Sustainable cultural heritage tourism at Ban Wangka Village, Thailand

ABSTRACT

Ban Wangka Village is the most robust Mon community tourist destination in Thailand. However, since tourism arrived many changes have occurred. Sustainable cultural heritage tourism is the key element in the development of this destination and TBL is a key strategy that was implemented in order to develop the destination and to prevent unsustainable practices. Also, a qualitative method was applied using in-depth semi-structured face-to-face interviews with five groups of tourism stakeholders. The results reveal the details of the sustainable tourism situation and the various ways to best develop it. It was also found that the social and ethical dimension of the destination has been overshadowed by the economic dimension, which may lead to a lack of sustainability.

KEYWORDS:

• Heritage tourism
• sustainable tourism
• tourism development
• Thailand

Acknowledgement

This study is a part of first author’s doctoral dissertation submitted to the Assumption University of Thailand, Bangkok, Thailand. For future studies, researchers should be aware of the nature of the cultural heritage tourist destination community which will compose of more than one community but at least two; one is attraction community and other is business community work together in the destination.