Thailand as new destination for Norwegian travelers

Abstract

Selling a destination has become a challenging task in today’s modern high-technological environment. Travelers can obtain a huge variety of choices about any destination from online networks. This study utilized Thailand as a destination to market to Norwegian travelers, figuring Thailand’s successful example to be a model for many Asian countries that wish to be a top destination for westerners. A few topics that were focused in the thesis include how Thailand attracts the Nordic travelers by presenting a desired image, and the most important determinants for Norwegian travelers to select a destination are shown from the result of a quantitative survey. This study found that the most efficient way of influencing Norwegian travelers was through word-of-mouth (WOM) effects. The quantitative survey was carried out at the University of Stavanger with 162 respondents, which can be segmented into two groups: visitors who had been to Thailand and non-visitors who had not been to Thailand. A comparison study was constructed and the result showed that these two groups shared high correspondence to the choices of the sources of information, length of stay in the destination, motivation factors and the purpose of visit to the destination. Demographic figures are suggested to be an influential determinant for these two groups to reach a resemble result.