Legal Problems Relating to Offence and Penalty for Tour Guide on The Tourism Business and Guide Act B.E. 2551 (2008)

Abstract

            This research aims at studying legal problems relating to offence and penalty for tour guide on The Tourism Business and Guide Act B.E. 2551 (2008). Several existing problems include unlicensed tour guide by aliens, sitting guide, offering optional tour program, in comparison to laws of Republic of Singapore, Socialist Republic of Vietnam and Malaysia. The study finds that The Tourism Business and Guide Act B.E. 2551 (2008) provides that any tour guide must be Thai national and permitted under the Act. The tour guide occupation has been reserved for only Thai people under the law on alien occupation so far.  Accordingly, any alien is decisively prohibited to engage the tour guide occupation in Thailand. Certain factual circumstances of tourism industry in Thailand are huge number of multi-lingual inbound tourists and increasing trend in their number in the future as well as inadequate number of licensed Thai tour guides who are capable of communication in specific languages of those inbound tourists.  Consequently, a number of aliens communicating in specific languages have engaged tour business as tour guide in Thailand, including the case of Thai tour guides together with aliens acting as Sitting Guide. Thailand has strict legal measures on The Tourism Business and Guide Act B.E. 2551 (2008) but persons still violate the law. The comparative study also finds that laws of foreign counties are interesting in imposing measures for controlling tour guide as well as a strict and efficient penalty both administrative penalty and criminal penalty. In order to provide solutions for the aforementioned issues, the researcher suggests revision of law by imposing offences and both administrative penalty and criminal penalty under The Tourism Business and Guide Act B.E. 2551 (2008) for unlicensed tour guide, tour guide committing the sitting guide, and offering optional tour program, as modeled by statutes and measures applied in law of foreign countries for appropriate and efficient regulating the tour guide occupation by law.