The nature and challenges of guest house business in the Maldives: An exploratory study

Abstract

The Maldives has long been perceived as an exclusive and expensive travel destination. However, the political changes have introduced another accommodation option, the guest house. This has provided an opportunity for many locally owned guest house owners to offer accommodation service at an affordable rate. The purpose of this study was to explore the nature of business and the challenges faced by the guest house business in the Maldives. The data were derived from in-depth interviews with nine key informants. The thematic analysis qualitative method was employed in identifying informants’ view of the current guest house business. A total of six themes (i.e. product image, service quality, marketing channel, infrastructure, competition, policies, laws and regulations) were identified. The contribution of the paper lies in growing knowledge within the research niche of guest houses in the Maldives and internationally. Implications of the factors that contribute to successful guest house operations, including customer-oriented and service quality are recommended based on the findings. These recommendations can benefit guest house managers in developing and managing their guest house business. Future research may be expanded to view differences in perception among different stakeholders. Such findings could provide insights into what is missing and what topics require further investigation in the future.

Comparative Study of the Performance of Selected Local Tourism Business Operations in the Economy of Kisumu/Kenya: A Multivariate Analysis of Variance and Discriminant Analysis

“…The key insights were that a large proportion of private accommodation users were well educated and most of them depended on friends and relatives for information. Also, visitors who stayed longer in private accommodation spent more on food than those who stayed in camps and tourist establishments -a finding which was later confirmed by Chia and Muiz (2020). It was concluded that private accommodation receives substantial tourist income which creates direct, indirect and induced effect in destination economy.…”

“…Various researchers studied economic contribution of guest house from different perspectives but had mixed findings on the constraints faced and role played by guest houses in the local economy. An exploratory study done by Chia and Muiz (2020) aimed at revealing the nature of the business and challenges faced by guest house business in Meldives found out that though guest houses are important to tourist market and local economy, but their operations are constrained by a number of challenges. For instance, the limitations of budget make guest houses to mostly rely on online agents for promotion (Chia & Muiz 2020).…”

“…An exploratory study done by Chia and Muiz (2020) aimed at revealing the nature of the business and challenges faced by guest house business in Meldives found out that though guest houses are important to tourist market and local economy, but their operations are constrained by a number of challenges. For instance, the limitations of budget make guest houses to mostly rely on online agents for promotion (Chia & Muiz 2020). Further, the study found out that competition, state of infrastructure affected guest and lack of policies and regulation for controlling tourism development affected guest house businesses in Maldives (Chia & Muiz, 2020;Magombo, Rogerson & Rogerson 2017).…”

“…For instance, the limitations of budget make guest houses to mostly rely on online agents for promotion (Chia & Muiz 2020). Further, the study found out that competition, state of infrastructure affected guest and lack of policies and regulation for controlling tourism development affected guest house businesses in Maldives (Chia & Muiz, 2020;Magombo, Rogerson & Rogerson 2017). Despite the foregoing constraints, guest house offer personalized services, greater quietude and more opportunity to interact with local people (Henning 2007).…”

“…Also, operating guest house not only provides a source of income to local people and improve their quality of life but also enhance local economic development and reduce rural to urban migration (Zhao 2019). Likewise, different types of accommodation facilities portrayed different images regarding affordability and experience (Chia & Muiz 2020) Muiz (2020), Portolan (2012) had investigated the impact of accommodation on economic development of tourist destination in Dubrovnik -Neretva County. The aim of the study was to estimate the importance of private accommodation in the development of tourist destination on regional level.…”