Differences and Determinant Factors of Travel mode selection: An empirical study of FIT and GPT tourists from Phuket

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to understand the characteristics of two different types of tourists who arrived Phuket to travel independently (FIT) and tourist who arrived Phuket with group package tour program. Secondly, due to the impact of COVID-19 on Thailand's tourism industry, there will be not too many tourists with group visiting Thailand in recent years. Thus, the analysis focuses on the characteristics of independent tourists. However, considering the future development of Phuket's tourism industry, in-depth research has been carried out on the satisfaction of different types of two kinds of tourists, and development and improvement have been made based on some attributes that will affect their satisfaction. This paper aims to identify the importance factors prior to their trip and their satisfaction after the trip. This study sampled 250 international tourists from China, Russia, the United States, and other countries who had completed their trip in Phuket through the survey at the airport in early 2020. With multiple inference statistics analysis tools, for example, t-test, Probit model, we found that FIT tourists are younger than a group packaged tour’s tourists. In addition, FIT tourists have higher education background than GPT tourists, and they generally had previous outbound experience, while majority of GPT tourists who marked this presence trip during this survey as their first outbound trip. Tourist’s perception of safety factors and experience; for example, transportation safety, beach safety, and foods experience opportunities were found as important factor for tourist to distinguish their decision either to select FIT or GPT mode of travel to Phuket. Finally, tourists’ overall satisfaction with Phuket are relatively high and no significant disparity between FIT and GPT were found; however, it should be clearly noted that both types of travelers had different preference, tourist who travel with complete package tour preferred attraction based; for example, temple, shopping attraction. While FIT tourists’ preference relatively curved toward foods experience. Hence, both local and tourism authority should design and develop their tourism product and service in accordance to the preference of their major type of tourist’s arrival.