Guidelines for Building Tourism Confidence under a Pandemic Crisis

Abstract

            This paper is a study of the tourism industry and how confident people are to travel during the recent Covid-19 pandemic. The study is a review of the Phuket Sandbox model and offers guidelines for building confidence for the workers and tourists, who make up the tourism sector of Thailand. The sample size was 400 Thai tourists and data was collected using questionnaires with a 95% confidence level. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics consisting of percentage, mean and standard deviation. Independent samples t-test, one-way analysis of variance, and multiple regression analysis were used to test the hypothesis.

            Most of the respondents were female, and between the ages of 20-30 years old, had a bachelor’s degree or equivalent, had an average monthly income of 15,001-30,000 baht, were single, and worked as employees in private companies. The results of the hypothesis test showed that the differences in age, average monthly income, and occupation influenced Thai tourists’ confidence in the pandemic crisis, except for gender, education level, and single status. The overall confidence of tourists was 4.45 and the highest factors were safety and facilities. The correlation coefficient between the variables in positive and multiple regression analysis demonstrated factors that can predict tourist decisions during the pandemic at 26.9% with a statistical significance level of 0.05.