Tourism Microentrepreneurship: Volume 12

Microentrepreneurs have played a role in the tourism industry for a long time; however, they are now becoming more visible and increasingly influential stakeholders due to information technologies that enable them to reach prospective visitors, and because their economic activity is more transparent and taxable by governments. Nevertheless, tourism microentrepreneurship is still understudied, and destination practitioners are largely unprepared to fuel microentrepreneurial development and to integrate these genuine, local experiences with the formal sector components of the industry. This chapter provides an introductory overview of related knowledge as a basis for identification of themes in research on tourism microentrepreneurship.

Cruise ships visiting Belize is a recent and fast-growing aspect of the nation's largest economic sector, tourism. Many Belizean businesses are very small and informal; potential access to cruise ship visitors provides an opportunity for growth and income stability. We investigate the challenges and opportunities informal microenterprises face in the cruise tourism marketplace through qualitative interviews at three popular tourist destinations: Xunantunich (Maya ruins), Community Baboon Sanctuary (Howler Monkeys), and Jaguar Paw (cave river tubing). The results indicate that despite robust growth in cruise tourism, local microentrepreneurs are currently disenfranchised, receiving few economic benefits from the cruise trade. We propose several recommendations to allow Belizean microentrepreneurs and the local economy to capture more economic benefits.

Increases in international tourism have been associated with increased livelihood opportunities and the creation of microenterprises in developing and less developed economies. An exploratory study examining the motivations for engaging in a microenterprise and the perceptions of the benefits of tourism was conducted with participants from Vientiane, Laos. It was found the microentrepreneurs in the study were mostly pushed into engaging in microenterprises due to the lack of employment opportunities and thus were creating their own jobs as opposed to being pulled into starting a business in search of wealth or lifestyle benefits. All participants of the study believed international tourism created more benefits than problems for both themselves and the country.

Farmers are increasingly diversifying their agribusinesses to adapt to new market opportunities, and for many, this has meant offering farm experiences to tourists. The purpose of this study was to examine the motivations and constraints of farm tourism microentrepreneurs in North Carolina, USA. Results from thematic analysis of interviews with 15 farmers suggest that microentrepreneurs are motivated by the flexibility to structure their time and to be outside. Farmers indicated that they are devoted to sharing their farming heritage and educate tourists about their work and community ethic. Microentrepreneurial success was defined as the ability to continue to hold on to farmland and barriers included illness, aging, and lack of support from public agencies.

Indigenous entrepreneurship is not only driven by capitalistic ideas as inherent in Eurocentric microentrepreneurial thinking but also focuses on communal approaches where entire communities can gain social and/or economic benefits. The authors, who all worked at The University of the South Pacific in Fiji, share how they work and engage with students and indigenous communities involved in tourism microenterprises. Based on the authors' research and experience in the region, this chapter discusses the following two issues and their related best practices and implications. First, the balance and sometimes tensions between entrepreneurial self-benefit and benefit-sharing; and second, female participation and the related opportunities for empowerment of indigenous communities through tourism microentrepreneurship.

The frequent occurrence of dramatic natural disasters and political and religious instability in Southeast Asian island states has tested the resiliency of tourism-dependent economies and the livelihoods of host communities. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the role of local knowledge in contributing to the resilience of tourism microentrepreneurship. Drawing on a case study of a restaurant in South Sulawesi (Indonesia) that has thrived despite the ebbs and flows of tourism, we identify ways in which successful tourism microentrepreneurs draw on local knowledge to discern business opportunities and build rapport with neighboring communities.

When researching the role of microentrepreneurship in equitable and sustainable development, the question of how tourism microentrepreneurs forge relationships between place, community, and resources is significant. Two case studies from CREATOUR, a project investigating creative tourism, a novel type of cultural tourism that includes active participation in creative activities and connection to place, examines how these relationships are developed and implemented. Findings indicate that creative tourism microentrepreneurial activities in two small cities are being shaped by, and shaping, place in multifaceted ways. Creative tourism activities stimulate new perspectives on place, are designed synergistically with the “seasonal” fluctuations of the type of visitors, are embedded in personal networks of collaborators, and actively encourage alternative patterns of tourism consumption.

Prior research documents that host communities struggle to influence tourism product design and destination management; however, emerging information and communication technologies (ICTs) are allowing host communities to bypass retail monopolies and create self-representation. This chapter examines how to make technological innovation endogenous to a regional growth model by identifying barriers constraining the adoption of innovation among rural microentrepreneurs in Pennsylvania. Insights about adoption of ICTs were gathered through participatory action engagement and semi-structured interviews with a network of rural tourism microentrepreneurs. Analysis revealed that microentrepreneurs perceive that tracking and monitoring customer inquiries is very time consuming, and they feel that using these platforms diverts them from achieving their desired lifestyles.

Advances in information and communication technology have revolutionized the tourism industry. This development has blurred geographical boundaries, facilitated low transaction costs by directly connecting travelers to hosts and service providers, and improved service quality and distribution. The tourism industry, however, is in the midst of another massive change. The emergence of sharing economy platforms, such as Airbnb and Uber, is disrupting business models and is providing opportunities for microentrepreneurship. The goal of this chapter is to study how the changing nature of tourism business models and the increasing importance of microentrepreneurship are impacting value creation, capture, and delivery in tourism.

The neo-endogenous approach to rural development puts great importance on territorialization, and aligns with place-based strategies and with microentrepreneurship because both concepts consider local specificities and leveraging local resources. This chapter analyzes characteristics of rural tourism establishments in Vojvodina, Northern Province of Serbia, of which the majority are microenterprises. The discussion focuses on aspects of microenterprise functioning such as human capital, offers, revenues, and non-material benefits. The aim is to analyze the local embeddedness of rural tourism microenterprises and their contribution to neo-endogenous rural development. Our results reveal that microentrepreneurs are embedded in rural places, but they face numerous constraints which in turn limits the benefits host communities might receive from place-based rural tourism development.

This chapter investigates how food microenterprises leverage cultural representations to develop the tourism offering of a place. Food tourism is considered to provide visitors with cultural experiences of place. In a homogenized world, authentic food characteristics enable tourists to have unique food experiences according to the place. This case study considers the way in which food microenterprises in Wales and Brittany leverage characteristics of place to develop food tourism experiences. Following a mixed methods design, findings show differences in the food tourism offering of Wales and Brittany, and differing levels of awareness of each food destination. Findings also point to the need for clear food tourism strategies, to enable places to fully exploit their unique resources in the food tourism offering.

For many decades, destination marketing organizations have evolved in their structure and in their programming, especially as targeted toward leisure travel and tourism markets. They changed their focus to internet communication, then to brand strategy and destination management, and most recently to address disruptions from the tourism online gig economy consisting of myriad microentrepreneurs, some sharing local experiences directly with tourists. This chapter relates how Raleigh, USA, and its tourism office have begun to embrace tourism microentrepreneurship through strategic planning efforts and specific programs of the last five years. It concludes with implications for how small and medium destinations can structure new programs, policies, and interactions to support marketplaces of tourism microentrepreneurs as part of holistic tourism-related economic development.

Permatourism is a holistic approach to the study and design of equitable tourism development strategies, which leverages adaptive complex systems thinking and permaculture design principles. Permatourism advocates for the symbiosis between the formal and informal sectors of the tourism system, through creating and nurturing meaningful, functional relations among multiple actors. The formal tourism sector must embrace the sociocultural characteristics of the host community and grassroots business development strategies must be pursued to align local microentrepreneurs with expected business opportunities generated by big tourism investments. This chapter provides an overview of the conceptual foundation of this new approach as well as examples illustrating its pertinence to destination stewardship.

Microentrepreneurship is emerging as a key area of tourism research due to its increasing visibility and economic significance. Microentrepreneurs have complex pecuniary and non-pecuniary motivations, they combine multiple forms of knowledge to achieve success, and they can generate circularity and competitiveness when integrated into formal destination systems. Continued research on this topic is needed, but careful consideration of the ethics and methods used is recommended. This chapter assembles findings in this volume and in the tourism literature to propose a roadmap for principled engagement with microentrepreneurs.