Tourist Expectation and Tourist Experience in Cultural Tourism

Chiang Rai is one of the most famous destinations in Thailand due to its rich tourism resources especially with many cultural resources and well-organized and developed tourism infrastructure. As a consequence, Chiang Rai has targeted to promote and develop cultural tourism in order to attract more foreign tourists to visit and satisfy their needs and expectations, which is seen as one of the most important aspects in the current tourism development strategies in Chiang Rai. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to compare the gap between pre- and post-experience of foreign tourists who visited Chiang Rai towards their expectation and experience on: (1) arts and crafts; (2) life style of local people; (3) local food; (4) festivals and local traditions; (5) ethnic/indigenous life style and culture; and (6) cultural heritage. The quantitative approach has been chosen to conduct the study by using a questionnaire with 400 foreign tourists and One-way ANOVA was the statistic used for gap analysis between tourist expectation and experience. The data collection included the analysis of government documents and the relevant literature. The finding of the study illustrated that cultural tourism plays an important role in tourism development in Chiang Rai and the gap between pre- and post-experience of tourists. However, in order to minimize the gap between pre- and post-experience of tourists and maximize their expectation and satisfaction, both government and private sectors should have an in-depth understanding towards the management of cultural tourism. The tourist needs more quality cultural products and foreign language skills from staff and local people. 

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