Participatory Cultural Tourism Management Strategies Of Amnat Charoen Province

Abstract

The research aimed todevelopparticipatory cultural tourism management strategies of Amnat Charoen province. The target groups of the study consisted of 60 stakeholders including 15 tourism authority executives, 15 tourism authority staffs, 15 cultural tourism operators, and 15 tourists. The research instruments were structured-interviews, workshop and questionnaires. Collected data were analyzed by using percentage, mean, standard deviation, and content analysis.

The research findings were as follows:

Four participatory cultural tourism management strategies were created as the following: 1) participatory promotion of community and involved organizations in preserving and developing tourism resources using several strategies, that is, building people’s awareness of participation in preserving tourism resources and developing facilities, participation in preserving cultural and local wisdom, and preserving and creating cultural and local wisdom activities; 2) development of provincial tourism resources to be cultural tourism center employing strategies namely managing and providing tourists with sufficient, clean, and safe accommodations in the tourism sites, providing tourism information through public relations, and managing accessibility to tourism sites; 3) management of tourism sites and promotion of community economy through cultural tourism using strategies such as effectively managing community cultural tourism, standardizing community cultural tourism sites, and marketing; 4) development of tourism sites employing sufficiency economy philosophy using strategies namely creating networks to strengthen community, distributing income gaining from tourism, developing ecotourism through sustainable agricultures following sufficiency economy philosophy. The strategy evaluation assessed by experts and stakeholders resulted in the highest level of suitability and possibility.