Crisis Impact and Business Management in The Crisis Of Tourism Business in Thailand

Abstract

The research aims to study the impact of the crisis on the tourism business, the government's crisis management measures, and the crisis management of the tourism business. This qualitative research was used to study the crises that affected the tourism business in Thailand over the past 20 years. The research methods included document research and an in-depth interviews with 10 people with experience in the tourism business crisis. The data was analyzed using the content analysis method. The research results revealed that the impact of the major crisis that caused the number of tourists to decrease the most was the COVID-19 crisis. International tourists decreased from 39.9 million in 2019 to only 400,000 in 2021. The government has measures to alleviate the economic impact during the tourism crisis by providing loans to tourism businesses and stimulating tourism with tax deduction measures. As for crisis management, most tourism businesses used strategies to generate income during the crisis by marketing to other tourist groups instead of the lost groups. They focus on Asian and Middle Eastern tourists instead of American and European tourists and find income from other channels instead of the main income from tourists. In particular, during the COVID-19 crisis, they focused on generating income from restaurants instead of income from rooms, as well as reducing costs and expenses by reducing unnecessary expenses and managing personnel by reducing the hiring of temporary employees, training employees to work in multiple departments, and closing some service areas.