The Creation of Cultural Tourism Assessing for Lamphun Old City

Abstract

This article is a presentation “A guideline for assessing the potential of the area” for the development of cultural tourism. The aim is to prepare necessary tools for assessing the old Lamphun area, and to upgrading its religious tourism to cultural tourism.  By creating a guideline for analyzing the potential of the area, the paper is based on the analysis of the basic 5As spatial potential assessment concept, coupled with the market capability of the area, then synthesizing with the cultural tourism approach. The paper proposes a guideline for assessing the area for cultural tourism within 3 categories: 1) Cultural resource 2) Tourism supporting and 3) Tourism making. The first group is the “core value”, which is cultural related products of the place that can create “cultural experience” to tourists. The second group is “Supporting Products” or structures that can creating “tourism experience” to tourists. The third group refers to factors that enable to turn a place into a tourist destination and importantly to turn target customers into cultural tourists.