Muslim Tourists’ Behavior & Service Marketing Mix for Halal Tourism in Thailand

Abstract

The objectives of this study were to study; 1) the behavior of Muslim tourists, 2) the opinions of Muslim tourists towards service marketing mix factors, 3) the relationship between personal factors and Muslim tourists behavior and 4) the comparison between personal factors and service marketing mix factors. Questionnaire was used as an instrument to collect data from 400 Muslim tourists at Suvarnabhumi Airport, Don Mueang Airport and Phuket International Airport. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used; which consists of percentage, mean, standard deviation, Chi-square and One-way ANOVA.

The results of Muslim tourists' behavior shows that most respondents perceive information from Facebook advertisements that cause interest/decision to travel (35.0%) by using the internet to search for information on their own (72.8%), and trips are organized through travel agencies (39.3%). Most respondents come to Thailand for the first time (47.8%). Most of them traveled with friends (48.5%) with the purpose of marine recreation (75.7%) and most of them stated that if they had a chance, they will revisit Thailand (97.5%).

The results of opinions on service marketing mix found that the respondents were strongly agree with the price. Followed by the opinions on distribution channels, personnel and process respectively.

The hypothesis testing found that the behavior of tourists varied according to personal factors such as gender, age, education, occupation, income and status, and found that all of these personal factors were agree with the service marketing mix significantly at the level of 0.05.