Second, one of the main challenges for the Southeast Asian tourism industry, as mentioned before, is the
lack of skilled human resources. Therefore, tourism industry should give more emphasis on developing
human resources to ensure the quality products and services rendered to tourists. Specifically, local human
resources as well as indigenous workforce should be given priority in upgrading the comprehensive skills
necessary to better serve the tourism industry. At the same time, when emphasizing these objectives it is
also important to ensure the proper utilization of local resources so that it will enhance productivity of
local suppliers and broaden the inter-sectoral linkages among the enterprises of tourism industry. In this
aspect, the repercussion effects of tourism receipts will obviously ensure that foreign exchanges will not
leakage from the economy, rather; more income through multiplier effect would be generated.
The Southeast Asian tourism industry is characterized by the presence of large number of SMEs which is
the third major issue. SMEs are at the forefront of tourism development in the Southeast Asian context.
SMEs provide crucial positive functions to tourism industry in the form of integrating remote business,
developing linkages with other sectors of the economy and integrating personal services. Albeit SMEs are
at the heart of Southeast Asian tourism, most of them are facing the problem of every day struggle. In
addition, many SMEs are continuing their operation at the marginal point of survival. The lack of
operating tourism businesses through capitalization of modern management principles is the reason of
why SMEs unable to maximize their profit. In turn, this is meaning that these SMEs are incompetent to
take advantage of economies of scale arising from uncompetitive opportunities delivered by nature of
tourism demand. Further, limited resource base of these SMEs makes it difficult to attain these objectives.