|
Abstract:
|
This study has the objectives to examine the factors affecting tourism demand and behavior of Thai tourists who spent the visits to Mae Rim District of Chiang Mai Province and to estimate their expenditures for visiting this tourism destination. The needed information was collected through questionnaire from 400 samples of Thai visitors to Mae Rim. The analysis was undertaken upon the results of descriptive statistics and Likert’s scale rating. The tourism expenditure was estimated using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression.
From the study on personal information, it was found that the majority of the sampled Thai tourists could be characterized as female, single, 36 years old on the average, with bachelor’s degree education, private company employee and self employed by occupational group, and earning averagely 25,822 baht monthly personal income.
On factors affecting the Thai tourists’ desire to visit Mae Rim, the study made investigation to see whether they would be different by age group or occupational group but it found as the overall conclusion that the push factors were more influential than the pull factors. The push factors included that the sampled tourists wanted to have a change in atmosphere, and that they had free time for travel for pleasure. Meanwhile, the pull factors included the attractiveness of the tourist attractions and the safety in life and properties.
Most sampled Thai tourists were found to have rest and recreation as their travel objectives. Apparently, they were repeated visitors to Mae Rim. They arranged the travel program themselves and spent the trip and visit with friends. Their most preferred tourist attractions in Mae Rim were Doi Mon Cham and Sirikit Botanic Garden. They spent on the average 6,868 baht per person for their visit to Mae Rim tourist attractions which was mostly for transportation, followed by the expenses for food and beverage, and accomodation.
The estimation of tourism expenditure by OLS regression provided the results that there are five explanatory variables namely gender, occupation, domicile, income, and duration of the vacation. The estimated Thai tourist’s expenditure is 6,397 baht per person per visit which is rather close to the figure from averaging the data from questionnaire
Key word (5 words): Factors Affecting Travelling/Thai Tourists/Mae Rim District/ Chiang Mai Province
|