Water scarcity is one of the main problems for water resources management underpinning various Thailand’s socio-economic development activities. In the past, expert judgment and scientific knowledge were conventional ways for Thai government to solve the problem. However, this approach is, to some extent, not optimal because proposed solutions may not gain acceptance from stakeholders resulting in conflicts during implementation. The participatory approach can thus help to develop more favorable water management strategies by including stakeholders’ views in identification and selection of response measures. This study uses water scarcity in tourism city as a case study to show the benefit of inclusion of participatory processes. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to prioritize the most preferable choices of response. The result reveals that different stakeholder groups suggest a number of similar options while some solutions are preferred by one group but not by the others. This implies that agreeable options should be the first priority for implementation while disagree solutions may need further enabling factors to make them acceptable. Therefore, local information obtained by participatory approach is an indispensable input to identify better strategies, leading to successful water management that well respond to the local contexts.

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