The Development of Small Hotel in Chantaburi Province for Wellness Business Guidelines in Covid-19 Crisis

Abstract

The study focuses on tourism demand of wellness as well as tourist characteristics, tourist behavior and the willingness to pay for hotel health promotion services by using the study of the theory and research related to wellness tourism, creating online questionnaire to survey the behavior of a Thai tourist group interested in traveling to Chantaburi, the prominent province of East. Analyzing the results of education through the statistical trend monitoring is able to bring the key words together with the results of studies.

This study found that the tourist demand tends to stay in the hotel accommodations in Chantaburi and those who were interested in wellness activities can be identified into two tourist groups : The actual demand and the potential demand. 1) The actual demand is the main tourist groups that have ever come and be interested to stay at the Chantaburi Hotel, mostly be a women, retired 60-79 years old and private company employees, high-income tourists, one nights and two night stays in hotel, mostly with family or friends, travel 3-5 people and 6-11 people with their private cars, 2,001  - 4,000 bath per trip per person for travel expenses. Also, most of them were interested in doing things outside the hotel by themselves, but in doing things in a homestay activities by having the hotel organize things and have a lot of interest in Thai massage service inside the hotel with pleasure of paying for both activities. 2) the potential demand, the second group of tourists who never came but would be interested to stay at the  hotel in Chantaburi, mostly women, retired 60-79 years old, and private company and government employees aged 30-39 and 50-59 years, had high incomes, as did the first group, but estimated the cost of travel to be over 2,000 bath per trip per person; doing the same thing as the main tourist, but would be interested in beach yoga hotels and a shuttle service to Khitchakut national park.

This study shows the nature and behavior of tourists interested in wellness as well as doing wellness activities during their travels, which are a new marketing target for studying and suggesting ways to develop small-scale hotels in Chantaburi as a model for the development of small-scale hotels.