GASTRONOMIC TOURISM STRATEGY IMPLICATION FOR THAILAND

Gastronomic tourism is becoming popular as alternative tourism especially in Thailand that has legendary of food to become ‘kitchen of the world’. Gastronomic tourism is an intentional, exploration, and travel experience of tourists including the consumption of local food, cuisine, meal systems and eating styles together with learning with culture, life styles, ethos religion and joining the cooking classes. The aim of this paper is to study the gastronomic tourism strategy implication for Thailand. The qualitative data was collected from interviewing government officials who are involved with Thailand’s tourism policy, the tourism business sector and tourists. The results found by SWOT and the BCG matrix analysis found that the gastronomic tourism of Thailand was on ‘Star’ (+4.08, +4.15) and had a strategy vision that was “The hub of gastronomic tourism in ASEAN”. There are four strategies including (1) develop the capacity of tourism and food business in order for Thailand to become the hub of gastronomic tourism in ASEAN, (2) research and create new knowledge about gastronomic tourism in ASEAN, (3) support and promote the marketing of Thailand’s gastronomic tourism and (4) develop co-ordination between the government, business and community in order to develop gastronomic tourism. Finally, they were 12 projects of gastronomic tourism for implementation.