Introduction  

Small-scaled lodging houses (SLHs) are hotels or any type of lodging facilities where people stay primarily for leisure rather than business. They are often located in rural areas near tourist attractions, and are favoured by travellers who seek an authentic, local experience. They usually provide their customers with rooms, meals and other services. Due to the unique characteristics of their locations and their features, the services they offer may be quite diversified, varying from one lodging house to another and/or from one location to another. 

Tourism in rural areas is becoming increasingly popular. However, it is sometimes difficult for potential visitors to identify the existence and availability of, or the services offered by, a particular SLH. 

The United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) Travel and Tourism Domain has developed deliverables that assist SLHs to convey information concerning the offerings of their accommodations and surrounding areas, and to make reservations. The UN/CEFACT deliverables include: Business Requirements Specifications (BRSs), which describe the processes surrounding these procedures and propose their standardization; Requirement Specification Mappings (RSMs), which provide the data that could potentially be exchanged; and a proposed Extensible Markup Language (XML) schema in order to exchange the information in a standardized way.  

The SLHs, to whom such standards are addressed, are usually small. Today’s information exchange technologies (Internet, mobile, cloud, etc.) are potential stimulants to the use of such standards and would provide global visibility to SLHs. For these reasons, six Asian-Pacific countries have launched a pilot project through the Asia-Pacific Council for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (AFACT) in order to promote the use of these standards and to assist SLHs to effectively communicate and exchange information related to their offerings and reservations.  

 Applications

 Tourism is a major economic sector for many countries around the world. In many developing countries it is the main source of income—for governments, business and also the country’s workforce.  

 The SLH deliverables aim to assist countries (and their SLHs) to promote their national tourism, the diversity of their tourism market, and alternative accommodation propositions.  

Benefits

The SLH standards allow the owners of these small-scale establishments to showcase their offerings and allow visitors to easily search, book and stay in SLHs which are often located in rural settings not typically accessible through large tour operators.  

In so doing, the SLH standards contributes to vitalizing (or revitalizing) local economies by attracting visitors from abroad. This contributes directly to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 1 (to reduce poverty), to SDG 8 (to provide decent work and economic growth) and to SDG 11 (to create sustainable communities).