Management Guideline of Alternative State Quarantine (ASQ) During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

As a result of the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of tourists in Thailand has significantly decreased, seriously affecting the hotel industry. At the same time, the government has enacted state quarantine measures for those arriving in the kingdom to enter detention facilities; with the ability to choose an alternative detention facility, this was an opportunity for hotels to adapt their businesses to alternative state quarantines. For this research, the objective was to study the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on the hotel and tourism sectors, along with the marketing mix factors affecting the decision to use alternative state quarantine, and also to study alternative state quarantine management practices. The study used mixed research methods. The qualitative research included interviews with key informants, namely 3 hotel managers in alternative state quarantines, 1 physician, and 1 designer. For the quantitative research, questionnaires were used to collect data from 385 persons entering the kingdom who had used an alternative state quarantine in the Bangkok Metropolitan Region; these questionnaires were studied in terms of the marketing mix factors affecting their decision to stay at alternative state quarantine hotel and were then analyzed using multiple linear regression analysis statistics.

            The results showed that the marketing mix factors that mostly influenced the decision to stay at an alternative detention facility hotel were: process (Beta = 0.256), which was statistically significant at the .01 level of significance, followed by marketing promotion (Beta = 0.115) and price (Beta = 0.101), which were statistically significant at the .05 level of significance. Also, the opinions of the key informants focused on the management of alternative detention sites with sanitary standards-compliant service processes to build consumer confidence, as well as the implementation of pricing strategies and marketing promotions.