Aspects of Thai tourism marketing as seen by tourism directors, advertising directors and five national groups of tourists

The problem. This study first examined the extent to which various types of touristic advertising content were seen by tourism directors and by advertising directors as having worldwide appeal or requiring local tailoring for different target markets. It also addressed the extent to which each type of content was believed by these groups to be an important feature of Thailand's touristic advertising as a whole. Additionally, the study contrasted the views of these tourism directors and advertising agency directors with the views of 618 tourists in Thailand, divided into five language groups.; Method. Likert-scale researcher-designed instruments were used. Statistical analysis relied on one-way analysis of variance, Student's t-tests, Spearman's Rho, and Kendall's Coefficient of Concordance.; Results. The combined group of tourism directors and advertising directors perceived nine types of advertising content as having worldwide appeal and thus justifying a common marketing approach. Only one content area showed a difference in perception for the two groups.; Overall, there was a strong degree of agreement between tourism directors and advertising directors in terms of the perceived importance of 42 areas of advertising content. For only six areas were there significant differences between the two groups.; When the tourist group was added, the degree of overall agreement was substantially reduced. The tourists disagreed significantly with the tourism directors and the advertising directors in terms of a number of advertising factors that affected their decisions to visit Thailand.; These findings led to a categorization of types of advertising into those that might safely be treated by using a "global" marketing approach, and another category of advertising content types that would be more likely to be effective if they were "tailored" to fit specific target markets. A variety of recommendations were made, based on the areas where tourists disagreed with the professional groups concerning the appeal of various kinds of advertising content.