LETTERS: The Malaysian Homestay Experience Programme (MHEP) was established in 1995 by the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture Malaysia (MOTAC) under the Rural Tourism Master Plan 2002 and opened to all rural villages in Peninsular Malaysia and North Borneo.
It aims to encourage rural community participation in the tourism sector, enhance their income in non-agricultural sectors, and provide rural villages, mainly the Malay Kampung, with new and unique hospitality.
In this programme, the rural community participates as the homestay committee members, host families, cultural performers, guides, and cooks.
Tourists stay with the host families at their houses and experience village daily lifestyles with the family and surrounding community.
MOTAC defines this as a programme where tourists stay with a host family, who is registered with MOTAC, interact with the host family, and experience the daily lifestyle, and economic, community and cultural activities in the village.
Today, there are 223 clusters of homestay programmes established by 372 villages in both Peninsular Malaysia and North Borneo, participated by 4,313 host families, to provide 6,124 rooms for the tourists.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, this programme was evaluated by MOTAC as the most successful homestay product as an alternative to existing accommodations such as hotels and resorts and contributing to the preservation of villagers' traditional lifestyle tradition and culture.
Motivation for the tourists, mainly the non-Malays and foreign tourists, to participate in this programme is believed to derive from the interest to experience living in the Malay Kampung and stay in the traditional Malay houses.
Nevertheless, like other tourism products, Malaysia Homestay Experience Programme has also been affected by Covid-19.
MOTAC recorded a declining number of tourists visiting homestays since 2020, which has become the factor of losing incomes for the participating villagers.
Host families in this programme have stopped receiving tourists to their houses, performers and cooks have lost their partial incomes, and homestay activity centres have been left empty and abandoned.
About 458,899 foreign and domestic tourists have visited the homestays, and almost RM30 million have been generated in 2019; however, only 49,622 tourists (primarily domestic) have visited homestays, and RM4.6 million generated in 2021.
The recovery of the homestay programme during the post-pandemic can be overshadowed by other recovery projects on major industries of hotels and resorts at significant tourists destinations such as the island and city centre, compared with villages in the rural area.
Nevertheless, a new strategy is needed to attract more tourists to visit the homestays, regenerate rural villagers' income, and revitalise this programme to be as important as the other major tourism industries.
A new Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) can be set up to use the traditional Malay house as the accommodation, and existing guidelines on tourists' safety and security can be revised to suit the Post- Pandemic situation.
In addition, the number of tourists and villagers who participated in the programme can be controlled to ensure the SOP are followed, guided by MOTAC and other government organizations such as the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Defence.
Dr Rohaslinda Ramele @ Ramli
Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Architecture, Planning and Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times