Factors affecting the decision toward accommodation service of foreign tourists in Koh Samui District, Surat Thani : a comparison between European tourists and Asian tourists
Abstract:
The purpose of this independent study was to study the factors affecting the decision toward accommodation services of foreign tourists in Koh Samui District, Surat Thani by comparing between European tourists and Asian tourists. The samples consisted of 450 participants, and the questionnaire was used as an instrument for data collection. Statistics used for data analysis were percentage, mean, standard deviation, and Chi-Square Distribution. Two-Way ANOVA was also used to determine the differences between three or more independent groups while the Independent Samples t-test was used to investigate the difference between two independent groups.
The results of the independent study revealed that the majority of foreign tourists were male with ages ranging from 31 to 40 years old while their marital status was married. The average level of education was Bachelors degree. Besides, most of them had their own business with the average income from $30,001 USD to $40,000 USD per year. Regarding the results of behavior analysis, it showed that the objective of the trip of most of these foreign tourists was to travel and they usually travel with their family. Furthermore, the average duration of stay was between 3 to 7 days, and the hotels with room rates between $80.86 USD to $113.15 USD were mostly chosen. Most of these foreign tourists decided on accommodation by themselves and also reserved the room via telephone in advance. Due to the location, most of European tourists chose accommodations close to the sea or the beach while Asian tourists chose to stay close to the communities.
Due to the hypothesis testing, the results showed that different personal factors affected on behaviors of foreign tourists toward the accommodation services in different ways. Similarly, different levels of importance of the marketing mix affected the behaviors toward accommodation services differently. Moreover, the results indicated that both European tourists and Asian tourists differently considered the importance of marketing mix of service business as follows: place (t = -3.769, Sig. = 0.000), people (t = -5.485, Sig. = 0.000), process (t = -5.090, Sig. = 0.000) and promotion (t = -3.411, Sig. = 0.006).