Institutions |
| Several
institutions involve in ecotourism management and development.
Their roles are explained as the followings: |
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Tourism
Authority of Thailand |
The
Tourism Authority
of Thailand (TAT) was established in 1960, the first public
enterprise in Thailand to be responsible specifically for the
promotion of tourism.
TAT supplies information and data on tourist areas to the public,
publicizes Thailand so as to encourage Thai and international
tourists to travel in Thailand, conducts studies to set development
plans for tourist areas, and co-operates with and supports the
production and development of personnel in the field of tourism.
Since
the inception of the first local office of TAT in Chiang Mai
in 1968, there are now 22 local offices throughout Thailand.
TAT has also established many overseas offices the first being
the New York office in 1965. TAT has since established 15 more
offices in different parts of the world during the past 30 years.
In
the past, major roles of TAT in nature tourism in protected
areas were to promote tourism destinations, render supports
especially allocation of government budget for tourism infrastructure
development within protected areas upon requests from the RFD.
Budget was also provided through TAT for research and tourism
plan development for nature tourism sites within protected areas.
Establishment
of local community networking, local capacity training in ecotourism
management, and promotion of community-based tourism destination
was additional roles of TAT as stated in ecotourism management
policy and action plan. Normally these missions have been carried
out in cooperation with the NGOs, and academic institutions.
However, since the governmental organization re-structuring
program in October 2002, TAT role has been focused primarily
on tourism promotion and marketing.
The emerging public organization under the new Ministry of Tourism
and Sports called “Office of Tourism Development” will be responsible
to oversee the tourism development plan including local community
– based tourism product development. |
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