English Needs of Thai Hotel Front Desk Staff in Tourist Attractions of Southern Thailand in the Move towards ASEAN Economic Community 2015

Abstract

          The purposes of this study were to identify and compare English needs of hotel front desk staff among three areas in Southern Thailand: Phuket, Samui Island, and Hat Yai. Data was collected from 315 Thai hotel front desk staff via questionnaires and from 16 Thai hotel front office managers via semi-structured interviews. The questionnaire data was analyzed by the following statistic methods: a frequency distribution, means, standard deviation, and a one-way analysis of variance. The interview data was categorized and summarized. The findings revealed that the needs of four English language skills were rated at the high levels. Listening and speaking were mostly needed while reading and writing followed closely. When compared across the areas, it was identified that the staff in Phuket and Samui Island needed to use English more significantly than the staff in Hat Yai (p < 0.05) due to a higher number of English speaking customers. Furthermore, a large number of customers in Hat Yai did not use English in their communication but preferred using other languages such as Thai, Malayu, or Chinese.