A Tourism Promotion Action Plan

An action plan is a focal point for translating strategy into action. In the case of action plans related to tourism development in Thailand, there are five agencies, that is, the Office of the Public Sector Development Commission (OPDC), the Office of the National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB), the Bureau of the Budget (BB), the Office of the Civil Service Commission (OCSC), and the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) responsible for giving policies and guidelines for formulating strategic plans and action plans. The purpose of this article is to give a bird's eye view picture of the relationship between the policy giving agencies and the agencies which have to implement the policy. In addition, the process of action plan formulation will be discussed. The provinces in which the world heritage sites as well as other attractive tourist spots are located, such as Kamphaeng Phet Province, where one world heritage site is located, playa very important role in driving policy. According to the government policy, every province which is relevant to tourism development must formulate strategy to strengthen and increase quality and efficiency in order to ensure that the Gross Provincial Product (GPP) will increase. In preparing an action plan, the planning team have to abide by the policies given by the relevant controlling agencies as well as adopt and adapt innovative management techniques in order to ensure that the action plan as such can be an efficient tool to drive the provincial as well as the national level tourism strategy as a whole. The format of the action plan is a mix of the following techniques. That is to say, in the introductory part, it consists of the relationship between the action plan and the strategy which the action plan belongs to. In addition, the team members have to understand the policies relevant to tourism development. They have to follow the national strategic target given by NESDB, the guideline for preparing provincial strategic plans given by OPDC, the strategy-based budgeting system guideline given by BB, the guideline for competency improvement given by OCSC, the guideline for tourism development Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and level of success of quality development for provincial tourism given by TAT. For the main part of the action plan, the guideline has mainly been given by OPDC. The relevant techniques are as follows: (1) participation is used to ensure that all relevant people understand what has been done, (2) a logical framework is used to understand the logic of cause and effect of the plan, that is, the relationship between input, process, output and outcome of the project as well as the relationship between the project and the strategy which it belongs to. In addition, the team members must understand the KPIs at input, process, output, and outcome levels of the project. Apart from this, the team members must understand the mechanism for monitoring and evaluation of KPIs especially the monitoring and evaluation of the Output and Outcome of the Project. Last but not least, team members must understand the project risks and critical success factors (CSFs) in order to prevent and manage risks as well as to weigh whether or not the project has feasibility for support and will become successful as planned. (3) Results based management (RBM), which was suggested by OCSC and OPDC, should be used in project management. In conclusion, the Tourism Promotion Action Plan of Kamphaeng Phet Province represents all provincial action plans on tourism development. The action plan is a subset of the strategic plan or the 4 year provincial development plan (2010-2013). The success or failure of action plan implementation depends upon the quality and efficiency of the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle.