THE STRATEGIES FOR ENHANCING TOURISM SMES? COMPETITIVENESS:THE CHALLENGES FACING THAILAND TOURISM SECTOR UNDER THE AEC?S LIBERALIZED TRADE IN SERVICES

The AEC?s liberalization of trade in services brings ample opportunities and higher competition. This paper is a documentary research, adopting a meta-analysis method and narrative approach, focusing on tourism SMEs? roles, their weakness, strength, threat, opportunities, and challenges. The findings revealed the strength of Thailand?s rich tourism resources, good tourism infrastructures, and strong tourism brand, which depended on the government?s management. Tourism SMEs? strength was their entrepreneurship and warm hospitality, and the weakness was the lack of the access to finance and technology, poor human capital development, managerial skills, value creation and innovation capability. A key challenge was the higher competition. Recommendations are that proactive strategies, based on the tourism competitiveness factors, should be adopted with sustainability principles to ensure no present and future socio-economic, political and environmental impacts on local communities and the overall national tourism. The personnel having AEC and tourism knowledge, and ICT well-trained staffs are also required and must be empowered for enhancing tourism SMEs? competitiveness.