Abstract:
The aim of this research is to study the tourist behavior patterns and travel motivations of Thai Gen Y people, by quantitative research. The population of this study is Thai people aged between 22 36 years old, living or working in various areas within Bangkok. Two data collection methods were used. One way was that the paper-based questionnaires were sent to the samples by sampling some districts of Bangkok by method of Cluster sampling technique and the Quota sampling technique was used to select some samples from each of those districts. Another way was that the online questionnaires were submitted to the Facebook and LINE application by means of Snowball sampling technique. The number of complete responses from the sample group was 394. R program was used to analyze the data. Descriptive statistics was used to find the frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation. Inference statistics was used to test the statistics hypotheses with the Chi squared test, t test, F test and multiple comparisons with LSD method.
The research found that most of Thai Gen Y people have behaviors in managing their own travel plans. They like to travel both domestic and abroad, 1 3 times a year with 1 3 family members as travel companions. Weekends is their favorite time to travel. Each trip takes 3 days and 2 nights. Traveling costs is about 1,000 3,000 baht per trip and they like to travel to the destination by private cars. The most popular attraction is natural attraction. For reservation, they will be made through the websites such as agoda, expedia, and etc. However, if private cars are not used, bus or air tickets are also directly booked through agencies or airlines. The most influential decision making medium is social media. The activities that Thai Gen Y people like to do most during their travels are photography, sightseeing, and food tasting respectively. To test the hypothesis that tourists with different demographic characteristics will reflect different tourist behaviors, it was found that the difference in income will result in different behaviors of tourists and this factor has more influence on tourist behaviors than other demographic characteristics.
The highest level of driving force that motivates the Thai Gen Y to travel is their physical and mental needs, especially the desire to relax while the demand for new social experiences is highly motivating. The motivation induced by the high level attraction factors are the attraction of the destinations, tourism information public of media and the effective transportation. To test the hypothesis that different demographic characteristics motivate different travel behaviors, it was found that occupations non significant with motives of traveling.