GUIDELINES FOR DEVELOPING THE WELLNESS TOURISM TO ENCOURAGE THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE WITH HIGH VALUE SERVICES IN SA KAEO PROVINCE

Abstract

     The purposes of the current research were to; 1) analyze strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the wellness tourism in Sa Kaeo Province as well as 2) propose the guidelines for developing the wellness tourism to encourage the competitive advantage with high value services in Sa Kaeo Province. There were seventeen informants who were selected using the purposive sampling when analyzing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the wellness tourism. In addition, the snowball sampling was used when proposing the guidelines for developing the wellness tourism to encourage the competitive advantage with high value services in Sa Kaeo Province. There were also 370 research samples selected from the purposive sampling during proposing the guidelines for developing the wellness tourism to encourage the competitive advantage with high value services. The research instruments were three interview forms which were assessed their congruent value at 0.97, 0.93 and 0.93. These three forms were employed with another form which showed its congruent value at 0.90 and its reliability value at 0.88. The data about content was analyzed using the content analysis and the data about statistics were analyzed using frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation.
     The research findings were found that:
     1. The findings about strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the wellness tourism in Sa Kaeo Province. 1) The strengths related to: In Sa Kaeo, there have been many Thai traditional medicine hospitals and alternative medicines, various natural attractions and local tourism, numbers of herb fields and organic vegetable farms as well as strategic and developing plans for promoting wellness tourism. 2) The weaknesses related to: There is no managing guideline for wellness tourism, some tourism attractions have not been well-known as well as various tourism places are far from one another. 3) The opportunities related to encouraging wellness tourism through the social media along with launching health agenda including promoting Sa Kaeo Special Economic Zone. 4) The threats related to: The tourists have hardly known that there is Thai traditional and alternative medicine in Sa Kaeo as werll as slowdown of economic conditions has been affected by the epidemic of covid-19.
     2. Guidelines of wellness tourism for encouraging the competitive advantage with high value services comprised the following details consecutively 1) the developing guidelines for wellness tourism based on business-plan principles, 2) the developing guidelines for wellness tourism based on value-chain principles, 3) the developing guidelines for wellness tourism based on digital-marketing principles, and 4) the developing guidelines for wellness tourism based on customer-journey principles.
     3. The guidelines for developing wellness tourism to encourage the competitive advantage with high value services in Sa Kaeo province showed the suitability/ possibility to implement at a high level ( = 4.14, S.D. = 0.57).