Geographic Information System for Managing Community Based Tourism in Chon Buri Province

Abstract

Abstract

At present, tourism is major source of income in Thailand therefore developing and finding thenew attractions are needed to be done. The objectives of this research were to survey the location and dataof community attractions, estimate standard of community attractions, and set community based tourismroutes in Chon Buri province. Forty-five community attractions were found from field survey includingthirty four historical attractions, three cultural attractions, five natural attractions, and three ecologicalattractions. Then the maps of community attraction were created using Geographic Information System(GIS) software namely, ArcGIS Desktop 10. The results shown that almost community attractions’ scoreswere lower than the standard score. There were five community attractions with moderate scores namely,Mangrove forest education and conservation center for ecotourism, Mab Aueng agri-nature center, WatYannasangwararam, Wat Thepwararam, and Ang-Sila community. There was only one communitythan attraction was higher the standard score namely, Chantathen waterfall. Next, community basedtourism routes were set including R1 Coastal dharma route, R2 Phrarod-Maeree folk tale route, R3 Fourcaves dharma route, and R4 Varity of nature route. Finally, the shortest routes were analyzed by usingNetwork Analyst Extension in GIS. The total distance of R1, R2, R3 and R4 were accounted to 96.51, 31.59,58.48 and 36.40 kilometers, respectively.

Keywords : Community Based Tourism; Geographic Information System; Network AnalystExtension