THE INEQUALITY OF TOURISM REVENUES IN THAILAND: CITY OR CONGLOMERATION

The rapid growth in tourism sector since the early of 2010s generate a significance revenue for Thai economy. In the views of inequality, tourism revenue concentrated only in Bangkok (capital city) and major cities. In fact, there are many cities which do not enjoy with the expansion in tourism sector. Then, this paper aims to evaluate the degree of inequality of tourism revenue by employ the Gini coefficient and Atkinson index by city and conglomeration (Thailand's hidden gems and tourism cluster). On city level, the results explore the high inequality of tourism income distribution. However, the conglomeration, Thailand hidden gems and tourism cluster, can improve the degree of inequality. This paper concluded that the inequality of tourism revenue is nature and obliterated especially in city level. Following the finding, the policy to enhance the declining of the inequality of tourism revenue should be (1) implemented as the conglomeration city in order to reduce the variation between cities, (2) introduced the unseen destination especially in low tourism revenue city, (3) promoted the new tourism routes to foreign visitors and (4) supported the tourism value chain to push a strong linkage with local and neighbor cities.