- Lee Led uses tourism as a tool to protect their natural resources which is their main source of income. Lee Led offers educational tours. Other communities such as Klong Bang Bai Mai (close to Klong Roi Sai) have used Lee Led as an example.
- Tourism Authority of Suratthani plans to promote community based tourism. However, the major problem is defining primary targets to find the marketing position and meet tourists’ standards.
- Lee Led and other CBTs are identifying their target tourist segments. The community needs to offer a variety of tourist activities to meet the different demands of Thai and foreign tourists. With a clear target, communities must meet the needs of different tourist segments, especially in standards and tourism products. The professor plans to talk with local community soon.
- One of the difficulties in Suratthani’s community-based tourism project is attracting tourists to the community. Typical tourists head straight for Koh Samui while quality tourists (TAT definition: luxury and premium tourists) who are interested in community-based tourism will look for other communities to visit. Sometimes the community like Lee Led has a good intention to develop and promote their CBT program but in the past 4-5 years, there are no tourists visiting the area.
- Another difficulty is that most local people who engage in CBT homestay program are elderly, making it especially difficult to establish standards and human resources that make operations sustainable.
- Local people of the Ao Ban Don (Bandon Bay) are active in community-based tourism and want to bring tourists into the estuary area to prevent mafia fishing boats from exploiting their fish supplies. Nevertheless, the professor questions if this CBT program is sustainable. In fact, Lee Led currently is in the process of internal review to assess how to proceed. According to Professor Por, currently Lee Led does not accept tourists to its community but he needs to recheck the current situation with the Thailand Community Based Tourism Institute (CBT-I).
- He also mentioned his experience with Kenan Institute Asia on Andaman project. He said the Kenan tried to lock the area for development program such as Koh Koh Khao in Phang-nga province but the area had several conditions that made it impossible to be preserved tourism destination such as local influentials. We need to consider multiple factors. For the sustainable tourism project, we should wait for the community to review their needs and ask us what kind of help they really want.