Common and public facilities satisfaction among serviced apartment's residents in Kuala Lumpur

Abstract

Serviced apartment started in early 1950s in the United Kingdom as an alternative accommodation besides hotel especially for tourist or travellers who plan to stay for long period. The rapid growth of serviced apartment especially in a new trend as a permanent home as existing public facilities are unable to accommodate residents' needs. The serviced apartment are categorised as a commercial entity, whereby the calculation is based on plot ratio and all requirements include facilities are also based on commercial rate. Meanwhile, the requirement for public facilities is based on the intensity of population in an area. Provision of sufficient facilities is important as an indicator level of sustainable development and a prosperous community. Therefore, this research aims to examine the requirement of common and public facilities for serviced apartment and level of satisfaction of serviced apartment’s resident toward existing common and public facilities. Primary data collection was carried out from site observation, questionnaire and interview then analysed using descriptive analysis to identify the level of satisfaction of the residents toward common and public facilities. The results show that residents are more satisfied with common facilities provided by developer within the serviced apartment compared to the public facilities. The results indicate that 82.4% respondents agreed that the requirement of public facilities should be considered in a serviced apartment development to meet residents’ needs. Improvements need to be done on public facilities’ requirement and provision in terms of policy formation, condition, accessibility and design. In order to improve the standard and quality of common and public facilities provision for serviced apartment, several recommendations have been suggested including the revision of the Planning Standards for the Provision of Public Facilities 2020 by taking into account the need for serviced apartment's residents from the aspect of population calculation methods. Serviced apartments are only permitted in a matured or established area, which has sufficient public facilities, common facilities for a serviced apartment that should be provided based on the requirement for residential development. However, the public facilities can be excluded if it has been provided in integrated facility building that has good accessibility by the resident within 5-minute walking distance and precinct plan as a guideline for the landowner or developer to surrender a portion of their land for the government to build integrated facilities building.