Problems and Obstacles of Developing Cruise Home Port in Andaman Tourism Cluster

Abstract

The purposes of this research were (1) to study contexts of cruise tourism in Thailand and Andaman Sea; (2) to investigate problems and obstacles of cruise home port development; and (3) to propose key success factors of how to solve problems of a cruise home port in Andaman Tourism Cluster of Thailand. This research was a qualitative research. Population were stakeholders related to cruise tourism of public sector, private sector, local communities, and academic experts in the central and the southern region. Twenty-seven interviews were conducted through purposive sampling from related key informants from September 2016 to April 2017. For qualitative data analysis, content analysis was used to analyze data. The results showed that (1) Thailand has been a cruise destination for more than thirty years as a port of call of many cruise ships. Those cruise ships brought passengers into Thailand as day trippers. Most cruise ships arrived in the morning when passengers disembarked cruise ships and they embarked back in the evening while the ships would sail to the next port. At present, Thailand has only one cruise terminal at Laem Chabang Port to use as a port of call and turnaround port for cruise passengers, but the facility development and management is not fully efficient for accommodating large cruise ships. Thailand has five cruise service ports in which anchoring at Patong beach and docking at Phuket Deep Sea Port is the most popular landing pier. Phuket was
chosen as one of the ports of call continuously in Andaman Sea because of the development of Singapore cruise homeports and the short-distance cruise route between various connectingports and Phuket. (2) The result of problems and obstacles of home port development in Andaman Tourism Cluster included limitation of port infrastructure, non-standardized existing ports, limited government policy, lack of corporation among stakeholders, lack of resources for serving tourists during high season, in-efficient local transport, lack of competent personnel, a local ship’s tender, and environmental impact. (3) The research findings lead to develop some guidelines for key success factors for the public sector, private sector and the communities for developing cruise home ports, together with cooperation among all stakeholders.