In light of the recent devastation in the US due to Hurricane Katrina the excellent work of David Dowall , Professor of City and Regional Planning and Director of the Institute of Urban and Regional Development at the University of California at Berkeley is all the more timely. He has produced the UC Berkeley and Chulalongkorn Universitys Strategic Plan for Sustainable Tourism Development in Krabi Province in response to the tsunami in the region.
The team has also produced a documentary video:
http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/specialevents/terriblewave.rm?start='00:00:03'
or at:
http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2005/webArticles/tsunami.html
See the report below.
UC Berkeley and Chulalongkorn Universitys Strategic Plan for Sustainable Tourism Development in Krabi Province
Acknowledgements
Many, people, in many ways, helped make this collaborative studio project successful. First, and foremost I want to thank Chote Soponpanich, President of the Thai Public Policy Foundation for coming up with the idea for the project and for supporting it financially. Chancellor Robert Birgeneau quickly agreed with Khun Chote and also provided financial support. At Chulalongkorn University, Faculty of Architecture Dean Associate Professor Lersom Sthapitanonda, Faculty of Political Science Dean Professor Dr. Amara Pongsapich and Assistant Professor Dr. Suwattana Thadaniti Director of the Social Science Research Institute enthuastically supported the project and provided the leadership to get it launched. Faculty of Architecture Associate Dean Dr. Pinraj Khanjanusthiti and Urban and Regional Planning Chair Associate Professor Dr. Daranee Thavinpipatkul provided essential institutional support, including studio space, and computer and logistical support. The co-teachers of the studio included Urban and Regional Planning Assistant Professor Dr. Siriwan Silapacharanan and Political Science Lecturer Pitch Pongsawat. Both of them were critical in shaping to structure and work of the studio, as well as acting as cross-cultural guides and mentors. They helped create the wonderful chemistry between the Chula and Berkeley students. Chulalongkorn University Faculty of Architecture Associate Professor Dr. Banasopit Mekvichai and UC Berkeley Professor Karen Chapple helped launch the studio and participated in the fieldwork activities in Krabi Province. Khun Pissmai Khanobdee, Advisor to the Thai Public Policy Foundation helped keep the project on track, traveling with the team to Krabi Province and backstopping the project in Bangkok. Janet Dawson of UC Berkeleys Institute of Urban and Regional Development handled logistics in Berkeley as well as helping with the editing of the final report. In addition the project is indebted to scores of people in Krabi Province who took the time to talk with us about tourism issues, including the present Mayor and past Mayor of Krabi, staff of the Provincial Administration Office, business leaders, and citizens. The van drivers, Eak, Piak, Oan and Somchai, were paragons of patience, wisdom and humor. We hope that our work will benefit the people of Krabi by adding to the discussion about the role of tourism in Thailand.
David Dowall
Professor of City and Regional Planning and
Director
Institute of Urban and Regional Development
University of California at Berkeley
Acknowledgements
.1
Table of Contents
.2
Table of Exhibits
?
Executive Summary
?
Introduction
4
· Our Partnership
4
· Sustainable Development and Krabi
6
· Tourism Planning in Thailand
..7
· Structure of the Report
.11
Approach/Methodology
12
· Limitations of the Project
..13
· Consultative Strategic Planning
..15
· Initial Research Activities
.18
· Stakeholder Meetings
.18
· Site Visits
19
· Topical Groups
20
· The Model
..21
· Comparing Our Process With Conventional Master Planning
22
· Conclusion
..24
Krabi Province Overview
.25
· Introduction
25
· People and Society
..25
· Religion
.26
· Landscape
..26
· Economy
28
· Water and Sewage
..29
· Administration
30
Tourism Industry Overview
..31
· Worldwide Tourism
.31
· Tourism in Thailand
32
· Tourism in Krabi
..37
· Ecotourism
40
· Health Tourism
.41
· Cultural and Educational Tourism
..42
· Golf Tourism
42
· Conclusion
42
Krabis Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT)
43
· Strengths
..43
· Weaknesses
.46
· Opportunities
49
· Threats
..51
Vision Statement
55
Tourism Strategies
..56
· Krabi Riviera
.56
· Krabi Highlights
..59
· Krabi Discovery
..62
· Summary
.65
External Scenarios
66
· Global Boom
.66
· Global Median
.67
· Global Downturn
68
· Summary
68
Analysis of Futures (Strategies x Scenarios)
.70
· Krabi Riviera x Global Boom
70
· Krabi Riviera x Global Downturn
.73
· Krabi Highlights x Global Median
.75
· Krabi Discovery x Global Median
76
· Comparison of Futures
.?
Issues and options for creating sustainable tourism in Krabi
..?
· Next Steps
..?
· Future Research
.?
Appendices
.?
· Team Members
?
· Maps
..?
· Charts and Graphs
?
· Itinerary
?
· People Interviewed
..?
References
?
Introduction
The December 26, 2004 Andaman Tsunami caused widespread damage to six Southern provinces in Thailand. A total of 5,395 persons were killed, 8,459 were injured and 2,993 persons are unaccounted for as of February 22, 2005. Over 6,700 dwelling units were damaged or destroyed and there was extensive damage to public infrastructure and natural resources - coral reefs, beaches, mangrove areas, fish and shrimp farms, freshwater aquifers, and landfills and wastewater systems were affected (see Exhibit 1). The rebuilding recovery process is underway in most affected areas, but the pace is uneven. Tourist areas with casualty-insured facilities are recovering the fastest, while local settlements with little insurance cover and unclear property rights are slow to rebuild.
Exhibit 1. Tsunami damage on Phi Phi Don Island
Source: Krabi Tourism Workshop
In most areas attention is centered on near-term recovery and there is little concern about long-term issues. But the tragedy begs broader questions what role should tourism play in Southern Thailand? What should be the balance between environmental protection and cultural preservation and the economic benefits of tourism activities?
Our partnership
In February of 2005, the University of California at Berkeley, Chulalongkorn University, and the Thai Public Policy Foundation formed a partnership to provide technical assistance to help shape long-term strategic planning in the Andaman coastal region. The idea for the project came from Chote Soponpanich, President of the Thai Public Policy Foundation who contacted Chancellor Robert Birgeneau of UC Berkeley to inquire how the school could provide some technical assistance for tsunami relief. Building on a previously successful partnership between the Thai Public Policy Foundation, UC Berkeleys Department of City & Regional Planning and Goldman School of Public Policy, and Chulalongkorn University Social Science Research Institute in 1997; it was decided that the three institutions should work together to form a project. Due to the abundance of short-term humanitarian aid for the tsunami, the team thought that a project focusing on long term strategic planning for tourism would be appropriate given the needs of the impacted tourist areas and the combined expertise of the three partners.
During the week of March 21-25, 2005 the partners visited three provinces - Phuket, Krabi and Phang Nga to assess conditions and to define a project. During the visit the team met with local elected officials, planners, and community leaders (see Exhibit 2). Through interviews and site visits to tsunami inundated areas, they assessed local technical capacity, surveyed the scale of international humanitarian assistance activities, and gauged the level of interest of each of the provinces in receiving long-term strategic planning assistance. In Bangkok the partners also met with officials at the Department of Public Works and Town and Country Planning to learn about ongoing planning activities.
Exhibit 2. Stakeholder Meeting in Krabi (from right to left: Head Tourism Business Association of Krabi, the Mayor of Krabi City, Representative from the Rubber Planters Association, and representative from the Krabi Chamber of Commerce).
Source: Krabi Tourism Workshop
Based on the results of the field visits and discussions with Chulalongkorn faculty and the members of the Thai Public Policy Foundation Board of Directors, the partnership agreed to concentrate their efforts on Krabi Province. Through interviews, conversations, and recommendations it was decided that the project concentrate on developing an overall strategic framework for the province, focusing on sustainable tourism development, community development and income generation, and regional level infrastructure needs. In addition the partnership agreed to develop an active community participation process to engage stakeholders and reflect their views in the final product.
Twenty graduate students and six faculty from Chulalongkorn University and the University of California, Berkeley with backgrounds in city planning, architecture, government, and landscape architecture met on May 23, 2005 in Bangkok to form the project team. After a series of briefings, the team traveled to the Krabi province to embark on a four-week research project. From May 26 to June 4, the team met with local government official, business leaders, community groups and tourists. On June 5, the team returned to Bangkok to prepare its strategic plan and presentation. The team hopes that this process can be seen as a model for future cross-cultural and collaborative strategic planning projects.
Sustainable Tourism and Krabi
The rapid expansion of the tourism industry in southern Thailand has provided economic benefits for many and has also affected many facets of daily life. In Krabi Province tourism has the potential to drive the development and growth of the region, creating jobs and generating local government revenues. However, tourism can also generate undesirable side effects -- environmental degradation, social dependency, underdevelopment, and adverse socio-cultural effects, especially for rural populations. The tsunamis aftermath offers the opportunity to assess the benefits and costs of tourism, and to reframe a tourism strategy for the province that is environmentally sustainable, economic productive, and socially acceptable.
Stakeholder meetings, informal interviews, and extensive fieldwork throughout the province allowed the researchers to collect both qualitative and quantitative data on the existing conditions of the province. Issues surrounding sustainable tourism development, environmental protection, community development, income generation, and regional level infrastructure needs were identified. Back in Bangkok, the team used a strategic planning and scenario assessment method to assess tourism strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and to consider a range of possible strategies for guiding the future.
This strategic plan hopes to lay out the direct and indirect economic, social, and environmental linkages between the distinct sectors and stakeholder groups within the province and show how their activities may affect Krabi provinces future. The rebuilding of the region provides a unique opportunity to develop long-term strategies for guiding future development in the region.
The work of the project did not take place in a vacuum, its activities are one of several tourism planning efforts initiated by various government agencies over the past decade. Below, we summarize this work and compare and contrast it with our activities.
Tourism planning in Thailand
UC Berkeley and Chulalongkorn Universitys Strategic Plan for Sustainable Tourism Development in Krabi Province should be viewed in the broader context of past and ongoing tourism efforts. Government policies and plans for tourism development in Krabi fall under three different levels; national, regional and provincial. At the national level, the three main initiatives that discuss tourism in the broader context of national development include the 9th National Economic and Social Development (NESDB) Plan and a series of plans and programs proposed by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) under the Ministry of Tourism and Sports. At the provincial level, different plans exist, encouraging cooperation with neighboring provinces (Phuket, Phang Nga, Trang) to form tourism and development clusters, as well a tsunami recovery plan, which emphasizes the role of tourism in this process. Local-self governments throughout Krabi province have also developed their own tourism plans and initiatives, of which the most notable are the plans for Lanta Islands and the Municipality of Krabi.
The NESDB, the central planning unit under the Office of the Prime Minister, set forth its ninth five-year plan for the years 2002 through 2006 proposing that tourism should play an important role in economic and social development and that the central government should determine the goal of tourism development to increase country's competitiveness. The plan calls for tourism development to increase employment, distribute income more evenly across communities, follow the principles of sustainable development, and foster more cooperation with neighboring countries (forming a development partnership triangle with Indonesia and Malaysia). The five-year plan calls for a 7-8 percent annual growth in income from foreign tourists and more than 3 percent annual growth from domestic tourism. The plan also calls for a focus on tourism quality, emphasizing niche markets like cultural and eco-tourism, and upgrades in tourist facilities and infrastructure. Though the plan mentions community participation in tourism management as an important factor, it gives prominence to income generation and economic growth.
Like the NESDB, TAT sees tourism as an important instrument for tackling the countrys economic problems, creating jobs for people as well as increasing income for the country. The agencys main role is to promote tourism at the national scale in accordance with the governments policy. TAT uses proactive marketing strategies for increasing the new markets as well as the niche markets, both international and domestic, and launches campaigns such as Amazing Thailand and Thais Visit Thailand Year. The TATs plans strongly emphasize niche segments such as eco-tourism as a tool to promote sustainable tourism. In 2001, TAT Governor Pradech Phayakvichien noted that "If carefully managed, tourism can help conserve Thailands unique natural and cultural heritage, apart from significantly creating job and export earning.
The Southern Seaboard Development Project (SSDP), a national initiative aimed at upgrading infrastructure in the southern provinces, improving transportation between the South and Bangkok and other trading partners, and exploring sources of energy has also caused an impact in tourism development in Krabi. The national government has endorsed the plan hoping to duplicate the economic success of the Eastern Seaboard Project, which has become a center for the petrochemical trade since the National Petrochemical Public Company Limited was established there in 1984. It is also seen as a solution to alleviating urban sprawl around Bangkok, which has become a significant problem. The government is hoping that the development of a new economic area in the Southern Seaboard region will lure people out of the congested capital. The SSDP concept involves the establishment of a new gateway to the global trade network using integrated industrial parks and ports on each coast, connected by a Landbridge across the Isthmus of Thailand. Krabi is part of the area that will be bridged with the east coast province. Since Thailands coasts are abundant in natural resources, including fertile agricultural land, coal reefs, rich deposits of minerals and beautiful beaches and scenery, environmental groups and some in the tourism industry oppose the SSDP, saying that the industrial activity surrounding the project may destroy the Andaman coast's flourishing tourist trade and speed up an already rapid rate of environmental destruction evident throughout Thailand.
Many of the plans at the provincial level emphasize cooperation between Krabi and its neighboring provinces. The Andamanization Plan started in 1994, for example, called for the Phuket, Phannga and Krabi provincial governments to cooperate with key business representatives to promote more investment and development in the region. In the aftermath of the December 2004 tsunami, the Andamanization Plan was a key influence in the establishment of the Andaman Triangle, where Phuket, Phang Nga, and Krabi joined forces in their reconstruction efforts. Additionally, the 2002 Action Plan for Tourism Development of Krabi, Trang, Satul and Pattalung emphasizes the importance of the connection among various tourist destinations in the region. In this plan, Krabi has a key role as the connection between Phuket and other southern provinces.
The Provincial Development Strategic Plan of Krabi also sees tourism as an important driver for its developmental and tsunami reconstruction goals. The plan calls for the maintenance of the growth rates of tourism arrivals and receipts as well as the balance of tourism with other economic activities such as agro-business and the industrial. After the Tsunami devastation, the province proposed a nodal tourism development model, focusing on 5 localities as magnets for different tourism activities and niches (both inland and coastal) and to promote economic development in the province. This model is closely aligned with the Krabi Highlights tourism strategy described in this report.
Two noteworthy local tourism development plans are the Krabi Municipality Development Strategy and Lanta Islands Tourism Development Plan. The former was established by the elected local self-government in the town of Krabi to develop two main strategies for tourism development. First, the municipality maintains the role of infrastructure provision for development including landscape improvements within Krabi City. Second, the municipality develops new tourism activities, emphasizing pre-historic tourist destinations. The former strategy calls for collaboration with business community and local based authorities develop food safety project to keep balance with tourism development on the island. The food safety project emphasizes organic agriculture, less reliance on agricultural products from outside the island, and income generation for local communities. The plan also calls for infrastructure provision for tourism development on Lanta Island, including the proposal for a new marina to develop the eastern part of the island for tourism and as a docking for marine tourism in the Andaman sea.
Our CU-UC plans are different and complementary to the existing plans in several important ways. First, we test our alternative tourism strategies against external scenarios to gage the resiliency. Second, our plan sees communities and residents as the main drivers behind tourism management and planning, not just as economic stakeholders (such as selling crafts, cultural performance and food provision). Third, we do not separate tourism as a sector in and of itself, but see it in the broader context of the whole economy of Krabi Province. Finally, we see tourists as integral stakeholders, not just a source of external demand.
Structure of the report
The overall report is divided into 10 sections. The next three sections describe the approach and method of the project, provide a general overview of Krabi Province, and discusss tourism trends from an international, national, regional and provincial perspective. The next section presents a vision of sustainable tourism for Krabi Province. It is followed by an assessment of Krabis strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (a SWOT analysis). Next the report presents three tourism strategies and evaluates their likely performance using a scenario planning process. The final section of the report summaries the results of the scenario analysis and proposes a range of implementation options for consideration. It also outlines what next steps should be taken to achieve sustainable tourism in Krabi Province.