Thailand as a tourist destination: Perceptions of international visitors and Thai residents

In the tourism industry, the perceptions of a tourist destination are critical to its image. Image can be either a mental image of a product created by a marketing department or an associative image of a product that is developed by the consumer. Tourism destinations must be careful about their image so the perception that they have is not different from the way that they are perceived by potential travelers. This study examines the perceptions of international visitors and Thai residents on the image of Thailand as a tourist destination. International visitors and Thai residents were both surveyed to determine their perceptions of the image of Thailand. Some results of the study found that Thai residents and international visitors felt cultural sightseeing, friendly people and food were significantly important when thinking of Thailand as a tourist destination, while international visitors felt that nightlife and entertainment were significantly more important than that of Thai residents.     

MODELING SEQUENTIAL TOURIST FLOWS: WHERE IS THE NEXT DESTINATION?

This paper analyzes the subsequent decisions of tourists with respect to sequential destinations: why they visit a given destination after visiting a previous one and where they are most likely to go. Using a dataset from an on-site tourist survey in Nanjing, China, we study this decision process by partitioning it into three stages, and a nested logit model is used to estimate the determinants in each stage. Apart from the individual characteristics of tourists and destination attributes, we find that the spatial configuration of destinations (spatial structure) also tends to influence tourists’ destination choice. Finally, a series of simulations are carried out to understand the competition/substitution patterns between subsequent destinations.     

Seasonal Trading and Lifestyle Motivation

ABSTRACT

This article explores relationships between tourism sea-sonality and the lifestyle motivations of small tourism businesses, fundamentally a supply-side perspective of seasonality. Seasonal trading decisions are subject to a number of influences, not all of which are in the operator's control. Drawing from exploratory research undertaken in Scotland, the article argues that for some operators, especially located in rural and peripheral destination areas, lifestyle enterprise can confer a range of benefits, some of which are afforded by operating the business on a seasonal basis. Moreover, seasonal trading was seen to assume a number of distinct roles, reflecting various characteristics of lifestyle operators. Accordingly, public policies that seek to promote seasonal extension based on the premise of local economic development or destination objectives are not necessarily destined to work. This is particularly pertinent if such policies do not recognise the wider supply-side dynamics of seasonal trading and fail to engage with the lifestyle aspirations of the operators themselves.     

A study of venue marketing mix for MICE industry in Thailand

The objectives of the research are to determine the important factors and the performance factors of the attributes in selecting venues （particularly convention hotels and convention centers） through investigating the meeting planners＇ set of needs and to identify factors and attributes relating to the venue marketing mix for MICE industry in Thailand. This paper has applied the hospitality and the tourism marketing mixes that are important to the MICE destination selection （particularly venues） for creating a new venue marketing mix. Therefore, the study is based on the importance levels of venue selection through each marketing mix factors including all attributes in the meeting planners＇ perspectives on behalf of their organizations, which will be able to reflect a set of their real needs that could bring about development of a venue marketing mix model that exclusively accommodates MICE organizers. The data was collected using self-administered questionnaires from 229 meeting planners. Statistically significant determinants of the meeting planners＇ overall importance levels indicated that in all of the 8 marketing mix factors （68 attributes）, the people factor was perceived to be the most important factor. The package factor was perceived to have a moderate level of importance. The other factors perceived to be important included Product, Price, Place, Promotion, Physical evidence and Process. It is also found from the factor analysis that the new venue marketing mix contained 8 marketing mix factors with 61 attributes for venue business in Thailand. It is recommended from the research findings that venue management be more concerned with and focus on the attributes of the people factor.     

A round trip on decentralization in the tourism sector

Although the performance of the tourism sector has been investigated extensively, the effects of institutional governance have largely been unexplored. This study uses a quasi-natural experiment setting owing to differences in tourism policy devolution between special and ordinary statute Italian regions. Using panel data for the period 1995–2010, we first assess the efficiency of each region by a smoothed bootstrapped Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and an order-m frontier estimator. Next, we adopt a difference-in-difference strategy and a fully non-parametric approach to assess whether decentralization affects the performance of regions as tourism destinations. We find that regions affected by decentralization worsened their performance, compared to unaffected regions. The results are robust to different estimators and empirical specifications.     

Local cuisines and destination marketing: cases of three cities in Shandong,China

This study analyzes how the three cities of Jinan, Qingdao, and Qufu in Shandong Province of China use their cuisines in promoting their destinations. Based on a critical review of previous studies, a conceptual framework was developed, which included five closely related areas: foods, beverages, dining, farming, and food festivals. All related texts, images, videos, brochures, booklets, and websites designed to market these three cities were content-analyzed. The study findings suggest that all the three cities have not yet fully utilized their cuisines in their destination marketing efforts. Although some of their culinary resources appear in their marketing materials, the local cuisines of these three cities are not yet skillfully integrated into their marketing efforts. The present study offers specific theoretical and practical implications on marketing the culinary resources of destinations that are in the early stages of their development.     

Travel motivations and destination choice: A study of British outbound market

Abstract

Knowledge of people's travel motivations and its association with destination selection plays a critical role in predicting future travel patterns. The objectives of this study were to uncover the underlying push and pull factors of motivation associated with British outbound pleasure travelers as well as to identify key motivational factors that have significant effects on destination choice. Six push factors and five pull factors were found. “Knowledge seeking” and “cleanliness & safety” were perceived as the most important push and pull factors respectively. The results of logistic regression analyses snowed that the British tend to visit the U.S. for “fun & excitement” and “outdoor activities,” Oceania for “family & friend togetherness,” and Asia to seek a “novel experience.” The findings of differential motivational factors across seven destinations suggest that a destination can capitalize on its strengths with an optimal combination of push and pull factors to attract and retain the British travelers.     

Global Trends and Issues in Value Added Taxation

Since the late 1960s, the VAT has become one of the mainstays of the tax systems in over one hundred countries. Apparently, its revenue raising and neutrality properties make it an attractive tax in a rapidly integrating, high-tax world. Following an overview of VATs throughout the world, this article examines various VAT structure and policy issues under the following headings: tax coverage features, tax base aspects, hard-to-tax sectors, rate structure issues, and interjurisdictional coordination problems. It is shown that the normative requirements of a good VAT are often met only in the breach.     

An empirical analysis of the factors raising the interest in new shopping destinations

The relationship among the factors in the rising interest in new alternatives is empirically investigated in the context of shopping destination choice behavior. The hypothetical causal relationship is that the rising interest in new alternatives requires both active information search and considerable benefit, which is supported by the results of the mixture structural equation models using a data set containing revealed shopping behaviors and attitudes toward shopping destinations in the Tokyo metropolitan area: a lower level of satisfaction with the current choice set incites external information search for all subjects; however, the benefit of adding new alternatives affects the interest in new alternatives only in the group that engages in active information search.