TOURIST BEHAVIOR AND MOTIVATIONAL FACTORS DURING COVID-19 OUTBREAK IN THAILAND

ABSTRACT

Since COVID-19 has been spread out in December 2019, it has impacted the world's economy significantly. As of other countries, there are several businesses in Thailand were directly affected by the outbreak of COVID-19 especially in tourism industry which is one of the major revenues in previous years. The new ways to live with COVID-19 such as social distancing, hand washing, or mask wearing have been promoted by the government ever since. Moreover, a few campaigns have been launched to support people in this difficult time including "We Travel Together " which is mainly focused on tourism. However, some questions also arise whether this campaign is sufficed for boosting the tourism industry, what are the tourist behavior, opinion, and motivation factors during this time because no one knows how long the situation will resume to normal and when COVID-19 will be last. The findings show that during COVID-19 situation, respondents mostly travelled to Central region of Thailand with rate of frequency of 1-4 times, the majority of respondents chose sightseeing (63.7%) over other types of tourism, and respondents mostly were motivated by Relax/Escape (Mean = 4.12) which is one of the 13 motivational factors from Travel Career Pattern model (Pearce & Lee, 2005). This refers to tourism during COVID-19 situation is still needed as long as tourism is available and the motivation can be met.