Implementing Sustainable Beach Tourism Management Framework for the Royal Coast Cluster , Thailand

Beach tourism is one of the tourism models that most partners realize to manage to its sustainability. Integration of thoughts for various sectors was also needed for a walk to success. This research, thus, sought for ways to investigate for proper beach tourism management model with certain component. Testing will be implemented in area along the gulf of Thailand which is known by the name “The Royal Coast”. The mixed-methods design was employed for the study: focus group (n=88), policy meeting (n=29) and questionnaire (n=800). Both host whose stakeholders in public and privates business in the beach area and communities and guests or tourists were asked and discussed. The results from the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) indicated that six components were the significant factors for sustainable beach management, yielding Chi-square =10.870 Chi-square/df = 1.812, df = 6, p = 0.092, GFI = 0.996, CFI = 0.993, RMR = 0.008, RMSEA = 0.032. The sustainable beach tourism included six components of management on marketing and promotion management, tourist attraction management, participation management, environmental, cultural and education management, process, plan and policy management and personnel management respectively. All six components was assigned and implemented for testing in sustaining beach tourism management on the Royal Coast.


Introduction
International tourism has increased in growth since 1950 but many other types of tourism; namely, natural tourism, cultural tourism, historical tourism and other have also become popular (Suanez & Bruzzi, 1999).Beach tourism has increased along with the development of mass tourism emerged the 1970's (Buhalis, 2000) and depends on natural attractions such as climate, landscape, ecosystems, cultural attractions, historical and cultural heritage, arts and crafts, traditions and other resources (United Nations Environment Programme [UNEP], 2005).Most tourist around the world are interested in visiting attractive beaches and therefore beach have become one of the fastest growing areas of tourism (Hall, 2001) because they offer opportunities for leisure, physical activities and pleasure of all ages and social groups (Gormsen, 1997;Butler, 1980).Beaches are an important part of the tourism market.(Houston, 2013) The World Tourism Organization [UNWTO] said the coast or beaches have large areas where tourism industry has seen steady growth like in the Mediterranean, one of the most beautiful coastal and beach areas in the world which had more than 246 million tourists in 2005 and will reach up by 150 million in 2025compared with 2005(Blue Plan, 2008).These studies show that beach tourism is an important factor that can affect other parts of the hospitality industry as well.
However, the demand for beach recreation has put pressure on the sites (Lucrezi, Saayman, & Merwe, 2015) in terms of changes in environment and land use involved with new accessibility and recreational use (Swarbrooke, 1999;Koutrakis et al., 2011;Veloso-Gomes & Taveira-Pinto, 2003) and the more complex negative impact involving development, promotion, over carrying capacity, crowding, transportation considerations and the unequal link between environment management and marketing (Hall, 2001;Mora, 2008).In additions, Anthony (1997) showed his concern for cultures and community in these areas being overly influenced or change by visiting persons.The negative impact of tourism development needs to be studied carefully involving stakeholders to seek a balance between economic advantages and good environmental standards.Sustainable beach management is challenge for both natural or artificial beaches.
Sustainable tourism is considered important and necessary thing for tourism resource management (Thomson & Jahn, 2009).This sustainability is important not just for niche market or alternative tourism but also used for all types of tourism destinations and mass tourism.The sustainability has to balance three aspects of tourism development concerns including visitors' needs, industry, and the host community (UNWTO & UNEP, 2005) and focus on maintaining and conserving environment, making and distributing fair benefits to all stakeholder and long term economic management and respecting socio-cultural value and conservation of cultural heritage (UNWTO, 2004).Moreover, another dimension for determining sustainability includes administration and management (Mowforth & Munt, 2009;Holladay, 2011).Page (2007) states that trends and the future of tourism destination management have been altered to be more integrated several dimensions like innovative products and services, stability, and balancing for economic, social, culture and environment aspects.
Beaches are an attractive destination with natural beauty, favorable climate, landscape, culture, and tradition management.It has been recommended that beach tourism management can be achieved according to how well balanced public and private supply is with demand (Gunn, 1994;Giraldi, 2009) along with sustainable integration of economic, environmental, social and culture dimensions (Hult, 2011).In order to find ways and guidelines to make beach tourism compatible, the research applied three mains approaches: the sustainable tourism development by UNWTO (UNEP, 2005), the principle of Integrated Coastal Zone Management [ICZM] (Commission of the European Communities, 2000) integrated as an international concept and finally, the Thailand beach tourism standard.
According to the literature, beach attractiveness or a quality beach, is based on destination attributes; climate, landscape, culture, people, activities and facilities (Hu & Ritchie, 1993;Goodrich 1978).Determining beach management has to be carefully studied, surveyed, analyzed and considered (UNWTO, 1994).Then good beach tourism management will increase capacity socially and environmentally, result in safe habitats, encourage high employment and high occupancy rates, and, effective waste management, recycling and result in environment rewards (Blancas, Lozano-Oyola, González, & Caballero, 2010) as well as cultural benefits (Botero et al., 2013).Sardá et al. (2015) states that the environmental quality standards and environmental management systems have been widely used for beach managers, such as the Ecosystem-Based Management System.(Sardà, O'Higgins, Cormier, Diedrich, & Tintore, 2014) The important factors for beach management are cleanliness, safety, protection, management, and, facilities and services (Chen & Bau, 2016).Certification of beaches, for example, by eco-label or blue flag, is very important in role of protection, management, planning (Ergin, O¨z¨olcer, & Sahin, 2010) and has a positive effect (Capacci, Scorcu, & Vici, 2015).It is also the most useful for creating an image of environmental destination, increasing competitiveness, improving beach service quality and raising environment awareness (Mihalicˇ, 2000;Honey, 2002).
Approaching the sustainability of beach requires the essential components of participation, political leadership, (UNEP, 2005) planning and policy, integration, promoting accountability and quality assurance (Sardá et al., 2015).The competitiveness of the beach destination management should be planned by direct stakeholder groups, inside and outside (Sautter & Leisen, 1999).The incorporation and participation of beach managers can empower the various planning processes and outcomes (Currie, Seaton, & Wesley, 2009;Chen & Bau, 2016).The involvement and participation is a key of build local plan policy and connect to national levels.In term of beach planning, greater stakeholder participation will raise major beach issues which help beach managers make decision (Murphy & Murphy, 2004).Policies, plans, and strategic plans require continuous, well prepared processing for relatively long-term periods (UNWTO, 1994).
These will increase the quality of the beach and increase the interests of tourists (Huybers & Bennett, 2003).Thus, marketing is another important component to develop good management for the beach.It is employed to promote the area and motivate tourists such as green space interested persons, international visitors, beach lovers, and domestic tourists coming to visit and willing to pay for products and services at the destinations (Onofri & Nunes, 2013).
As beach tourism is increasing, research about beach tourism and coastal tourism has been related to area-based development (Haugland, Ness, Gronseth, & Aarstad., 2011;Green, 2012;Ioppolo, Saija, & Salomone, 2013), finding modes of activities (Anthony, 1997;Armaitienė et al., 2007), beach quality assessment (Philips & House, 2009;Capacci et al., 2015;Chen & Bau, 2016), and studying eco labels for a sustainable tourism management pattern.Some research focuses just only on one area which lacks integration for a holistic approach (Huybers & Bennett, 2003;Haugland et al., 2011).According to the study, natural resources, marketing, personnel, participation, process and environment, the main purpose was to investigate the beach tourism management components which integration of all relative aspect of sustainable tourism management and the second also aimed to implement the context to the areas which is called "The Royal Coast" with stakeholders who steer directly for beach management.

The Study Area
Thailand is a country that has very long range of coastal area.There are 17 provinces that own the land areas next to the sea in the gulf of Thailand and another 6 provinces by Andaman Sea.The Royal Coast area includes the four provinces; three of them, namely, Phetchaburi, Prachuap Khiri Khan, Chumphon situate by the gulf of Thailand and another one called Ranong is by the Andaman Sea.The Royal Coast make up one of the main eight tourism clusters designated by the Department of Tourism, Thailand, National Tourism Agenda 2012-2016.This study focuses on the area in the Gulf of Thailand beach areas; Cha-am beach in Phetchaburi, Huahin beach in Prachuap Khiri Khan, and Had Sai Ree beach in Chumphon.They are the most popular and well known beaches for domestic and international tourists.

The Research Methods
This research used mixed-methods research.The sample size was determined by Yamane's formula (1973).860 questionnaires were distributed to tourists and local residents in the sample sites with purposively sampling and only 800 were completed usefully for data analysis.The questionnaire contained 47 attributes and five-point Likert's scale (1 = Needed the Least (No need), 2 = Needed Less, 3 = Somewhat Needed, 4 = Needed a lot, 5 = Needed the most).Descriptive statistics was used to describe respondents in terms of socio-demographic by using SPSS Software Version 20.Based on the factor analysis approach, six components were labeled as tourist attraction management, marketing and promotion management, personnel management, participation management, process, plan and policy management, and environmental, cultural and education management.Confirmatory factor analysis was employed by using Analysis of Moment Structure (AMOS).Focus group qualitative research was conducted with 88 selected community representatives and policy meeting was with 29 representatives made up of scholars, private sectors persons, government officers, heads of communities, and representatives of communities to discuss the results and implementation for each beach.Content analysis was used to describe and analyze sustainable beach tourism management.

Socio-Demographic
The sample was made up to over half female, 56.87% and 43.12% male.The respondents were 31.50 % of 31-40 years of age and only small percentage of 5.37% were teenagers between 15-20 years old.Classified by marital status, 66% of the participants were married.With educational level, 70.62% held a bachelor's degree.Occupations were fairly balanced with the respect to company employees, 28.75 %, and business owners, 27.12% (see Table 1).

Factor Analysis
The six components of beach management indicated the positively value correlation ranging from 0.430 to 0.634.Bartlett's test of Sphericity Chi-Square yielded a significant result of 255.719, df = 15, p = 0.000, and the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure reached the value of 0.769, greater than 0.60 (Pallant, 2007) (Table 2).The eigen values was 2.343, greater than 1.00 of appropriateness of analysis, and total variance explained 39.05%.Reliability analysis of the scales was conducted using Cronbach's alpha values (Pallant, 2007) which were 0.728, 0.732, 0.737, 0.744, 0.755, 0.779 respectively, meaning that they had high reliability and internal consistence (De Vallis, 2011) (see Table 2).An application of CFA for each beach management component revealed that six components have value of Chi-square =10.870Chi-square/df = 1.812, df = 6, p = 0.092, There was an acceptable indication with the goodness of fit index (GFI) = 0.996 (Lorenzo-Seva, 2013), comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.993, the root mean square residual (RMR) = 0.008, and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.032.This showed that all six components were significant and relate to the empirical data.Considering factor loading, marketing and promotion management (MARMT) had the highest factor loading at 0.71, tourist attraction management (ATTMT) and participation management (PARMT) had the same factor loading at 0.56, environmental, cultural and education management (ENVMT) with 0.38, process, plan and policy management (PRCMT) at 0.36 and personnel management (PEOMT) at 0.32 respectively.From the finding, it showed that in managing the Royal Coast area, the need for marketing and promotion was the first priority.Further, participation of all stakeholders as well as the attractions management should be focused.However, environment, process, plan and policy, personnel management should not be neglected.The researcher brought all issues to discuss with stakeholders in order to create new ideas for sustainable beach tourism (see Table 3).
www.ccsen  , 2009).This could result in improved coastal attractions and increased appeal for tourist (Huybers & Benntee, 2003).In addition, situational analysis, problem differentiation, impact studies and thorough planning should be carefully considered in beach management to bring about appropriate changes and usage of beaches.Moreover, it would be useful for the beach management to specify plans and criteria.After conducting a complete strategy with all stakeholders in these three beach areas, further development and integration of coastal tourism should be implemented with community based tourism and coastal areas emphasizing the green tourism concept to reach environmental harmony and sustainable tourism for the benefit of everyone and each beach area.
The recommendations from this study can be applied for the policy makers to determine the Royal Coast Master Plan and action plan for the three coastal areas necessarily involving the participation of all the stakeholders.The community should create and monitor new attractions; such as tourism plan, activities, ecotourism, community-based tourism and work jointly with the local governments.The private sectors should also participate with local government and community, promoting and supporting products encouraging effective and safe tourism or tourism routes in nearby community.Finally, educational institutions should integrate multidisciplinary practice to study area-based tourism, appropriate tourism and sustainable tourism.

Table 1 .
Demographic profile of respondents

Table 2 .
Correlation matrix of beach management components (n = 800)