Abstract:
The purpose of this research was to study the tourism promotion for the senior Japanese tourists market to Thailand. The sample size included a group of 400 senior Japanese tourists aged 55 years and above. The researcher distributed 200 questionnaires to senior Japanese tourists in Thailand and another 200 senior Japanese tourists previous visited Thailand via the Tourism Authority of Thailands offices in Japan. The collected data was analyzed in term of frequency distribution, percentage, arithemic means, and standard deviation. The Marketing Mix (7 Ps) were compared namely: product, price, place or distribution, promotion, people, physical evidence, and process. The t-test was utilized to compare gender, age, and length of stay. Twelve Thai tourism stakeholders experted in the Japanese market were interviewed. The results showed that the majority of the sample size were female, 55 65 years old, retired, average revenue of 2,500,000 - 5,000,000 Yen/year, a source of income from private business, most of them were Frequent Individual Travelers (FITs), having travelled to Thailand 2-5 times, stay in Thailand 11-20 days, knew information about Thailand from friends and relatives, travelled to Thailand because of safety, and would come back to Thailand again and/or recommended Thailand to their friends and relatives. The marketing mix which received a highest level were Process ( X̅ = 4.53), Physical Evidence ( X̅ = 4.51) and Price ( X̅ = 4.32). There was significantly different in opinion regarding the length of stay, at the 0.05 level but there was no differences in opinion among gender and age. The appropriate forms of tourism for the senior Japanese tourists market were voluntourism, cultural tourism, longstay tourism, golf tourism, and health tourism.