SWOT Analysis of Religious Tourism in Nong Khai Province, Thailand Proposed Guidelines to Incorporate Temple Stay Program

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of religious tourism in Nong Khai province, Thailand to incorporate Temple Stay Program, which is a valuable form of religious tourism. Temple Stay Program is a successful Buddhist tourism program in Korea which creatively attracts many tourists throughout the Korean Buddhist culture. A semi-structured interview was applied to collect data from key informants. The results show that religious tourism in Nong Khai province has the potential to incorporate a Temple Stay Program as a core religious tourism product to introduce Thai Buddhist culture. In order to improve the potential for religious tourism in Nong Khai province to establish a Temple Stay Program, the necessary things that should be focused on are 1) diversity of religious activities for tourists 2) improving human resources in tourism 3) arranging public service vehicles to go to temples 4) extensive public relations 5) collaboration by stakeholders. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n23p696