Ecotourism Development by Riding Bicycle in Bangpub Community Bangkontee Samut Songkhram

Abstract

This research aimed to 1) studying the context of community and the potential of ecotourism resources of Bang Plub community, Samutsongkhram Province 2) studying the potential of the stakeholders who involved with ecotourism management by using bicycle of
Bang Plub community, Samutsongkhram Province 3) developing guidelines for ecotourism and bicycle using for Bang Plub community, Samutsongkhram Province. Research methodologies were mixed between quantitative and qualitative research. For qualitative research, community study checklists, tourism resources checklists and in-depth interview form were used as data collection tools to asked 30 stakeholders in the community such as  government sector, entrepreneurs, and local people. And the quantitative data were collected from 50 people of Thai tourists by using questionnaires as a research instrument.

According to the research findings, it was found that 1) important ecotourism resources, which are Bang Plub local learning center (free toxic pomelo and coconut gardens) and Bang Plub temple. Furthermore, there are other interesting activities, such as the festival of offering Kanom Krok to monk at Ban Bang Plub, coconut sugar simmering activity, fruit charcoal activity, Reborn fruit making activity, orchard touring activity, Benjanrong depicting activity, and Sor coconut crafting activity 2) The analysis of SWOT indicated that the strength is its location near Bangkok that can attract more tourists, weakness is the lack of support for reinforcement to small business entrepreneurs to promote sustainable tourism management, opportunity is the chance to develop to be the production base for pummel for exporting, threat is increasing competitive capacity of our neighboring countries (especially in Southeast Asia) that can reduce the interest of this province. For the tourists’ opinions found that the places in Bang Plub community which has the highest satisfaction ranks are the learning base of charcoal, learning base of reborn fruit, learning base of pomelo garden, and learning base of Pra Ya Sor respectively. Due to the results of this study, the researchers were creating 3 bicycle routes. 3) the researcher using both qualitative and quantitative results of research developed to be the new form of ecotourism by bicycle in the area of Bang Plub community, Samutsongkhram Province with three main trategies as following, the integrated of stakeholders participation, developing of bicycle route in the community, and the developing of creative economy development.