The Old Community District: Socio-Cultural Materials of Tourism in Thailand

Thailand has many materials of tourism such as nature, culture, culinary, medical facility, ecology, education and even MICE. These materials have generated income to Thailand around 2,000 million US. Dollar per year in 2014 (The Tourism Authority of Thailand, 2014). Most tourist attractions are expressed by elegant culture, beautiful landscape, modern and comfortable technology, and even sex service. In fact, Thailand has many local tourism materials, attracting and charming for tourist around the world. One of the local tourism materials is “the Old Community District” on which settled around the country. During 2012 -2014, Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning (ONEP) had surveyed and defined “the Old Community District” by the standard of cultural environments. As a result, 612 old community districts had been primary registered to the tentative lists of the cultural environment in Thailan The purposes of this article have main three aims. The first is that it aims to reveal criteria and definition of “the Old Community District”, defined by the methods including focus group, group discussion, and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The second illustrates the categories of “the Old Community District” in Thailand, which are characterised into three types – environmental settlements, functions, and cultures depending on each community context. Finally, it attempts to explain the relation between the old community district and tourism type. It shows potential in different contexts to develop to tourist attraction. The outcome of the article shows the new materials of tourism in Thailand, based on socio-cultural capital and spatial. For this study, the old community district in the North-eastern Thailand shows the integration between urban conservation and development relating to tourism management. As P. Duhamel (2009), tourism is essentially an urban development programme which could support the way of life and daily life activities for local people. Finally, this article strongly supports the concept of the raw material of tourism is space, as C.Iatu and I.Muntele claimed (2006).