Post Covid-19 Travel Behaviour of Thai Tourists in the Northern Region of Thailand

บทคัดย่อ

   The objectives of this paper are 1) to analyze the behavior of Thai tourists traveling in the northern region in Thailand after Covid-19, and 2) to propose the marketing guidelines of domestic tourism in the northern region by government agencies and entrepreneurs. It is a quantitative study using questionnaire surveys with 400 respondents using convenience sampling in Chiang Mai. The results showed that the northern province that Thai tourists visit the most is Chiang Mai. The post-covid-19 tourist behavior of the Thai people can be described as follows: 1) Thai tourists pay cash for their tourism spending; 2) they travel as free independent travelers, 3) they travel with their families, 4) they use private vehicles, 5) they travel twice a year, 6) they are likely to travel during the weekends, 7) their purpose is for recreation and eating, 8) they like to take pictures, 9) they find travel information mostly from the Internet, and 10) they prefer to spend no more than about 1,001-5,000 baht each trip. The proposed guideline is that tourism businesses and government could use the results from this study for their marketing plan to attract Thai tourists after the Covid-19 pandemic has ceased by offering a value for money travel to the Northern part of Thailand as well as providing more travel information on the Internet to suit with the tourist behaviour in the new generations. It is the study provides insightful managerial implications that many regional tourism sectors in Thailand can adapt for the better tourism marketing.