Sustainable Marine Ecotourism Promotion at Talu Island in PrachuapKhiri Khan Province

Abstract

          The research "Sustainable Marine Ecotourism Promotion at Talu Island in Prachuap Khiri Khan Province" was studied covering the following objectives: 1) To study the potential of the Talu Island attractions and 2) To study Talu Island tourism management and create    Guidelines for Sustainable Marine Ecotourism Promotion. The research used mixed method research by gathering quantitative and qualitative data. The population and samples of the research were Thai and foreign tourists. Questionnaire were used to collect the data. 381 samplesand 5 samples for interview were chosen by purposive sampling method with non-probability. The data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics. Content analysis was used to conclude the data concordantly with the study.

 The results have shown as follows: 1) The overall potential from 7 potentials () of Talu Island in PrachuapKhiri Khan Province is  moderate. 2) Talu Island PrachuapKhiri Khan Province has appropriate factors for promoting to be a marine ecotourism attractions by considering from unique nature, developmental tourism plan without affecting environment from entrepreneur, resource conservation, sustainable management, tourism development control, environment concern and safety first for tourist activities and equal benefit from tourism to community. 3) Environment should be managed systematically to reduce the effect to tourism resource and community's ways of life, for example, rubbish problems. Further, tourism attractions should get more promoted. Also, route should be improved so that the attractions on the island could be linked together by providing guidepost. Last, the route between Talu Island and marine tourism attraction on other islands in Thai Gulf should be linked to help increase income   distribution to the community as the         government policy.