Designated Areas for Sustainable Tourism Administration (Public Organization)

DASTA Encourages Expats to Travel Across Provinces

          DASTA is pushing “Chiang Khan in Loei province”, one of the role model communities, to become a world-class sustainable tourist attraction. DASTA aims to promote a variety of local ways of life and cultures through several creative activities that will make visitors extend their stays which, in turn, creates more incomes to the community.

          Even though “Chiang Khan in Loei province” is a popular destination among Thai and foreign tourists, we have to admit that the number of foreigners staying in Thailand who travel to Chiang Khan is pretty small.

          Dr. Chuwit Mitrchob, deputy director of the Designated Areas for Sustainable Tourism Administration (Public Organization) or DASTA has revealed that DASTA has had a development plan for the year 2020 – 2027 to improve the designated areas in Loei province for a sustainable tourism. This plan is focused on encouraging the foreigners (expats) who are staying in the upper part of the north eastern region (Isaan) to travel more across regional provinces.
 

Dr. Chuwit Mitrchob

          The main objective of this plan is to stimulate more expats to travel to “Chiang Khan in Loei province” and other provinces in the region. Most importantly, the plan also aims to prompt the expat tourists to stay in the communities longer in order to increase spending.

          The standards of the community-based tourism (CBT) Thailand will be utilized to develop 15 communities with tourist attractions covering 9 districts of Loei province. By doing this, there will be a distribution of tourists to other small communities that are linked with the major attractions. As a result, these small communities are able to earn more incomes from the tourism and other related services.

          Chiang Khan, a major place of interest and role model tourism area under DASTA, has been listed in the Sustainable Destinations TOP 100 from the Green Destinations Foundation in the Netherlands and ITB (Internationale Tourismus-Börse) in Berlin, Germany.

          “The goal of DASTA is to improve the quality of life of people in the communities and generate more incomes to the locals through tourism. We are going to add more creative activities to 15 communities in 9 districts of Loei province and they need to comply with the standards of the community-based tourism (CBT) Thailand. We are using Chiang Khan as a role model and will extend to other connecting areas. We will focus on the province’s identities in order to make Loei become the creativity and cultural based tourist attraction,” said Dr. Chuwit.

          These 9 districts include Mueang Loei, Chiang Khan, Tha Li, Dan Sai, Phu Ruea, Na Haeo, Phu Kradueng, Phu Luang, and Nong Hin. Each district will come up with its own tourism theme that is different from one another; however, the themes will be in line with the strategic plan of year 2020 – 2027 which targets to generate accumulated tourism income of 35 billion baht by 2027. According to the current statistics, 90 percent of tourists in Loei province are Thai or persons who stay in the country. Nonetheless, with the new strategic plan to be used in 9 districts mentioned above, its objective is to increase the length of stay; for example, from 2-day-1-night stay to 5-day-4-night stay.
 

          For the traveling across provinces, the first route that has started is the pilgrimage travel route following the footsteps of Luang Pu Mun which links to Sakon Nakhon province. DASTA has also developed Sakon Nakhon to be dharma tourist attraction for Buddhists which is under a development plan in the fiscal year 2021.

          Nowadays, there is a new tourist spot in Loei province that is a “skywalk” on Pak Nam Hueng Mountain, close to the area of a big Buddha image of Phukokngew. The skywalk is located near the Mekong River in Ban Tha Dee Mee community in Pak Tom subdistrict. It is a responsibility of DASTA to work with related agencies to improve a tourism management plan for the area and make it more effective. It is expected that there will be a large number of tourists coming to the site; therefore, the management plan will come into use to reduce the number of tourists visiting the skywalk and distribute them to other connecting tourist spots and rest areas. In this way, the skywalk will not be overcrowded and the tourists will be able to enjoy a beautiful view on the skywalk happily and conveniently.