The Role of Thai Parliament in Development of Legal Mechanisms to Strengthen the Capacity of Cultural Tourism

The study entitled “An Investigation of the Parliament's Roles to Develop Mechanism, Regulations, and Laws in Attempt to Optimize Cultural Tourism Management” aims 1) to study cultural tourism and the acts pertaining to tourism business and law enforcement regarding strategies for cultural tourism management, 2) to develop mechanism, regulations, laws, policies of the government to optimize cultural tourism management, 3) to propose a guideline to optimize cultural tourism for the responsible people to make decision, and 4) to suggest the National Assembly’s role affecting the development of mechanism, regulations, laws, and policies in order to enhance cultural tourism management. The current study used a documentary research method by analyzing and synthesizing documents and researches which are involved with cultural tourism. The research tools were an in-depth interview and focus group discussion. The sampling group was comprised of public sectors, private sectors, and people. Regarding the content analysis, the following consequences will be identified below.

1. Regarding cultural tourism and the acts pertaining to the tourism business and law enforcement in line with strategies for cultural tourism management, it found that the global competition places emphasis on culture which becomes a part of their products and services to be outstanding amongst competitors. It is in line with the creative economy. Many countries are aware of cultural tourism that is generating great income for the country. Hence, culture becomes one of the national strategies. Cultural tourism is involved with four types of law: general tourism supported by organizations, tourist detention, tourism controlling and developing tourism resources, and controlling tourism business. 

2. According to the development of mechanism, regulations, laws, policies of the government to optimize cultural tourism management, it revealed the guideline to improve laws by means of the participation of local administration. When there is a change in a society, the nation needs to improve countries and laws corresponding to the social context by driving policies to optimize the competitive ability for cultural tourism. Therefore, laws are a mechanism to drive the process of legislating tourism law. The government must formulate policies for developing countries by putting emphasis on law development. Problems are posed due to the old laws that are repetitive with the new laws but the laws have never been adopted. So, the laws are not updated and attributed to hindering national development for cultural tourism. Driving cultural tourism to be successful and effective, the government should formulate the laws pertaining to cultural tourism that can be adopted in the local community, especially the local administration because they have a crucial role to supervise the local areas.

3. The guideline was proposed to optimize cultural tourism for the responsible people to make the decision. It indicates that cultural tourism management can be enhanced through the government policy that supports the organizations’ role directly and/or integrates their work to push cultural tourism management. Every organization is important by optimizing the successful cultural tourism management so that they should study factors affecting competitive advantages. There are four factors: 1) transition period from producing for the household to producing for cultural tourism business, 2) employing culture into tourism as an instrument to optimize competitive ability, 3) mechanism driving tourism by cultural innovation, and 4) positioning in the competition to optimize cultural tourism management.

4. The suggestion on the National Assembly’s role affects the development of mechanisms, regulations, laws, and policies in order to enhance cultural tourism management. The National Assembly’s role in Thailand following all Thailand’s constitutions specified that sovereignty power belongs to the Thai people and the king as a head of the state shall exercise such power through the National Assembly, the Council of Ministers and the Courts. The National Assembly, as known as the ‘Parliament’, works as a legislative branch. The roles and duties of the parliament will be carried out by elements of the mechanism of the parliament’s operation. The council is comprised of the House of Representatives’ Standing Committees and Senate’s Standing Committees who uphold the laws and their major duty is a legislative branch. They legislate laws and act, amend the act or express abrogation.

The council has to examine the administrators and follow up their administration related to the government policies through the ministries and public sectors, the tourism committees. Hence, national and international will be developed to reach the World's ranked tourism by emphasizing cultural tourism.