Is homestay service an ideal business opportunity for women?

Abstract

AbstractHomestay services are one of the booming concepts for local community participation in the tourism industry. Participation of women in community‐based tourism activities is getting attention from academic stakeholders, but the women in the homestay services section need special focus. Hence, this study explores the opinions of female homestay service providers about their experiences in running homestays. In this study, 62 women were interviewed in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, India. The study extracted women's perceptions of homestay service in tourism. A semi‐structured questionnaire, interviews and participant observations were used to collect primary data. Homestay service is found to be an ideal profession for married women as it gives them the opportunity to fulfil other family duties, though it is not a compulsion in all cases. Women were also found to feel a sense of recognition through such participation in tourism. Participating in homestay services was found to be a source of meeting peers, building social networks and a sense of exposure to the outside world. The findings of the study will be insightful for implementing schemes related to women's empowerment and rural development. These findings confirm the mass migration of the rural population towards metro cities can also be curved by engaging more people in tourism and allied businesses locally.