Tourism planning concept for Ko Samui, Thailand: A sustainable environment development approach

Natural resources are an essential component of tourism development. Therefore, the sustainable development approach is recommended for tourism planning. The sustainable development concept recognizes that economic, environmental and sociocultural issues are equally important and need to be integrated into the planning process in order to provide long-term utilization for tourism development. Environmental analysis plays an important role in planning for tourist destinations. In order to improve this complex tourism planning process, the GIS is recommended. An environmental analysis which utilizes GIS was developed based on the overlay method. This developed environmental analysis method was used for supporting the sustainable environment development approach.;This study demonstrates the simplest procedures in the sustainable environment development approach to tourism planning. Ko Samui, a small tourist island in the southern part of Thailand was selected as a study area. Two parts of the sustainable environment development approach, impact identification and establishment of guidelines for development to minimize the identified impacts, are defined. Four potential impacts are suggested in this study: the potential for erosion, runoff, ground water contamination, and re-vegetation. For identification of the potential for erosion, the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) was used while the SCS TR-55 was used to identify the potential for runoff. The rating scale with overlay method was used to identify potential for re-vegetation and ground water contamination. A process diagram of each impact was constructed for analysis. Then guidelines for development in each impact zone were created.;The sustainable environment development approach was applied to Ko Samui. All the necessary data were collected and analyzed through the developed process diagrams. The guidelines for development to minimize environmental impacts on Ko Samui were developed, the sustainable tourism planning concept was concluded. Finally, it is recommended that further research focus on economic and sociocultural as well as implementation and monitoring techniques.