The Lifestyle and Travel Behaviors of High-Spending Thai Senior Tourists

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the lifestyles and travel behaviors of high-spending Thai senior tourists and to analyze the relationship between their lifestyles and travel behaviors. The sample group consisted of 1,000 high-spending Thai senior tourists from four regions, including the Bangkok Metropolitan Area, using multistage sampling. A questionnaire was used as an instrument for data collection. The statistics employed for data analysis were descriptive statistics and Chi-Square test. The result revealed that respondents’ lifestyle was overall at a high level. As for each aspect, Activities was at a moderate level, while both Interest and Opinions were at a high level. In terms of tourism behavior, it was found that the majority of respondents traveled three times per year, during a long weekend, an average of three days per trip, with the objective of relaxation, recognizing information from personal media, deciding to travel on their own, traveling with their couples, arranging their trip, traveling by personal car, visiting nearby provinces or other regions away from their home, visiting natural tourist attractions, staying at the hotel, spending 5,001-10,000 baht per trip, mostly for accommodation expenses, and preferred traveling to the south. The relationship between lifestyles and the travel behaviors of the high-spending Thai senior tourists found that lifestyle had a relationship with their behaviors on the travel frequency, travel period, travel duration, travel objectives (relaxing, studying, and visiting cousins, grandchildren, and friends), main travel-decision maker, travel companion, the most visited attractions, place of interest, accommodation, travel expenses, highest travel expense, favorite regions to visit with statistical significance at the level of 0.05.