CAMERON HIGHLANDS: The mushrooming of illegal homestays here has caused concern not only among the hotel industry but also legal homestays registered with the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture (MOTAC).
Chairman of Kampung Taman Sedia homestay association Mohammad Zulkepli Daud said this could be seen from the decline in booking by homestay operators since last year.
“Since the completion of the low-cost housing project here at the beginning of the year, someunits have been converted into illegal homestays. Thus has seen our homestay income decline between 30 and 40 per cent.
“I estimate there are about 60 units out of the 1,000 apartment units here which had been converted into illegal homestay units.
“This itself is not only affecting our earnings but also undermines effort to assist the Government in promoting culture, arts and lodgings in the rural areas,” he told the NSTP
Hotels in this tourist spot are crying foul over the mushrooming of homestays, especially illegal ones, which not only reduced rooms being taken up but also has affected their income.
Hotel operator in Brinchang, Muhammad Syafiq Nair told a portal that the existence of such homestays was threatening to put hotels out of business.
He said the homestays began mushrooming some five years ago following the shortage of hotel rooms.
Syafiq said the presence of such illegal homestays also sees the government losing out in terms of income through the Goods and Services Tax in the past and now the Sales and Service Tax which runs into the millions of ringgit.
Zulkepli, who owns and runs the Rose Chalet, said the homestay offered by the illegal operators was different to that offered by the legal ones.
“As in the Kampung Taman Sedia homestay programme, there are 17 registered with MOTAC and are bound by the need to take various programmes that need to be attended with the ministry and in addition they are also monitored by the authorities at all times.
“Apart from providing accommodation, we need to promote activities related to culture and arts mainly to foreign tourists.
“This contrasts with the illegal homestay which only serve as mere lodgings and discredit the legal homestays as people tend to think that all the homestays are the same,” he said.
Zulkepli hoped that whoever was elected as representative on Jan 26 would resolve the illegal homestay programmes in the district before it completely undermined the tourism industry.