaction forms, and factors that endure the interactions are languages, time, and the ability to transfer.