ABSTRACT Using Chiang Mai, a popular tourist city in Northern Thailand, as a case study, this paper aims to measure the size of the tourism economy, its efficiency and the distribution of the gain among the major stakeholders -the capital owners, the labor groups and the government. It proposes the concept of domestically retained value added as a measurement of the net direct impact of tourism. The paper also investigates the competitive structure of the industry. The data were extracted from profit and loss statements for the year 2002 of about 450 enterprises in Chiang Mai and from about 500 interviews with owners, managers and workers. Fourteen sub-sectors in the Chiang Mai tourism industry were investigated. However, only the details for the more important sub-sectors are included in this paper. These are hotels, guesthouses and resorts, restaurants and catering, golf, tour and travel services, tourist bus services, cars rental and gas stations. The results show that the domestic value added of the tourism industry in Chiang Mai was very low reflecting low foreign involvement. The efficiency of the hotel industry, however, was very low. This could be due to the short tourism season and a long lag of productivity improvement from learning by doing.
[less]
0 FOLLOWERS · 248 VIEWS
Economic Impact of the Tourism Industry: A Case Study of Chiang Mai, Thailand1 - ResearchGate. Available from: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/238669136_Economic_Impact_of_the_Tourism_Industry_A_Case_Study_of_Chiang_Mai_Thailand1 [accessed Apr 9, 2015].