CHAPTER 6
CONCLUSIONS
The purpose of this study was to identify and prioritize the potential ecotourism sites in
land ecosystems of Surat Thani province, Southern Thailand. This study presents an
integrated approach of GIS with AHP combination to assess the ecotourism suitability
by matching the characteristics of an area with those attributes most appropriate for
ecotourism. These integrated approaches were able to handle complex and universal
issues like sustainable development of ecotourism, biodiversity conservation and
protected area management in a tropical and developing country such as Thailand.
The main contribution of this study was the identification criteria and factors of
ecotourism by applying the hierarchical structure of AHP in geospatial environment. It
was started by the calculation of weighting and rating from the AHP analysis where
experts were asked to determine the relative importance of each criterion and factor.
The determination of criteria and classification of factors for the identification of
ecotourism potential areas which were divided into 2 main categories: bio-physical and
socio-economic sections. There were five criteria and nine factors in the form of nine
GIS-based layers incorporated for land suitability evaluation for ecotourism. These are
landscape or naturalness (visibility, land use/cover), wildlife (reservation/protection,
species diversity), topography (elevation, slope), accessibility (proximity to cultural
sites, distance from roads), community characteristics (settlement size). These important