Development of Health Tourism Destinations of Thai Traditional Massage and Enhancing Service Standards in the Thung Khru Community, Bangkok

Abstract

This research aims to assess risks and factors associated with health tourism following the COVID-19 pandemic and to develop Thai massage-based health tourism destinations in the Wat Phutthabucha Community, Thung Khru District. Furthermore, it seeks to improve skills of massage therapists in the community to comply with the SHA Plus health service standards. The findings show that the risks and COVID-19-related factors affecting health tourism contributed to establishing criteria for assessing health tourism standards. Then the entrepreneurs in the Wat Phutthabucha community prepared to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak, assessing opportunities and impact of risks. They applied their risk experiences during the previous pandemics and related factors to be guidelines for business operations, with risks being analyzed. Moreover, the massage therapy entrepreneurs in the community realized the projected risk of new COVID-19 variant outbreaks, which could potentially spread widely. Due to their constant experience with the COVID-19 pandemic, they could anticipate the subsequent impacts on their businesses. They could seek alternatives for safe work procedures and prioritize risks after understanding the severity level of the spread. Regarding developing health tourism destinations of Thai traditional massage in the Wat Phutthabucha Community, Thung Khru District, three Thai traditional massage therapy businesses were involved in the training workshop, namely Kacha Health Massage, Phutthabucha Health Massage, and Phutthabucha Massage. This workshop aimed to develop massage skills of community members to meet the health massage service standards SHA Plus. The target participants of the workshop included Thai traditional massage entrepreneurs, elderly people, and unemployed housewives in Thung Khru District. This workshop could improve the readiness and capability of three health tourism destinations of Thai traditional massage through training community members. Additionally, the researchers developed a one-day health tourism route. We also conducted an analysis to create a tourism route map using augmented reality (AR) technology, capable of presenting travel routes covering the entire area.