The chair of Samoa's Tourism Tsunami Rebuilding Project says it's shifted many resort owners from the informal to the formal business sector.
Sina Retzlaff, who's also the immediate past president of the Chamber of Commerce, says beach fale operations have traditionally been family-owned and escaped licencing, GST rating and taxation.
She says under the rebuilding project's theme to "build back better" resort owners are required to undertake a strategic planning course to help them streamline the running of their business.
"Part of what they needed to do was to understand how a business works, to understand that there were margins, to understand that there were high seasons and low seasons and in that, there was also a requirement to buy a business licence."
Sina Retzlaff says more men need to attend the strategic planning courses but Samoa's chiefly system works against that.
