Tourism Marketing For Elderly Inbound Tourists Traveling in Thailand

Abstract

    For inbound senior tourism in Thailand, there were many different kinds of tourists categorized by various objectives such as traveling for leisure, doing volunteer activities, or the medical treatment of disease. However; the proportion of senior tourists in Thailand was still considered as quite very few number compared with the other type of tourists. Due to poor organization and tourism marketing in Thailand, most tourism stakeholders did not treat this segment as more specific and very important, especially in the private sector that might not understand the market and took interesting in inbound senior groups seriously because of the difficulty in the operation.    As results, the researcher found that the image of Thailand, safety in travel and comfort of the accommodation was the most important to inbound senior tourists because the recent years ago, Thailand’s political problems and protests made visitors feel uncomfortable in visiting in Thailand, and government policy did not plan to create the tourism image of the value chain. By the inquiry in the tourism market for the old, tourism agents ought to focus more in the diversity of the tour programs as well as modern transport systems that encouraged them to travel conveniently in Thailand and then attended some interesting activities. If demanding to make a market for tourists in this group, the booking of senior tourism products via websites must be established and provide Thai tourism information of the elderly foreign tourists easily.Keywords : senior tourism, marketing management, inbound tourists