Abstract:
The purposes of this research were to study the management style of small-sized hotels in Krabi Province. This study employed the qualitative method. An in-depth interview was used to collect data for this study. The main informants consisted of administrators and managers of 29 small-sized hotels in Krabi. The results were as follows: Most hotels had been operating their business for not less than 5 years. There are more than 20 rooms and 20 staff in each hotel. From the analysis, the strengths of the small-sized hotels were competitive prices and better services. However, most hotels run their business in a family style. They couldnt afford hiring professional staff due to high salaries, so most of their staff were selected based on their English skills. Most of the small-sized hotels focused on making profits, rather than planning to improve their business. Therefore, most of their staff lacked motivation and loyalty for the hotels. Moreover, they were not interested in the visions, and missions of their organizations. Most of their obstacles arose from the political crisis of the country as well as the seasons. Regarding hotel management, most hotels had established the goals for their organizations, but lacked clear long term planning strategies. Regarding the hotel organization, most of the small sized hotels had a simple organizational structure. Most of the communication of each department was via conversations between department heads and staff. Each department had its own records. Only the executive administrators and the owner of the hotels attended meetings. The recruitment process used the selection of people from both inside and outside hotels. The staff were checked only for their attendance, and the evaluation of the staffs performance was from the administrators observations. The guidelines to improve the small-sized hotel business were as follows: Planning; the hotel should establish its goals, vision, and mission and make the staff understand and work towards the goals; Staff: the hotel should build up the staffs morale so that they will work more efficiently; The owner of the hotel; the owner should focus on the customers and services more than profits; Critical period; the hotel administrators should have a second plan when a crisis happens.