The Foreign Tourists’ Behaviours and Satisfaction with the Temple of the Emerald Buddha and the Grand Palace Visit

Abstract

The objectives of this research project are 1) to study the foreign tourists’ behaviour towards the Temple of the Emerald Buddha and the Grand Palace visit; and 2) to study the satisfaction level of the foreign tourists with the Temple of the Emerald Buddha and the Grand Palace visit. The questionnaire is the research tools used to collect the data collated from 200 samples from 2 groups of samples: 1) 100 western tourists and 2) 100 Asian tourists visited the Emerald Buddha Temple and the Grand Palace with the accidental random sampling. The statistics used to analyze data include frequency (N.), percentage (%), mean (𝑥̅ ) and Standard Deviation (S.D.). The research results revealed that most of western tourists visiting the Emerald Buddha Temple and the Grand Palace were female, aged between 20-29 years old, single, accompanied with their boyfriends, holding a Master's degree or higher, worked in a private sector with a monthly income of US$ -10,000 or less, visited Thailand for their first time, for 9 day duration of stay, the recreation and sight-seeing were the main purposes and searched for the tourist attractions via the Internet. With regard to the Asian tourists, most of them were female, aged between 20-29 years old, single, holding a Bachelor's degree, were students, with a monthly income of US$ 600-1,050, traveling with friends, visited Thailand for first time, for their 6-8 day duration of stay, planned their trip by themselves and known attractions from the Internet. The comparison of two groups of tourists’ behavior, the study found that both the western and Asian tourists realized the status and significances of the temple and palace visiting rules; therefore, they would not behave in improper ways while visiting the places due to they have a positive personal attitude or planned a head before their trip. They also study the visiting regulations, and the prohibitions of attractions by searching information on the Internet. In term of the satisfaction levels of the western and the Asian tourists upon the Emerald Buddha Temple and the Grand Palace visit, the study found that the majority of these groups of tourists were satisfied in a high level in terms of the location, facilities, price of entry, and service quality of the staff. In addition, in overall, the groups of tourists were satisfied with every aspects of the attractions in a high level with no significant difference between the two groups of these tourists.