Guidelines for Small Hotel Competitive Advantages of Southern Andaman Coast Thailand

Abstract

The objectives of this research are 1) to study current problems of small hotel businesses in the Andaman coast of southern region, Thailand, and analyze their competitive advantage approaches, 2) to study approaches affecting competitive advantages of small hotel businesses in the Andaman coast of southern region.This research is a qualitative research using literature review and interviews of experts, relevant academics and 10 business owners, then the content was analyzed and classified  into a structure of factors.

            According to the findings,  (1) The problems of small hotels in the southern Andaman coast of Thailand concern about the problem in human resource management in which  a fixed number of employees was prevalent with unequal assignments in each period; the financial problem with high costs but unstable income; the sales promotion problem  not yet communicated to consumers as  per the entrepreneurs’ goal  setting; consumers’ loyalty problem; and the lack of activities to build hotel loyalty to the customers. (2) There are four ways to create competitive advantages for small hotels in Andaman coast of southern region, Thailand as follows: (1) management approach, (2) cost approach, (3) marketing, and (4) guidelines for generating customer loyalty