Homestay Enterpreneurs—Drivers and Barriers

Abstract

Malaysia is one of the fastest growing countries in Asia. Nowadays, Malaysia is well known as eco-tourism as it is endowed with rich natural heritage, and state of Johor has been ranked as third in tourism destinations after Kuala Lmur and Penang. The growth of Johor's tourism industry has caused the high demand for homestay tourism product. Currently, there are 140 homestay with 227 villages throughout Malaysia with total of 3,264 houses offering 4,463 rooms until June 2009. This numbers is forecasted to be increased in the future. The focus of this paper was to identifv the drivers factors that encourage the growing numbers of homestay entrepreneur particularly in the state of Johor, as well as the barriers that constraint them in managing homestav business. The findings of this paper were based on the questionnaires and series of interviews conducted along the research process. Ihe respondents participated in this study were homestay entrepreneurs including homcstay coordinators and homestay operators. The findings identified that thc homestay entrepreneurs in the State of Johore were highly motivated by internal factors to involve in the homestay business, even though they have facing many challenges and problems in managing the homestay business. This results will be benefitted to the homestay entrepreneurs to improve and enhancing the homestay business in future.