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This paper aims to explore the human resource (HR) challenges faced by hotel managers in Langkawi due to the implementation of the minimum wage order (MWO).

This study collected qualitative data from 18 managers and two owners from 19 hotels of various sizes and levels of service, including budget and boutique resorts on Langkawi Island, Malaysia. A semi-structured interview was used to ask the question “What are the challenges faced by hotel managers due to the implementation of an MWO?”

The challenges faced by the managers are: low employee productivity levels, many employees with a salary below the minimum wage rate, difficulty paying staff because of low revenue and conflicting laws and guidelines relating to the issues related to the service charge.

This study provides an initial qualitative exploration of an important current legal development bearing on hotel managers in Malaysia. It provides some initial findings from Langkawi, but the findings may not represent the attitudes of hotel managers in other parts of Malaysia.

This study contributes to HR management literature by providing an insight into challenges faced by hotel managers in a developing country. To the managers, the MWO guideline is a serious challenge, as some of their employees are not productive enough to be paid at the minimum wage rate. To address the increasing labour cost, some have turned to the employment of foreign workers, whereas others have increased their casual employee numbers. These insights may serve to guide policy-makers and hotel managers in other developing countries that are planning to introduce an MWO.

For the MWO to be effective, it is crucial for the government to develop effective guidelines for its implementation and for hotel employees amongst the Langkawi community to increase their level of productivity.

The Malaysian MWO policy was introduced in 2012. The policy affects employees’ remuneration and provides a challenge in implementation for the Malaysian hotel industry, especially in Langkawi. Although many studies on MWO implementation have focused on unemployment, this study provides the managers’ perspective on the challenges faced due to the implementation of this policy and identifies reasons why the unemployment rate for local workers may increase after the implementation of an MWO.

This paper aims to examine the initiative of low-price hotels, budget hotels, in Malaysia, to restore the financial sustainability through empowering the digital marketplace strategy in the tourism resilience sector. Giving an open accessibility to customers for achieving their venue with a low price and have a friendly service comes from initiating the digital marketplace arrangement.

This study focuses on what is the importance of the digital marketplace strategy for tourism resilience in the pandemic age and how is it important. The data come from qualitative interview from one couple, husband and wife, regarding the budget hotel operation practice in the city of Sri Iskandar, the Perak state of Malaysia.

The findings revealed the importance of initiating the strategy of digital marketplace in enabling the customers’ personalised decision towards the tourism destination they prefer based on their needs of low-cost and proper service. There are three main points, namely the importance of digital marketplace for tourism market enhancement, readiness of digital marketplace for tourism market enhancement and continued capacity to strategize digital marketplace for tourism market enhancement. The initiative to commit with applying for the resilience for tourism sustainability in the pandemic age is important to ensure they can take a small advantage continually with the frequent customers’ sustainability.

This paper is supposed to contribute in developing the resilience practice through advancing the strategy of digital marketplace in raising the tourism sector, budget hotel operators. The main occupation aims to empower resilience for tourism sustainability in the pandemic age, in order to recover the market in online platform.

In the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic, organizations now are expected to serve customers who are highly conscious of safety and sanitation. Among others, the hospitality industry is significantly and negatively influenced by this pandemic. Given the unique characteristics of services, using advanced technology is not enough to create a memorable experience without physical interaction between service providers and customers. Thus, this study aims to define the “new normal” for service customers and to explore the “new service design” for the hotel industry.

As most of the Southeast Asian countries heavily rely on the tourism industry, this study focuses on one of the emerging tourism destinations in this region, Malaysia. The data is collected through in-depth interviews with 17 potential national and international tourists.

The results suggest that considering the “new normal” for customers, there is an immediate need for the hotel industry to revamp their service design by mainly practicing disinfection and sanitation activities, re-designing overall infrastructure and introducing promotional offers.

This study is novel in its kind as it provides useful guidelines for both practitioners and academicians/researchers. Under this crucial time, very few research is conducted specifically focusing on the hotel industry and tourists’ behaviors amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The study will provide in-depth knowledge about tourists’ expectations from the hotel services, especially in their own voices.

Hotel labour costs in Malaysia are increasing. This paper aims to explore Langkawi hotel managers’ perceptions about reducing labour costs using various information and communication technology (ICT) innovations.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers from 19 budget and boutique resorts on Langkawi Island, Malaysia. Qualitative data were recorded, transcribed and content analysed using latent coding.

All hotel managers reported using some form of ICT. The purpose for ICT adoption found was to increase productivity and efficiency. A hotel’s customer mix, the need of the organization and the technology budget available influenced the outcome of technological innovation. Langkawi hotels had successfully implemented Property Management Systems (PMSs), but self-check-in/out kiosks were not seen as important as they do not meet their customers’ service expectations.

This study identifies some factors influencing uptake by hotels of technological innovations. This initial qualitative exploration of the technology adoption feasibility in Langkawi suggests that implementation to reduce labour cost is more likely for employee-operated devices rather than customer-operated devices.

This study contributes to the human resource (HR) management literature by providing insight into the reasons hotel managers introduce technology in a developing country context. Results suggests that hotels face challenges in reducing labour costs through technology. These insights may serve to guide policymakers and hotel managers in other developing countries that are planning to use technology to solve their HR issues. Luxury hotels can consider adopting ICT for back-of-the-house operations such as using a HR information system within the HR department and PMS for the hotel overall operation.

These findings can increase the Malaysians awareness of ICT importance, especially in the hotel industry.

The Malaysian national minimum wage order policy was introduced in 2012. This policy has resulted in increased labour costs and suggests a need to adopt ICT. This paper is the first to examine the viewpoints of hotel practitioners as to the viability of this strategy. Whilst many studies on the adoption of ICT in the hotel industry focus on its impact on productivity and firm’s performance using quantitative methods, this study used qualitative methods to explore hotel managers’ perceptions on its feasibility to reduce dependence on labour.

The interviews were conducted with the respondents (the founder and Manager of De Cyber Hotel). Other data were obtained through the websites of the relevant businesses.

Siti Alia and her friends established De Cyber Hotel in January 2019. It was incorporated as a Malaysian private limited company in Cyberjaya, Selangor. Siti Alia was appointed as the hotel manager and was responsible for managing the hotel’s day-to-day operations and financial matters. Being a new budget hotel, competing with other established hotels was quite difficult. De Cyber Hotel used brochures and word-of-mouth for its promotion activities and mainly depended on walk-in guests. Siti Alia knew she had to take immediate action to ensure the hotel’s survival and could no longer rely on walk-in guests. Hence, to increase the occupancy and revenue rate, on 27 March 2019, De Cyber Hotel management decided to accept an offer from ABC Digital Booking to implement a digital booking mechanism and form a partnership for at least a year. ABC Digital Booking provided an online system to enable the listing and booking of budget accommodations and partnered with hotels to provide similar guest experiences across countries. After working and collaborating for 10 months with ABC Digital Booking, Siti Alia had to decide whether De Cyber Hotel should continue its alliance with ABC Digital Booking. Hence, she had to think thoroughly and consider the advantages and disadvantages, as well as the impact of her decision on the business.

Undergraduate Integrated Case Studies, Seminar in Management, Risk Management and Corporate Governance, Management Accounting, Financial Accounting, Strategic Management. Postgraduate Organizational Behaviour, Management Accounting and Controls, Strategic Management Accounting, Marketing Management, Hospitality Strategic Management, Entrepreneurship Development.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and compare the impact of the minimum wage order from the perspectives of two different stakeholders, namely, hotel managers and employees, in the Malaysian hotel industry.

For the study, qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews from three managers and three employees from hotels in West Malaysia.

From the managers’ perspective, minimum wage implementation has resulted in managers adopting the best payment structure to reduce labour costs for the operators, deciding to reduce the service charge allocation to employees and having to deal with minimal improvement in employee productivity and motivation. In contrast, the positive impact from the managers’ perspective is lower turnover intentions and social justice for foreign workers. From the employees’ perspective, there is a rather negative impact – minimum wage policy has resulted in a minimal increase in the salary. From a positive perspective, employees said that they have experienced an improvement in living standards.

This research presents current responses from hotel participants regarding the latest wage increase impact, some six years after its implementation.

Loyalty membership is widely used as a marketing strategy to secure customer’s loyalty in many business sectors. The purpose of this paper is to focus on loyalty membership of customer in Malaysian luxury hotels, specifically, in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia by looking into the perceived value of economic, interaction and psychological needs.

Quantitative cross-sectional research was conducted to explore the feedback from customers who have loyalty membership with a luxury hotel. Surveyed data of 489 respondents were analysed using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling.

There is a significant positive relationship between the psychological needs and perceived value. The relationship between the perceived value and customer’s loyalty is also significant and positive. However, there is no significant relationship between the economic value and the interaction constructs with the perceived value. The perceived value functions as a mediator for the economic value, interaction and psychological needs in respect of customer’s loyalty.

Hotel management should prioritise addressing the elements of psychological needs to enhance the perceived value from the customers’ perspective. The strength of the perceived value indirectly stimulates customer’s loyalty to a hotel, followed by the interaction and economic value from the customer value perspective to ensure customer’s loyalty.

This research highlights on how customers can be secured by a luxury hotel chain through a loyalty membership strategy. The knowledge generated from this research is expected to provide insights to practitioners on how to enhance their loyalty membership marketing strategy.

This paper aims to investigate the economic impacts of the current coronavirus disease, which is globally known as (COVID-19) pandemic, on small businesses in the tourism and hospitality industry, including food and beverages (F&B) industries in Malaysia during and after the enforcement of the Movement Control Order (MCO) and conditional (CMCO) with the emergence of new business models.

In this paper, the implemented methodology involved a secondary qualitative research design based mainly on the existing literature, the World Health Organisation (WHO) reports, the government’s documents, in addition to online sources and observations regarding local business experiences.

The findings revealed that implementing effective strategies of recovery, shaping resilience solutions and supporting policies such as the National Recovery Plan, which is backed by the government played a pivotal role in avoiding the turndown of small businesses.

This critical review is submitted as an original research paper, which aims to provide important perspectives regarding the COVID-19 pandemic impacts on the tourism and hospitality industry in Malaysia. This paper serves as a scholarly platform for further in-depth studies on various resilience solutions of small businesses.

While there was heightened awareness on the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution (IR 4.0) prior to COVID-19, studies have shown that the adoption of these advanced technologies (e.g. Big Data, robotics, Internet of Things, etc.) continues to remain low across global industries. This qualitative study sought to explore the reasons for the low rate of adoption of these technologies and appropriate measures to enhance their adoption at hotels, through the lens of hotel executives.

Based on interpretivist's ideals, this study follows a case study design and adopts a qualitative method of enquiry. The heterogenous purposive sampling technique was employed to gather data for the study, using semi-structured interviews.

Grounded on the technology-organisation-environment (TOE) framework, the thematic analysis revealed technology, organisation and environment-related reasons for the low rate of IR 4.0 technologies adoption at hotels in Malaysia. Also, the study uncovered some interesting measures that will enhance the adoption of these advanced technologies at hotels.

This study unearths technology, organisation and environment-related reasons for low adoption, and measures to enhance the adoption of IR 4.0 technologies in hotels. This study also enlightens hotel owners and technology providers about practical issues that will ensure the successful adoption of such technologies to enhance hotel business. In line with SDG 9, this study also seeks to promote sustainable innovation in the hospitality industry. Practical and theoretical implications have also been discussed in this study.

This study is the first attempt to analyze the effectiveness of recent two major tax policies, the reductions in personal and corporate income taxes and a rise in indirect tax and their combine, under both balanced and unbalanced budget conditions, on the economy and social aspects of Malaysia.

This study uses a computable general equilibrium model to investigate the impacts of all simulation scenarios on the key macro and micro indicators. Further, based on the 2012 Malaysia Household Income and Expenditure Survey, it uses a micro-data with a significant number of households (over 56,000 individuals) to analyze the impacts of tax policies on poverty and income inequality of Malaysian.

Simulation results show that, under the balanced budget condition, personal and corporate income tax reductions increase economic growth, household consumption, and investment, while the rise in indirect tax has adverse impacts on these variables. However, in the unbalanced budget condition, all tax policies, except indirect tax policy, reduce real GDP and investment in the economy and the indirect tax policy has insignificant impacts on all indicators. All policy reforms reallocate resources, especially labor, in the economy. In both budget conditions, the reductions in corporate and personal income taxes, particularly the corporate income tax, decrease poverty level of Malaysian households. Results also indicate that both tax policies are unable to influence income inequality in Malaysia.

This study recommends that the government can increase its revenue by increasing indirect taxes as it does not have any impact on household welfare. In order to increase government revenues, initial increases in personal and corporate income taxes are suggested as they may have small negative impacts on the economy and welfare of households.

One of the significant features of this paper is that it examines both expansionary and contractionary fiscal policies in a country that government budget depends on oil exports. Since the literature on this subject is limited, particularly in the Malaysian context, the authors used Malaysia as a case to show how tax reform policies affect the economy and poverty level of such countries. Distinguishing the Malaysian households into 10 deciles and analyzing the distributional impacts of tax policies on these categories are the most significant contributions of this study.