Tourism has brought many benefits to Phuket, not the least of which is an annual income from tourist spending that makes the province one of Thailand’s economic powerhouses. But the benefits come with many visible and not-so-visible costs. Government officials and tourism professionals continually strive to strike a balance between supporting tourism and preserving the region’s natural wonders.

Often lost in the debate over sustainable tourism, says Titiyawadee Punmanee, a 27-year-old doctoral student at the University of Leicester in the UK, is a commitment to preserving a region’s unique culture and traditions. What’s needed in Thailand is a new conception of sustainable tourism, one that addresses all of the factors involved in a region’s tourist industry — one that addresses human resources as well as natural resources.

“Ecotourism has transformed the concept of environmental tourism and its practices,” she says. “It has incorporated education toward a perspective that aims to minimise impacts as well as to meet the needs of future generations regarding the conservation and preservation of areas, especially in natural landscapes.

“Geotourism, however, has different concerns from ecotourism,” she continues. “It focuses on positive practices involving stakeholders, and it adds more concern about cultural heritage — which has been ignored by ecotourism — that plays a key role in each place’s identities and beliefs.”

A native of Northeast Thailand, Khun Titiyawadee on 26 June presented her doctoral thesis on the new concept of geotourism, Rural and Cultural Heritage Under Threat from Ecotourism, as part of the University of Leicester’s Festival of Postgraduate Research. Her research evolved from a lifelong interest in the natural areas in Thailand’s Chaiyaphum province.

The concept of geotourism was first introduced in 2002 in a report issued by the Travel Industry Association of America and National Geographic Traveler magazine. For The Geotourism Study, the groups partnered on a wide-ranging survey of demographics and attitudes among American travellers. One of the findings showed that 71 percent of travellers placed importance on minmising the impact of travel on the places they visited.
“What has evolved over the past decade is abiding consumer awareness — and subsequent concern — that destinations are morphing into homogenous places that offer like experiences,” the report concluded. “In an effort to please everyone and to make them feel ‘at home’, the travel industry risks sacrificing the very things that attracted consumers in the first place.”

To understand how the concept of geotourism might frame Phuket’s tourism policies, Phuket Post engaged Titiyawadee and tourism officials in a series of conversations about sustainable tourism.

Titiyawadee Punmanee
Doctoral student in the department of geography, University of Leicester

Titiyawadee began field research for her thesis looking for ways to integrate culture and heritage with ecotourism in Northeast Thailand. She focused on the pristine areas of Chaiyaphum province, which had not been addressed by academic research, and she started to question whether ecotourism’s focus on natural areas to the exclusion of culture and heritage provided a good model for sustainable tourism in the region.

“My advisers at the university asked me if there was a term that would fit my perspective, and I found that it had been introduced in 2002 by National Geographic: ‘geotourism’,” she says. “I have travelled to Chaiyaphum province for quite some time, during my schooling and when I studied for my bachelor’s degree. I found that since Chaiyaphum province has adopted an ecotourism programme, especially in the Siam tulip field (in Pa Hin Ngam National Park), it has been developed and changed the ways of life in traditional and tourist areas.

“Geotourism is a type of tourism that fills in the gaps of ecotourism because it tries to understand and minimise the human impacts to cultural heritage as well as geographical areas,” she adds. Geotourism is concerned with the ethics of the host nation, the region and the community. It also aims to encourage stakeholders to create a plan to sustain all tourist destinations and to regularly review and evaluate their plans. As a concept, geotourism leads to a fuller understanding of the effects of tourism in a region, and it provides a better foundation for tourism management, conservation and preservation.
“To conduct the research, I used interviews, questionnaires and focus groups involving residents, authorities from national, regional and local governments, non-governmental organizations, tourist agencies and tourists,” she says. “I found that ecotourism in Thailand is really different from ecotourism in Western countries because, as we know, Thailand’s geographical areas have a different diversity of resources, which includes nature, culture, heritage, geological sites and events.”

Titiyawadee explains that the first step toward implementing geotourism-oriented planning is to set up regional meetings with representatives of government, local residents, the tourism industry and academia. The group must outline what’s necessary to sustain not only natural and cultural heritage areas but also to pass on benefits to local communities and the larger province. Then, community leaders should turn to tourists, circulating questionnaires to gather data not only on what satisfactions visitors get from their travel but also on what new understanding they have about local culture.
“In the case of marketing, I think the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has done their job quite well with Thailand tourism promotions,” she says. “However, it would be better if we could focus more on the issue of how to manage and protect everything that we have. We need to remember that if we do well in promotion but not in management, this could cause problems for residents and tourists in the long run. If a place is well-managed, then tourists will return. Tourism in Thailand is not too far from sustainability. But we need to engage each stakeholder and, of course, think about economic issues less than management, sustainable development and people.”

Anoma Wongyai
Assistant Director, TAT Region 4

“We have to accept that many tourists are coming to Phuket for different reasons,” Khun Anoma says. “Some of them just want to lie down on the beach and relax for the whole holiday, and some of them prefer to learn about the places they visit — the history of the area and the lifestyles of the people. Right now, tourists who travel to learn about traditions and culture are becoming more and more prevalent. Maybe it’s not a trend, but they don’t just want to visit nature.

“There’re many tourists destinations around the world,” she continues. “There’re many beautiful beaches, and there’re many choices for tourists. The things that make Phuket attractive and that make tourists want to come back are the unique things, the differences in traditions and cultures. The things that bring tourists to Thailand and especially to Phuket are the impressions they have of the people and the traditions that we have inherited from our ancestors over the centuries.

“The TAT always sees the importance of and the worth of the culture and traditions of our country and Phuket,” Anoma says. “With all the projects we support and promote, we include the communities as much as we can, such as the Vegetarian Festival, the Two Heroines Memorial Festival and the Old Phuket Town Festival, an annual festival we have organized for more than 10 years. It’s very successful, but this year we didn’t arrange it because of mourning ceremonies for HRH Princess Galyani Vadhana.

“It’s not only through events we arrange that Phuket can present local traditions and lifestyles,” she continues. “Tourists can get impressions by themselves from the Portuguese styles of the buildings in Phuket City and from the Chinese shrines that show how Phuket has a lot of influence from Chinese people, who are the ancestors of most of Phuket’s population.

“As for Phuket losing its culture and traditions, I think that all over the world things change all the time, and we have to accept that,” she concludes. “But every part of Phuket, both provincial and municipal governments, remains committed to preserving culture for future generations. People in the communities should feel concerned to take care of their unique identities, their natural surroundings and their customs so we can sustain tourism. The TAT encourages communities to feel concern for their communities and to see the value of their communities in different ways by giving awards to places that take care of their environment, such as Koh Yao, Phang Nga, Koh Lak and others. We want to make them proud of the places where they live and make them feel like they are a part of a people who take care of their environment and identity.”

Promchote Traivate
Director of Tourism, Sport and Recreation in Phuket (a department of the Ministry of Tourism and Sport)

“If we talk about tourism, there’re many kinds of tourism that we divide into categories, such as ecological tourism. Also, we have many historical places, including our unique traditions and culture, which all Thai people are proud to present to people who come to visit our country or even to Thai people who live in other regions. If we separate and specify the tourism industry in so many ways, we may reduce the size of the markets we promote tourism to. So in my opinion, I prefer not to specify the types of tourism.
“Homestay is one type of tourism that can show the way of life of people, and that can be anywhere, in rural areas or in the city,” Khun Promchote continues. “Tourists who go to homestays can learn about other cultures and the lifestyles of other places. We try to push this kind of tourism in Thailand. People who live in those areas learn their environment first-hand or from indigenous knowledge. Even if they don’t have a formal education, they can do things or know things like they are professionals who have studied for a long time. For example, the plants in the jungle. They know properties of those plants, like which ones are poisonous, but they just don’t know the academic data about those plants.

“In Thailand, regulations are sometimes confusing,” he adds. “People who want to be guides have to have certificates. Even though the villagers in some communities have knowledge about their area, which may be more than a guide leading tourists, it might be illegal because they don’t a certificate. We try to make them legal by giving them a license to be a community guide. If people in the communities are a part of the tourism industry and can bring money to their communities, it will be very good. They will be proud of the place where they live and want to preserve the local identity of their community. They will also be proud of their abilities, which can represent the unique cultures and traditions for other people to learn.

“One of the big concerns for tourism is money,” he says. “People often think about the money tourism will make for them, and sometimes they forget about how to preserve the environment, how to keep tourism sustainable. That’s why the Ministry of Tourism and Sport tries hard to educate people, to instill people with pride in their communities and in the environment where they live or where they were born. The Ministry of Tourism and Sport not only helps them with how to manage tourism, but we are also concerned about people’s well-being and with improving their quality of life, such as supporting education and sanitation, and so on.”

Robert Pratt also contributed to this story.