Stay@Rural application / Muhammad Faezzul Farhan Yazid ... [et al.]

Rural tourism has grown quite significantly in Malaysia and the advent of COVID-19 pandemic has fueled more demand for domestic travel to rural areas. However, travelers usually face difficulty in finding and booking their accommodation in rural areas as there are very few websites or applications that promote accommodation especially at local rural areas. Therefore, our group presents Stay@Rural application (an app), to ease travelers’ problems when searching and booking their place to stay in rural areas. Besides giving out information about accommodations in rural area, Stay@Rural also provides other information such as places of interest, and activities. The important feature is travelers can make their booking via this app. In addition, users can locate their accommodation easily and that they can rate the accommodation they used. As for the accommodation provider, they will also benefit where they can use this app to promote and sell their rooms and tourism activities. Basically, there are two parties involved in this app – the travelers and the owner of the accommodation. Another important feature of this app is that it promotes security where both travelers and accommodation owners will have to register their personal details in the app, thus ensuring peace of mind to both parties. Overall, this app will provide opportunity to all accommodation providers in rural areas in Malaysia to promote their services thus making more rural communities share the benefits of tourism. Finally, Stay@Rural app can potentially be expanded to other Asian countries, or other countries in the world.