TOURISM LOGISTICS MANAGEMENT:

A CASE OF CULTURAL CREATIVE TOURISM IN THAILAND1

Pairach Piboonrungroj

Logistics and Supply Chain Research Centre

Faculty of Economics, Chiang Mai University

239 Huay Kaew Road, Muang District,

Chiang Mai Province, Thailand 50200

E-mail address: me@pairach.com

Korawan Sangkakorn Social Research Institute, Chiang Mai University

239 Huay Kaew Road, Muang District,

Chiang Mai Province, Thailand 50200

E-mail address: korawana@hotmail.com

1 Paper presented on “World Conference on Hospitality, Tourism, and Event Research

2013” 25-28 May 2013 at Bangkok, Thailand

INTRODUCTION

Many countries raise their culture as the key factor in their tourism pursuits,

especially aesthetic or historic countries. Such key factors include not only the way of life,

and cultural performances such as cultural dance, but also temples and ancient sites.

Moreover culture has been applied in souvenir designs for tourists such as ancient site

models, textile patterns, and several types of decoration.

According to a study of Asian Development Bank (ADB), which is based on 2,227

observations of international tourists to the Greater Mekong Sub Region in November –

December 2004, it was found that the most favourite tourist activity is local food testing

(82%) followed by sight seeing (75%), local souvenir shopping (75%), visiting art and

cultural sites (55%), visiting natural parks (33%), and visiting cultural communities (21%),

whereas tourists traveling to Thailand spend 45% of total expenses on shopping (as the

highest expenditure) which makes Thailand the second country of highest expense on

shopping (the first is Yunnan province in China PRC). Additionally, Thailand has the highest

score of diversity of products and value for money (cheap relative price). The ADB study

also concludes that tourists who travel to sun, sand and sea sites are not likely to be interested

in cultural tourism and local handicraft souvenirs. The recommendation of tourists who visit

art and cultural sites is to develop a cultural tourism book in various major languages,

especially for the places that do not allow tourists to take photos.

Chiang Mai is well-known as one of major provinces of Thailand as an aesthetic local

culture destination. Chiang Mai is one of the first 4 cities which have international tourists of

39% of all international tourists in Thailand (Kaosa-ard et al., 2007). Whenever Chiang Mai

is presented, the beautiful nature, which is surrounded by mountains and forests, is always

highlighted. Impressive characteristics in the friendliness of local Chiang Mai residents also

fascinate both Thai and international tourists who travel to Chiang Mai. Thus, a study of

cultural tourism in Chiang Mai is of utmost important for planning tourism development in

Chiang Mai, because the image of Chiang Mai in the tourist sight is as a cultural destination.

Previously, Chiang Mai tourism concentrated on tourist attractions such as ancient

temples and places as well as other natural attractions. Since 2009, tourism industry in

Chiang Mai had been slow down. We can measure from the decrease number of tourists

visits Chiang Mai and decrease tourism income. Tourism in Chiang Mai is continuing

unpopular because of the internal political crisis, world economic crisis and undeveloped

tourism goods and services by creativity and innovation. Creativity will be an importance

role in the development of cities and increasing tourists’ destinations. Conceptualizations of

cultural tourism have commonly postulated the transient consumption of aesthetic

‘difference’, of the often exotic ‘other’, in the search for the sincere or the authentic

(MacCannell 1973, 1976; Urry 1990, 1995 in Richard and Vivien 2003). Creative Tourism’

has been increasingly applied as an extension of ‘Cultural Tourism’ (Richard, 2005; Richard

and Wilson 2006).

LITERATURE REVIEW

The creative economy is not a new thing for Thailand. It is the form of culture and wisdom,

of which the country has accumulated through body of knowledge, idea, wisdom, and

strength of culture as well as biodiversity to be further developed and integrated with modern

technology. The 11th

National Economic and Social Development Plan (2012-2016) is plan to

create a new look of economic system, “Creative Economy System”, for Thailand.

The scope of Creative Economy of Thailand should be divided into 4 groups (NESDB, 2009).

The first group includes the inheritance and culture which is a variety of biodiversity. These

include cultural tourism, traditional medicine, herb, spa and food. The second group refers to

skilled labor and cultural industry (including arts and culture).The third group means creative

works and design which cover fashion, architecture, advertising and software. The forth

group is the modern media or entertainment and digital content.

The effort to move the country forward with the creative economy was a major change in

Thai society. This development model is in line with Thai culture and lifestyle. The model

also reflects the great potential of the country to stand on its own feet. Moreover, it is also in

line with “Sufficiency Economy” philosophy, initiated and developed by His Majesty the

King.

Thailand has a long history of culture and creativity in arts, crafts, performance and

design. The Government’s 9th and 10th five year plans mentioned creativity as well as

innovation. The Office of Knowledge Management and Development (OKMD) was

established in 2004 and the Thailand Creative and Design Centre (TCDC) was established

under OMKD’s auspices in the same year.

The conceptual framework for The 11th

National Economic and Social Development Plan

(2012-2016) said a creative economy would ‘promote economic structural adjustments

particularly in production and service sectors for more value-added, thereby creating new

business using the hidden potential of Thai society. This top-down analysis is correct but

under previous plans the government seems to have failed to connect its strategic ambitions

with what happens at the level of individuals and markets.

Creative Thailand Projects aimed to develop Thailand to a creative industry hub in

ASEAN and increases the country’s proportion of creative economy value from 12 percent to

20 percent of GDP by the year 2012. The development of Creative Thailand became a model

for other developing countries trying to boost the creative economy. Thai Government pays

attention to Creative Economy, such as Ministry of Industries funded Creative Lanna Project

for 4 provinces in the upper north of Thailand, Ministry of Cultural will promote 3 cities in

Thailand to be the Creative City Network of UNESCO (Phuket: City of Gastronomy, Pattaya:

City of Film, and Chiang Mai City of Crafts and Folk Art), and Ministry of Commerce

enhances 10 Creative City Prototypes.

Creative City of imagination must identify, nurture, attract and sustain talent of it is able

to mobilise ideas, talents and creative organizations in order to keep their young and gifted

(Landry, 2006). Creative city is an urban complex where various sorts of cultural activities

are integrated into the city’s economic and social functions. Such a city is built upon a strong

social and culture infrastructure to have relatively high concentrations of creative

employment. Moreover, creative cities tend to be attractive to an inward investment due to

its well-established culture facilities. In such a city, creativity, rather than location, natural

resources and market access, is a principal key to urban dynamism. Thus, this research aims

to analyse, synthesize, and formulate structural knowledge of creative cities.

METHOD

This research designed based on the theoretical framework of the tourism supply

chains developed by Piboonrungroj and Disney (2009). Tourism Supply Chain Management

(TSCM) is currently emerging as a new research agenda (Song, Liu and Chen, 2012; Zhang

et al., 2009). One of the reasons for this is that SCM has already become a critical source of

an organisation’s competitive advantage (Cao and Zhang, 2011; Christopher, 2011) and

sustainability of the tourism firms (Schwartz et al., 2008; Font et al., 2008). Thus SCM is

considered to be a vital part of this kind of business. However, research on TSCM is still

rather immature and very limited at the moment (Song, Liu and Chen, 2012; Zhang et al.,

2009). Consequently, the objective of this section is to provide a research framework for

TSCM research. This framework is then used to review the TSCM literature.

This study has defined culture tourism as including visits to temples/historical places,

festivals/traditions, shows, museums, cultural communities, religious activities, and places

that sell cultural souvenirs. Thus, cultural tourists are tourists whose first three reasons for

visiting Chiang Mai include cultural tourism.

This study applied both qualitative and quantitative methods. The research process

can be listed as following.

1. An exploratory study of the selected area (old town)

2. Focus group meeting with the residents in order to develop the network and to

understand the fundamental background, culture and get to know key persons in the

community

3. Select the potential community in the old towns of Chiang Mai

4. Community survey to collect general information including demographics data,

economy, social and cultural background

5. Questionnaire design and pre-tested with general public, residents and

entrepreneurs

6. Data collection on site

7. In-depth interviews with residents and entrepreneurs

8. Data analysis and discussions

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

This study has developed the framework for an analysis of the logistics of the cultural

creative tourism in the community. The concept of five principle factors was developed. In

the conceptual framework, we proposed that the logistics system for supporting cultural

creative tourism should include infrastructure, information, intelligence, identification and

innovation. Drivers that enable and barriers that pull back the development in these five

factors were identified in the Table 1.

Table 1: Five Is for logistics development of cultural creative tourism in a community

No Components Descriptions Drivers Barriers

1 Infrastructure Roads, water, electricity Government

policies

Political

conditions

2 Information Opening hours, map, list of activities

and products

Collaboration

between

stakeholders

Conflicts and

technology.

3 Intelligence Statistics about demand, supply and

related factors

Collaboration

between

stakeholders

Conflicts and

technology.

4 Identification Uniqueness Social and cultural

capital

Communication

5 Innovation New things about the destination Human capitals Market

conditions

Source: Author

Table 1 not only shows the key factors in logistics development in a community to support

cultural creative tourism but also illustrate the potential success factors underlying the

community as a tourism destination. Well the findings of the case study show that

infrastructure and intelligence is the key bottle for the community as they are external factor

outside the control of the organizers of the development plan. The strenghts in the

information provided to the tourist and the facts that the destination is already close to the are

where many tourist accommodation are. However, intelligence of the customers is also

another key factors that is still under the development as the destination has just been

initiated.

CONCLUSIONS

Recently creativity has become a major factor in both developing and developed

countries. Creativity uses culture, knowledge and talent to instigate change and drive

innovation. These trends are encapsulated in the term ‘creative economy’ which brings

together creativity as a source of personal well-being and of economic growth. It marks a

break with previous economic systems which tended to devalue the individual’s personal

involvement in their work. This paper advanced the knowledge of the tourism logistics

including the conceptual framework and practical applications. To support the activities in

the creative tourism, logistics management is critical in terms of both reduce costs and

increase tourist's satisfaction.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The authors would like to thank National Research Council of Thailand (NRCT) for the

research grants.

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