Home Stay in Thailand

Home stay is one type of community-based tourism for visitors that prefer to live with the local family in their home to learn and build understand about the community and local ways of life and also raise awareness of natural and diverse cultures from the host family.

Home stay is now playing a growing role in tourism, especially among travellers with a deeper interest in local ecology and the lifestyle of the people. Living with a local family in their home, they learn to understand the community and its way of life. So, home stay is not just a matter of accommodation and food, but also a valuable sharing experience contributing to mutual respect.

Thailand has emerged as the most popular destination for home stay tourism in this part of the world as it is one of the countries that is most affordable and hospitable. For most of the year the weather is fine; the regions of the country manifest a diversity of attractive destinations, colourful local customs, and a fascinating culture.

The government sees home stay tourism as a means of helping rural communities to become self-sufficient. It is encouraging the people of those provinces that are ready to welcome tourists to work with local administrative bodies to develop model villages providing home stay services.

A model village would be noted for its natural surroundings, the quality of its local crafts and traditions and its hospitality. Visitors will have the opportunity to discover regional Thai culture in an authentic and inexpensive way. They will see the community's relationship with the natural world around them, and work they do. Central to this will be visiting the artists and craft workers who make One Tambon One Product (OTOP) goods.

High quality OTOP products will be the initial focus of the model villages for home stay tourism. They will be developed systematically with the goal of improving the community's income and standard of living, while at the same time adding a valuable new dimension to sustainable tourism in Thailand.

The first stage of the government's plan is to select 60 of the 76,000 villages nationwide with the potential to attract visitors to rural areas. Each province will select three of its premium OTOP products in villages that have the necessary qualities to attract tourists. The people must also be able to provide other attractions in and around their villages.

The government is also encouraging longer home stay tourism so that overseas visitors might stay longer in Thailand, and local communities joined the "long Stay-Home Stay" project launched in December, 2005.

The project was jointly carried out by the Ministry of Tourism and Sports and the Ministry of Interior in response to demand from tourists, and especially foreign visitors who wanted to prolong their stay in Thailand.

Research shoved that many visitors preferred the idea of staying in a home. They appreciated the warmth of feeling, the social contact, and the pleasure of discovering a rural way of life different to their own. This encouraging response suggests that home stay in Thailand will prove a valuable addition to the spectrum of tourism in Thailand.