Creating Creative Tourism Toolkit
Message from
Designated Areas for Sustainable Tourism Administration
(Public Organization), Thailand
DASTA is a public organization established to achieve sustainable tourism development in Thailand by
focusing on a community-based approach. DASTA is committed to the mission by allocating resources
and responsibilities to ensure that ‘tourism is managed by communities for communities’.
Creative tourism is one of the important strategies in achieving sustainable tourism by engaging
local communities. DASTA is dedicated to ‘Value Creation’ based on Thai identity, way of life, local folk
wisdom, arts, culture, and history. By adding creativity to the local assets, travelers can engage new
experiences through hands-on, community-based activities and learn the unique character of the local
people and sense of place. Creative tourism helps building communities stronger and make local people
more self-reliant, which are the keys to the creation of true sustainable tourism.
DASTA is responsible in developing six designated areas for sustainable tourism in Thailand. All the
initiatives, namely community-based tourism, creative tourism, low carbon tourism and other forms of
tourism, are designed to be learning cases; thus, best practices and toolkits reflected from the execution
are systematically formulated from experiential and experimental assignments. DASTA is hoping that
this toolkit along with learning cases would be beneficial for creative tourism development in other
contexts. Together, we can achieve the sustainable tourism development for all.
