Rethinking Sustainable Tourism Management: Learning from the COVID-19 Pandemic to Co-Create Future of Krabi Tourism, Thailand

Despite negative consequences from the COVID-19 pandemic, there are certain positive effects from this crisis including the restoration of natural resources. Using the institutional theory framework, this paper aims to explore how sustainable tourism management can be applied to manage recovered natural resources after the COVID-19 crisis. Qualitative research in the form of in-depth interviews, focus group interviews, and observations was conducted to demonstrate how Krabi tourism stakeholders could collaborate among themselves in order to sustain recovered natural resources after the COVID-19 pandemic. Informants of the study are Krabi tourism stakeholders; i.e., tourism business owners and managers, members of tourism associations, government officers, CBT members, that are recruited by purposive sampling method. This research has shed light on how tourism stakeholders can co-create tourism policies to respond to sustainability issues using the institutional process. In order to develop a successful sustainable tourism management plan, we propose that the plan should consist of three aspects-environmental, social, and economic. The findings from this research offer benefits to tourism stakeholders around the world for reshaping sustainable tourism management in order to take care of magnificent tourism resources after the COVID-19 outbreak.

Automated summary

This study demonstrates how sustainable tourism management can be applied to manage recovered natural resources after the COVID-19 crisis, emphasizing the importance of collaboration and policy-making among tourism stakeholders. The findings suggest that a successful sustainable tourism management plan should include environmental, social, and economic aspects.