MARKETING STRATEGIES DEVELOPING FOR HISTORICAL TOURISM IN MUEANG-KANCHANABURI DISTRICT KANCHANABURI PROVINCE

Abstract

           The research objectives were to study 1) the level of tourists' opinions towards the development of marketing strategies for historical tourism services, 2) the level of tourists’ opinions towards the improvement of the quality of historical tourist attractions’ standards, and 3) the relationship between the development of marketing strategies for historical tourism services and the development of the quality standards of historic sites at Muang District, Kanchanaburi Province. A questionnaire was used to collect data from a sample of 400 tourists in 11 target areas, and structured interviews were conducted with 11 community tourism business leaders and personnel at the tourist attractions. The data were analyzed using the descriptive statistics of percentage, mean, standard deviation and Pearson's correlation coefficient.

         The results revealed the following: 1) Overall, the tourists’ opinion towards the development of historical tourism marketing strategies was at the highest level, with an average score of 4.24 and with the aspect concerning service channels at historical sites receiving the highest average of 4.38; 2) Overall, the tourists’ opinion towards the improvement of the quality of the historical sites was at the highest level, with an average score of 4.25 and with the aspect concerning the quality of historical tourism acceptance receiving the highest average of 4.29; and 3) The relationship between the marketing strategy development of historical tourism and the quality improvement of historical tourist attractions’ standards had the value of 0.950., sig-value of 0.00, and sig of < 0.05, which were consistent with the hypotheses. It could be concluded that the development of historical tourism marketing strategies had a high level of correlation with and was relevant to the development of the quality of historical sites.