Publication Details
Abstract
The tourism and hospitality industry plays an increasingly important role in economic development, and within this sector family guest houses represent a significant form of accommodation that directly supports tourism growth and regional development. A variety of external and internal factors shape the conception of family guest houses: political environment, country economic situation, tourism infrastructure, market needs, personnel qualification, service level, pricing policy, labor efficiency, and market activities. Although family guest houses play an essential role in the tourism destination, their specific development and the mechanism by which various factors interact (especially combining macro and micro levels of the analysis) remain understudied, with the focus to date concentrated mainly on tourism enterprises and the large hotels. Abstract Purpose This study targets to reveal the external and internal factors affecting family guest houses growth and provide practical recommendations to ensure their validity and competitiveness. The analysis shows that external factors like economic conditions, infrastructure development, tourist flows and market environment interacting with internal factors like staff qualifications, quality of service, the cost of goods supplied, the price of services and advertisement collectively influence the performance of family guest houses. This study meets this need by presenting a systematic classification and a synthesis of measurable and non-measurable factors that influence family guest houses, which is missing from the tourism literature. These results inform a theoretical framework and serve as an evidence-base on which managers and policymakers can base targeted services improvement strategies contributing to better resource allocation, marketing and sustainability of family guest houses in the tourism and hospitality sector.