More than 70,000 rental accommodations running illegally, says association

SHAH ALAM - Malaysia Budget and Business Hotel Association (MyBHA) President Dr Sri Ganesh Michiel says 70,000 units under the Malaysia's Short-Term Residential Accommodations (STRA) are offering accommodation services to tourists with no regulations.

He said the government did not impose any regulations for the Online Tourism Agency (OTA) which lists STRA services in their respective platforms.

He said the STRA consists of houses and apartment units and many are located in main cities such as Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Selangor, Johor Bahru as well as tourist spots like Genting Highlands and Pahang.

Ganesh said the situation will adversely affect the recovery process for the tourism and hotel industries due to some STRA owners who offer accommodation services below standard.

"When tourists book through OTA, they will assume that the units listed are licensed, insured and such.

"However they wouldn't know that only hotels are licensed instead of the STRA," he said when contacted by Sinar Harian.

Ganesh said this when commenting on the recent viral news about tourists from Singapore who experienced poor service when they stayed in an accommodation in Genting Highlands.

He said this could jeapordise the national hotel industry's recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.

The existence of STRA with no regulations would produce a sense of unfairness for industry players, and creates an impression as though the government supports "unlicensed businesses", he added.

"The license ensures that workers should take courses on how to keep a room tidy and services given are according to standards and needs of the guests.

"Unfortunately, when issues such as this gets highlighted, our reputation is also affected," he said.

To prevent the issue from happening he said the government should immediately impose regulations on all OTA(s) and present the guidelines for STRA which was tabled in Parliament in 2019, to enable its enforcement.

"Currently, STRA units with no license can be listed. By establishing a set of guidelines for all OTA(s) could be done to ensure the "illegal" STRA units would not be rented by guests," he said.

Ganesh said he has been informed that the enforcement of STRA Guidelines should be under the jurisdiction of the Housing and Local Government Ministry (KPKT).

He said the KPKT should not have issues in enforcing the guidelines as the organisation in charge of enforcing the law, which comprises of local authorities (PBT), would be able to monitor the accommodations.