Hotel and Resorts in Myanmar

Hotel and Resort In Myanmar:

Myanmar Customers’ Perspective on

Hotel and Resorts Trends

Ye Lwin Hein, Soe Min Htut, Zin Thu Htet

UTCC Yangon

Introduction

        Myanmar has experienced unprecedented growth in tourist arrivals since 2010 when visitor restrictions were eased. As the country opened up, the businesses have changed from traditional family owned businesses to international cooperate businesses. Since Myanmar liberalized its economy in 2011, the country has experienced a surge of foreign direct investment and visiting tourists. Hospitality and Tourism sector is the biggest sector that contributes a lot of income to the country economy. The hospitality and tourism sector is often described as a 'people industry'.

Service quality has been recognized as a key factor in differentiating service products. Customer satisfaction can be secured through high-quality products and services  highlighted that the concept of service should be approached from the customer's point of view, since it was his/her perception of the outcome that constituted the service. Customers may have different values and different grounds for assessment and, most of the time; they may perceive the same service in different ways.

In the hotel industry, most researchers are interested in maximizing customer satisfaction; satisfied customers tend to return and make the profit to hotel. For this reason, it is important to understand how customer expectation is formed in order to identify the factors of service satisfaction. Different customers have different expectations, based on their knowledge of a product or service. This can be implied that a customer may estimate what the service performance will be or may think what the performance ought to be. If the service performance meets or exceeds customers& expectation, the customers will be satisfied. On the other hand, customers are more likely to be dissatisfied if the service performance is less than what they have expected. As mentioned earlier, a greater number of satisfied customers will make the hotel business more successful and more profitable.

To fulfill customer satisfactions, we need to understand their natures and perspectives. Their perspectives can be varied according to different situations and different factors such as political, economic, social, technology, legal factors, environmental. Their perspectives on these factors allow us to analyze the important factors in improving the hotel and resorts industry.

Rationale

        As Myanmar has opened up after many restrictions by the military government, many business sectors have started to developed. Many foreign investors have been looking for investments. Hotels and resorts sector has played an important role for many investors. Although many investments and international hotels and resorts have come in, current situations of the hotel and resorts standards have not been up to international standards or not satisfied enough for customers. That’s why; we would like to find out which areas or sectors are not being satisfied for customers from their perspectives.

Objectives of the study

1. To analyze the current situations and customers perspectives on hotels and resorts

2. To propose practical recommendations for the improvements of hotel and resorts in Myanmar according to current customers’ perspective

Literature Review

A consumer’s perspective is influenced by cultural, social, personal and psychological factors. Most of these factors are uncontrollable and beyond the hands of marketers but they have to be considered while trying to understand the complex behavior of the consumers. Consumer is the study “of the processes involved when individuals or groups select, purchase, use, or dispose of products, services, ideas, or experiences to satisfy needs and desires” (Solomon 1995, 7).

 Political approaches can influence the number of visitors, both tourist and business travellers’ visits to our country. As we have reached a new democracy in our country, people are more interested and we need to make sure that our country is in safe place to travel. Due to recent Myanmar Muslim religious acts and some terrorism in some part of Myanmar, we have seen some negative comments and impacts on such issues.

Economic is certain that our country has an economic growth in recent years. If the economy can maintain a stable condition, there will be more growth in tourism industry and there will be more investment in hotel industry. The inflation rates are still not stable and people are still worry about it.

A wide range of Social factors are impacting on Myanmar hotel industry as there are emerging trends in consumer lifestyle, demographic variables, impact of role models in consumer decision making and growth rate of population. As there are increasing consumers from all around the world mostly from Asian countries such as Thailand, Japan, China and also from European countries. As we have various ethnic groups in Myanmar, there are changes in the trends of customer demands and we have to change according to their needs.

As there is influx of great technology in our economy we need to attain all great sources to increase the technological infrastructure of Hotels in Myanmar. Furthermore, hotel bookings have become very sophisticated than ever before. Anyone can book a hotel room in a simple step with the help of internet. We need to innovate in such media and software in our booking system and online or mobile payment systems.

We need to setup laws that are more legit and firm for our labors. We used to have weak labor laws in our country. We also need to make sure that our new activities in beach resort are legit with country and state laws. As there will be sea sports, we need to make our safety standards as high as possible to ensure that the customers will feel safe.

Environmental factors are crucial for hotel industry as hotels usually emit carbon and many waste as they impact global warming and pollution. We have to control our waste management effectively. The resorts in beaches have to be environmental friendly to maintain the beach as beautiful as it is and to make a healthy contribution to the community. We will be able to maintain a good reputation amongst other countries if we can control our environment cleanly.

Definitions

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A PESTEL analysis is a framework or tool used by marketers to analyse and monitor the macro-environmental (external marketing environment) factors that have an impact on an organisation.^[1]