Cette recherche est une contribution à l'amélioration du Home Stay, forme de tourisme chez l'habitant d'apparition récente en Thaïlande. Enseignante de français dans une Université d'une région touristique, il nous est apparu que son développement profiterait à la région et offrirait des débouchés à nos étudiants. Nous avons recensé les Home Stay qui recevaient des touristes français ou francophones, dont nous avons contacté chefs de villages et habitants ainsi que les visiteurs étrangers présents lors de nos visites. Nous leur avons fait remplir des questionnaires, les visiteurs étrangers étant classés en trois catégories: français, francophones et autres, questionnaires que nous avons dépouillés à l'aide d'un logiciel SPSS. Nous en avons conclu à la nécessité de médiateurs interculturels. Pour permettre aux visiteurs étrangers de satisfaire leur curiosité sur le mode de vie traditionnel des habitants, leurs travaux, leurs fêtes et leurs coutumes et répondre également au souhait des habitants, il fallait une présence permanente dans les villages de tels médiateurs. Nous avons jugé qu'il serait intéressant de proposer à nos étudiants une formation linguistique et interculturelle pour pratiquer ce métier, ces deux compétences étant également nécessaires pour jouer le rôle de médiateurs dans un Home Stay. Pour éviter le choc culturel et les malentendus dus à la différence culturelle entre habitants et visiteurs étrangers, il est indispensable de mettre l'accent dans cette formation sur l'éducation et la communication interculturelles. Cette formation devra leur faire acquérir les trois composantes de la compétence en communication : savoirs, savoir-faire et savoir-être. / This research is contributed to the improvement of the Home Stay, a form of tourism recently appear in Thailand that allows the visitor to stay in a house of local family. Teaching French in a university within a touristic region, it appeared to us that this type of tourism would offer advantages not only to the region and but also to our students. We formulated the Home Stay for welcoming French or French-speaking visitors by contacting the village chiefs and the villagers as well as the others foreign visitors during our visits. We asked them to fill in a questionnaire, with the foreign visitors classified into three categories: French, French-speaking and Other, which we analyzed by statistical software SPSS. In conclusion, the results of the questionnaire data point to the necessity of the intercultural mediators. In letting the foreign visitors satisfy their curiosity about the villagers' traditional way of life, their works, their fetes and their customs, and responding to the desire of the villagers, it appears that these mediators could be required on a permanent basis, in the village. In turn, we propose a linguistic and intercultural program to our students towards the goal of becoming intercultural mediators. These two competencies are also necessary for the role of mediators in a Home Stay. In order to avoid cross-cultural and misunderstanding between the villagers and foreign visitors, it is necessary to emphasize the intercultural education and communication in this program. It would allow students to obtain three components of communication competency: knowledge, skills and attributes common to intercultural mediators.

Since Taiwan implemented the two-day weekend in 1998, ¡§home stay¡¨ industry has become a hot trend in leisure and become more and more commercial. Therefore, the research motivation of the case study is to find out the key success factors in business strategies of the home stay industry in Taiwan. The research methods of this study are to interview home stay operators, to directly experience home stay, to collect consumer questionnaires, and to probe into literature information. Social science research is used to collect data. Then, qualitative research and descriptive statistics are used to analyze information and discuss the results. The results of the case study of the key success factors in business strategies of the home stay industry are as follows: 1.Core assets: A. Home stay operators must choose a right location. B. Home stay operators must have adequate financial resources, own land, aesthetic architectures, and etc. 2.Core competencies: A. Home stay operators need to have personal special expertise, knowledge, or skills. B. Home stay operators need to have correct business ideas. C. Home stay operators need the abilities of business strategies and implementation. D. Home stay operators are able to prioritize service quality and create a brand. 3.Characteristics and charms of operators: A. Operators need the personal characteristics and charms to establish close interaction with customers. B. Operators have the characteristics of tenacious perseverance to overcome operating obstacles on the early-stage venture. With the core resources and core competences mentioned above, operators integrate all kinds of resources and exert the business method of ¡§synergy ¡¨ to enhance competitive advantages and to create value for future home stay business.

An F-1 academic visa is required for foreign students studying at academic institutions in the United States. While requirements for acquiring the F-1 visa are a matter of federal policy, some of the principles regulating orientations, host families, and home-stays do not align with best practices found at the university level, which include quality student orientations and thorough trainings with a vetting process for host families and home-stays. This lack of regulation may place visiting students at risk in terms of personal safety and wellbeing and have negative impacts for program credibility and lost revenue. Using Stone's regime theory as the foundation, the purpose of this multiple case study of orientations and home-stay experiences of F-1 visa students under the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, was to explore from the perspective of program participants, ways to increase safety and quality assurance of these programs. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with six former student participants. These data were inductively coded and subjected to a thematic analysis procedure. A key theme of this study is that participants perceived that additional training to host families including vetting and monitoring processes and student orientations in acculturation and communication would enhance the experiences of F-1 visa holders. The implications for positive social change include recommendations to schools and study abroad organizations to implement policy changes regarding the requirements for students and host families, sponsors, and home-stay monitoring and orientation components for students and host families to promote more effective and safer home-stays for F-1 high school students.

The purpose of this study was to examine conservation, livelihoods, and the role of tourism. The village of Sukau in the Kinabatangan District of Sabah, Malaysia, served as a case study. The vital importance of the Lower Kinabatangan in wildlife conservation, coupled with the tourism potential of the region, underpinned the creation of the Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary in 2005. The 26,000 hectare sanctuary is fragmented in nature and surrounded by palm oil plantations. Still, with the protection of these fragmented forested areas, Sukau has evolved into the ‘hub’ of tourism in the Lower Kinabatangan. The majority of visitors come to Sukau for the opportunity to view the flagship species of the Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary (orang-utan, Bornean pygmy elephant, proboscis monkey, and hornbills) in the wild. Many of the local villagers own land which is still forested and serves as important ecological links between the fragmented protected areas. However many of the villagers plan to use their lands for smallholder palm oil farming in the future. This will further fragment the forested areas of the Wildlife Sanctuary, and will have severe implications for nature conservation and tourism in Sukau. The Sabah Tourism Master Plan (1996) stresses that for the tourism-conservation linkage to be effective in Sukau, the local community must benefit from tourism. If the locals of Sukau are able to depend on tourism as a livelihood option, then perhaps the forested areas of the Wildlife Sanctuary will not be further fragmented in the near future. This study will attempt to answer whether tourism is an effective alternative livelihood source for the locals of Sukau. Predominantly qualitative research methods were used for this study. These included semi-structured interviews with the local villagers of Sukau, and informal interviews with key informants in the area. Structured questionnaires and interviews were also undertaken with lodges in and near the village. The information gathered from these sources was further strengthened by my own personal and participatory observations. In 2006, 10 per cent of the population of Sukau, and 23 per cent of the estimated total workforce were directly employed in tourism. Results indicate that having tourism as a livelihood option has made the villagers more motivated to protect their environment. Yet the locals of Sukau disagree that their community benefits sufficiently from tourism, and smallholder palm oil farming is viewed as the more lucrative livelihood option. The current financial crisis (2008-9) has complicated the likely contribution of tourism to livelihoods and conservation in the future. Nevertheless it is likely that both the palm oil and tourism industries will recover from the economic downturn, and consequently they will both continue to be future livelihood options for the villagers of Sukau. Therefore steps should be made to improve both industries for the benefit of livelihoods and nature conservation in Sukau. There are a number of potential ways in which tourism could be improved in Sukau to bring more benefits to the locals. If these suggested improvements occur, then the effectiveness of tourism as an alternative livelihood source for the locals of Sukau will be enhanced.