The Operational Efficiencies of the Hotel and Guesthouse Business in Thailand

This paper aims to assess the operational efficiencies and technology gaps in hotel and guesthouse business in Thailand. The study classified the hotels and guesthouse into five groups with distinctive levels of operational technologies. A meta-frontier analysis is applied to evaluate the efficiency scores of 1,799 samples of hotels and guesthouses in year 2007. It is analyzed within the same groups and between groups. The results show that the international chain or foreign investment hotels had the highest efficiency scores. The mean operation efficiencies in motel group had the lowest efficiency scores. In addition, the empirical results reveal that in case of different operational technologies, using pool frontier and group frontier approaches would provide an over-estimation of the efficiency scores. This study suggests different policies and technologies should be used to improve the operational efficiencies in hotel and guesthouse business. Sharing and transferring the operations knowledge within the group and among the groups would help develop the operational technologies and increase the efficiencies for the whole industry.