Situation and Strategy of Storytelling for Destination Brand Communication of The Historic City of Ayutthaya, Thailand

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to study the situations and strategies of storytelling for Destination Brand Communication of The Historic City of Ayutthaya, Thailand. It is qualitative research using in-depth interviews together with documents analysis, and non-participant observations. The data were analyzed strategically with SWOT Analysis and TOWS Matrix. The key informants were twenty-one experts using the purposive sampling method and a semi-structured in-depth interview covering the content of the situations and strategies of storytelling to communicate the destination brand of the Historic City of Ayutthaya, Thailand. The results found that the situations and strategies of storytelling to communicate the destination brand of the Historic City of Ayutthaya, Thailand consists of 1) storytelling with four main themes as follows: 1. Historical Stories, 2. Traditional stories, 3. Personal experience stories, and 4. Created stories. 2) Needs and storytelling expectations consist of 1. Creative storytelling patterns, 2. Use of various storytelling tools, 3. Storytelling through various digital media, 4. Planning of storytelling presentations to promote concrete tourism marketing, 5. Cooperation of government and private sectors in storytelling to promote tourism marketing. The most proactive strategies should be pushed as quickly as possible, for example, 1) Storytelling strategies in the historic city of Ayutthaya identity to match the current tourist behavior, 2) Strategies for promoting story-sharing experiences and self-guided travel through social media, 3) Strategies for developing and increasing the capacity of personnel of digital marketing agencies for tourism, 4) Strategies for promoting the cooperation of the concrete tourism agencies; 5) Strategies for promoting the development of tourism component standards.