The communication strategies for creative tourism of Sa Kaeo province

Abstract

          This quantitative research was to study 1) the communication of community in the creative tourism, 2) the communication of image in the creative tourism, and 3) the influences of community communication tools on the creative tourism image, of Sa Kaeo province. The questionnaires were distributed among 400 tourists and local people and tourist in Sa Kaeo province by means of accidental sampling method. Statistics, average, percentage, standard deviation, t-test, one-way ANOVA, and multiple regression analysis, were applied to analyze data. The results revealed that the samples with different in sex, age, marital status, and domestic traveling habits, would have overall different opinions of the community base in promoting a creative tourism of Sa Kaeo province with a statistical significance at the 95% level (p<0.05), whereas samples who had been and never been to Sa Kaeo province had no different opinions. Samples with different viewpoints of the community identity would also have different viewpoints of the creative tourism image and the use of community base communication tools with a statistical significance at the 95% level (p<0.05).

          In addition to the multiple regression analysis for influences of community base in promoting a creative tourism, the best model consisted of the Sa Kaeo tourism 1) can encourage the relationship between tourists and local people, 2) can promote memories, impressions, and understandings to tourists, 3) can generate the information exchange between tourists and local people.  The adjusted R square for this model was 0.58 (58%). The influence model of the best communication tools included the use of 1) tourist's word of mouth, 2) social media, and 3) marketing campaign, as means of the community communication to promote the creative tourism of Sa Kaeo province. The adjusted R square was 0.24 (24%).