MANAGERIAL GUIDELINES TO INCREASE SERVICE CAPACITY IN THE TOURISM ACCOMMODATION SECTOR IN A DEVELOPING COUNTRY

developing country, i.e., Thailand 2) to propose managerial guidelines to increase service capacity in the tourism accommodation sector in a remote area in a developing country that depends on the tourism industry for a large share of the national income. Methodology: A questionnaire was developed and distributed to 400 tourists to explore their expectations and satisfaction level in terms of the accommodation services they have experienced in a remote area. Mean, standard deviation, T-Test and F-Test were used to analyse the collected data. In-depth interviews were conducted with managers and staff in charge of managing and providing services in the accommodation. Main Findings: The study showed that tourists have low expectations, but high levels of satisfaction towards the five aspects of service quality in the tourism accommodation sector in a remote area. Implications/Applications: Thus, guidelines were developed to increase service capacity for accommodations, located in a remote area in Thailand and to enhance tourists’ experience to achieve the highest satisfaction levels. Five measures are described below. First, emphasize accountability and trustworthiness. For tourists’ benefits, legal measures should be set to control and manage accommodations that cannot correctly comply with the agreements or terms and conditions of advertisements or promotions. Second, focus on responding to tourists’ demands and their curiosity, staff should always accurately serve their needs. Also, inform and provide short and clear explanations to tourists when any changes occur after finalizing agreements with the tourist. Moreover, the service procedure should be convenient, fast, and simple. Third, increase tourists’ confidence towards accommodation services and staff by pursuing the following manners: honesty, well-mannered, gentle and friendly services with service-minded attitude. Fourth, because sympathy is another key success, encourage staff to show concern, kindness, and willingness to help and treat tourists equally. Finally, highlight the tangible assets such as providing a clean and attractive environment, both inside and outside of the accommodation. Increasing the accommodation’s sense of visibility through both offline and online advertisement and media is important

The Perceptions of members of the Karen and Hmong Hill tribes of the impacts upon their communities resulting from the development of tourism in Northern Thailand.

This research investigates the perceptions of hill tribe people in Northern Thailand of the sociocultural impacts and changes in their communities resulting from the interaction between themselves, their communities and the incoming mainly Thai, origin, external tourism actors (ETAs), such as tourism authorities, tourism businessmen / investors and tour operators. In Thailand, most studies on the impacts of tourism have been limited to economic analyses, and the socio-cultural impacts of tourism on hill tribe people has been under-researched. Of the previous studies of the socio-cultural impacts of tourism, the majority have examined the impacts from host and guest interactions, emphasising the negative social impacts resulting from the influx of tourists in general. Specific research on the interaction of local hill tribe people with incoming ETAs has not been reported. To fill this gap, this research aims to compare the perceptions of two hill tribe peoples (the Karen and Hmong), both those working for ETAs and those who do not, in terms of their employment experiences and perceived socio-cultural impacts resulting from the arrival of ETAs. In order to achieve the research aim, a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was used. A sequential approach was adopted incorporating a mixed methods design in order to better answer the research challenge of exploring the participants' views and perceptions. Building on a thorough literature review the first phase of primary data collection adopted a qualitative approach. Focus groups were used to explore the local hill tribe perceptions towards the interaction between ETAs and themselves, and their perceptions towards socio-cultural impacts upon themselves and changes in their community. Then semi-structure interviews were used to gain more in-depth details from selected participants. Themes from this qualitative phase were then used in the second stage of primary data collection to develop an essentially quantitative questionnaire, to measure, by means of a large scale survey, the perceptions of the selected population. The fmdings suggest that exposure to the social and cultural characteristics of ETAs, have significantly influenced some of the values, beliefs and lives of tribal people. However, despite the impacts resulting from the arrival of ETAs, these hill tribe people tend to be in favour and perceive these impacts and changes as positive changes. Moreover, the fmdings also suggest that differences in ethnic background, working environment and gender can be factors that influence perceptions of these hill tribe people. However, each factor, ethnicity, working environment, gender, exerts differing degrees of influence upon the perceptions of these hill tribe people toward different issues regarding impacts from ETAs. In addition, individual's perceptions toward impacts from ETAs differ despite their having the same ethnic background. However, the evidence gathered suggests that ethnic background does still control, to a degree, these differences with the result that while people's perceptions do differ in many ways nevertheless those from the same ethnic background tend to show greater similarities in their perceptions and actions when compared to those of different ethnicities. To this end, this study has pointed out several recommendations for future research together with the implications of the findings from this research on tourism management and policy makers

Electricity Consumption Forecasting in Thailand using Hybrid Model SARIMA and Gaussian Process with Combine Kernel Function Technique

Electricity consumption forecasting plays a significant role in planning electric systems. However, this can only be achieved if the demand is accurate estimation .This research, different forecasting methods hybrid SARIMA-ANN and hybrid model by SARIMA- Gaussian Processes with combine Kernel Function technique were utilized to formulate forecasting models of the electricity consumption . The objective was to compare the performance of two approaches and the empirical data used in this study was the historical data regarding the electricity consumption (gross domestic product: GDP, forecast values calculated by SARIMA model and electricity consumption) in Thailand from 2005 to 2015. New Kernel Function design techniques for forecasting under Gaussian processes are presented in sum and product formats. The results showed that the hybrid model by SARIMA - Gaussian Processes with combine Kernel Function technique outperformed the SARIMA-ANN model have the Mean absolute percentage error is 4.7072e-09, 4.8623 respectively. Keyword: Forecasting, Electricity Consumption, Model, Gaussian Process JEL Classifications: C13, C32, E27, P2