Introduction
The Asian tourism and hospitality industry has continued to grow tremendously. Currently, the sector contributes significantly to the region’s GDP. Despite global threats such as terrorism and economic depression, the sector has continued to bolster impressive results.
However, with the growing competition from other countries such as South Africa, USA, and China, many factors need to be considered to gain a competitive edge. Traditionally, the region’s economy has been, for years, propelled by proceeds from oil and petroleum resources. However, investment in the tourism industry has diversified the region’s economic pillars.
This paper explores hospitality service trends in the region, analyses their impacts, and establishes the factors that influence the industry especially in Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand and Singapore.
Hospitality Service Trends
Many sectors of the economy have been struggling to find their footage and to get back to profitability after the 2008/2009 economic crisis. However, the Asian tourism industry was hardly affected. In fact, the industry’s profitability has continued to increase annually.
The industry’s core services such as restaurants, luxury transports, cruise ships, lodgings, theme parks, and event planning have continued to attract more tourists; both local and international. Currently, many factors affect Asian tourism industry both positively and negatively.
The factors include technological advancements, globalization, rule of law, changing lifestyles, and socio-demographic factors. Whereas these factors have significant effects on small towns, there effects on large cities such as Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand and Singapore have been minimal.
According to Hotel Management Asia (2012), “Lodging markets in the Asia Pacific region will continue performing well through 2012 driven by strong performance in key cities.” Singapore, for instance, is expected to record a growth of 9.6%. This growth is attributed to its well-developed gaming services.
Gaming is a critical aspect of the hotel industry especially in the current century where most workers, families, and businesspersons who want a break from their daily tight schedules, use hotels as a way of relaxation. Gaming has also played a role towards healthy social lives (Ferguson, 2012). Due to increasingly declining household sizes, families have had a better part of their income as discretion income.
This extra income is often diverted to recreation facilities and leisure, thereby breaking the home setting monotony. Ecotourists enormously benefit from the incorporation of gaming in the industry. They get the opportunity to enjoy different cultures and site seeing.
Asia also boasts great food services that have attracted and retained many international tourists. According to Choo (1997), Hong Kong has some of the best dishes in the world. Food is a basic need in any setting where accommodation is provided. The hotel industry is not any different. Hotels entertain different categories of customers.
This means different types of food ranging from drinks, for those in need of refreshments, complete meals for those staying at the hotels and guest reception meals, for those holding functions at the hotel. The quality of the food served at any given hotel is enough marketing.
This is because customers demand high quality food in terms of cleanliness, taste, level of cooking, cleanliness of those who serve it, and reliability of the hotel, that is, you get any type of food you want, whenever you want it.
Thailand, in its attempts to remain the most preferred tourist destination in Asia, has diversified its services, and enhanced its accommodation services greatly. Currently, it offers the highest number of hotel services. These have been very vital to hotel customers, to carry on their activities with ease.
Accommodation, catering, tourism services, restaurants, meetings and events planning, massage, and gymnastic are among the services offered. Accommodation service has greatly benefited customers who are traveling in new places away from their homes.
These include families on recreation trips away from their residential places, workers on official missions far from their normal working locations, and international tourists in a foreign country. While these customers reside in the hotel, they are offered great meals by the hotel’s catering service. This saves them the trouble of looking for food in a foreign environment.
Thailand’s hotels have their own facilities for taking tourists around on their daily business for the entire time agreed. With the modern advancements, most events and meetings are held in the hotels, making the industry step up in its service delivery to the extent of planning for their customers such activities. Thailand’s improved communication network and transportation services have also promoted tourism (Kontogeorgopoulos, 2008).
In Macau, the situation is different and quite complex. Since the liberalization of its hospitality industry in 2004, many investors have moved in to invest in the industry.
However, the increased demand for personnel to help run the newly established facilities cannot be satisfied. This is due to strict measures put in place by the government that hinder cross border labor transfer (Lei, 2011). The country’s hospitality services are also affected by underdeveloped infrastructural facilities.
In conclusion, the growth of Asian Tigers’ hospitality is not in doubt. Slowly, but surely, the sector has become key to the region’s economic prosperity.
As shown in the discussion, the growth of this sector has been fueled by various factors such as diversification of services, service excellence, infrastructure development, and relatively low cost of life as compared to other destinations. Without any major shortfalls, Hong Kong, Thailand, Macau, and Singapore could dominate Asian hospitality market for a long time.
References
Choo, K. (1997). Uncertain Outlook. ABA Journal, 83(1), 101-109.
Ferguson, B. (2012). Games for Wellness—Impacting the Lives of Employees and the Profits of Employers. Games for health journal, 1(3), 177-179.
Hotel Management Asia. (2012, February 1). 2012 hospitality trends – an overview | Hotel Management Asia. Asia’s definitive resource for hospitality professionals | Hotel Management Asia. Web.
Kontogeorgopoulos, N. (2008). Tourism in Thailand: Patterns, trends and limitations. Cognizant Communication Corporation, 2(1), 225-238.
Lei, L. (2011). The challenges of the labor shortage in Macau’s hotel industry. Las Vegas: University of Nevada.