Rural Tourism Entrepreneurs Research Articles

Framework for Studying Consequence of Rural Tourism Entrepreneurship Development (Case Study: Shit and Shirin Sou areas of Tarom County)

Purpose- The purpose of this study is to present a framework for studying the consequences of rural tourism entrepreneurship development. Design/methodology/approach- The type of study is applied Research and descriptive-exploratory in essence. Data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire and the validity of the questionnaire items was confirmed by experts and its reliability was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha (.876). Based on statistical population of experts, local managers and owners of tourism complexes in the villages of Darram and Chavarzgh counties that were selected through purposive non-probability sampling method, 277 households were selected from the owners of tourism complexes and practitioners related to tourism activity. The field-library data collection and data analysis were performed using SPSS software and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) using AMOS software. The relevance of the four factors affecting the outcomes of rural tourism entrepreneurship development is discussed. Finding- The results show that the extent of the impact of independent variables of entrepreneurship on tourism development outcomes in the study area, respectively, are the indicators of the opportunities created by the growth and development of entrepreneurship with 0.98 as the first rank and the most influential, socio-economic value creation index of entrepreneurship with 0.87, which is ranked second, innovation and creativity index is ranked third with 0.43 and finally, environmental entrepreneurship index of tourism entrepreneurship is 0.38 and is ranked fourth. Practical implications- The formulation framework for evaluating the implications of tourism entrepreneurship development presented in this study has a meaningful and acceptable explanation in the study area.

The rural creative class: An analysis of in‐migration tourism entrepreneurship

AbstractThis study examines the creative class group in Chinese tourism destinations made up of in‐migration tourism entrepreneurs confronting the need to diversify away from city life. Based on a questionnaire survey of those rural tourism entrepreneurs who have set up business in the two townships of Huanglongxi and Luodai, and drawing upon social practice theory, the study explores concepts of entrepreneurship, organizational innovation, and sustainable competitive advantage. It shows how the entrepreneurship of the in‐migration creative class has played a crucial role in organizational innovation in the tourism industry and how they have made significant contributions to sustainable competitive advantage.

Rural Tourism Entrepreneurship Survey with Emphasis on Eco-museum Concept

Unemployment and scarcity of job opportunities count as major problems suffered in villages, especially by the youth. To this end, rural entrepreneurship, particularly in tourism and ecotourism sector, may contribute to the growth of rural economy through strategic and forward-looking planning along with other factors. Innovation and creativity are turning into one of the essential ingredients of continued development. Rural museums, such as “Eco-museum”, are one of the measures taken with regard to protecting various material and spiritual phenomena resulting from traditional habitats. “Eco-museums” can be deemed as a project to support sustainability, and a significant factor for development of entrepreneurship and businesses, especially small- and medium-sized businesses. Espidan, a village in North Khorasan province of Iran, can exert such an effect and play such a role as an eco-museum. Through library resources and field studies, the present study attempts to examine the potentials of Espidan for strengthening its rural tourist properties and fulfilment of ecotouristic objectives in line with three main criteria: public contribution, exclusive eco-museum activities, and creating social, cultural and natural conditions (the determining the vital conditions for a place to evolve into an eco-museum). A study and evaluation of the recommended criteria in Espidan indicates that the village demonstrates considerable potentials for evolving into an eco-museum. As effective steps towards achieving continued development, practical solutions have been proposed for fulfilment of eco-museum objectives as such an evolution into an eco-museum can result in rural entrepreneurship.

Students’ Attitudes and Intentions towards Rural Tourism Entrepreneurship

Abstract During the last years many scholars analyzed the development of entrepreneurial education and the factors that affect the entrepreneurial decisions. This paper analysis the entrepreneurial motivation of the students from three engineering undergraduate programs from University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine from Cluj-Napoca. The research method was the survey based on questionnaire. A total number of 208 questionnaires were validated for future investigation. The results reveal that the majority of the students would like to start their own business when they will graduate. The main reasons mentioned were self-assertion, financial independence.

Sustaining the Entrepreneurship in Rural Tourism Development

Entrepreneurs play an important role in sustaining rural tourism and formulation of sustainable strategies being the initiators of the tourism business and the engine of the local development. Therefore, it is necessary to stimulate the development of entrepreneurial activities for the recovery of rural tourism potential and regional traditions, maintaining local employment growth and increase living standards in line with identifies needs and priorities of regional human resources development. This article aims to discuss the involvement of local communities in development of rural tourism entrepreneurship as well as addressing the issue of entrepreneurship in rural tourism.

Food and Gastronomic Tourism for Developing Rural Areas Around the Via Francigena in Tuscany

The paper reports results from an explorative research on the socio-economic opportunity that the presence of pilgrims and tourists along the Tuscan section of the Via Francigena can be for local communities. The aim is to deepen the actual and future opportunities that gastronomy represent for the development of tourism around the Via Francigena , with a special attention to destinations out of the beaten tracks. The research has been carried out merging different sources of information, including scientific literature, news, media, direct observation and personal experience, and performing a dozen of face-to-face interviews to key-informants, selected within socioeconomic actors involved in developing tourism around the course of the Via Francigena in Tuscany. The interviews have been carried out during the last six months, involving farmers, wine producers, restaurant owners, tourism and rural tourism entrepreneurs and local administrative offices. Local communities have already understood the strategic importance to sustain their socioeconomic activities with the development of pilgrimage and tourism along the Via Francigena . The rich variety of local gastronomy can satisfy both frugal needs of pilgrims and those of visitors more interested in gourmandizing. Food and gastronomy could be a strong leverage to increase tourist presences out of the beaten tracks.

Domestic tourism encounters in the Masurian lake district: multiple tourism moralities, reversible relationships, and social well-being in contemporary Poland

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on different moral economies of domestic tourism encounters in late-post-socialist Masuria, in the rural Northeast of Poland. An ethnographic study of three different tourism entrepreneurs brings to light different, concurring legacies of the ‘good’ tourism encounter in the area and indicates a shift of tourism discourses and social aspirations of living well together in contemporary Poland. In a climate of mutual stigmatisation and boundary drawing, rural tourism entrepreneurs mobilise the encounter with domestic tourists to subvert evolving power asymmetries in Poland and to offer alternative readings to dominant narratives of inequality in the transforming country. However, their proposed alternative tourism socialities with the national ‘other’ do not arrive naturally: relationships in tourism are shown to be ambivalent and reversible to their participants; their performance demands much moral work and requires a degree of cultural complicity or compatibility with the other. The article contributes to current debates on the moral economy of encountering in anthropological literature of tourism, post-socialism, and morality.

Rural Tourism Entrepreneurship as Strategy for Economic Development in Nigeria

<p>Rural tourism entrepreneurship is a tourist industry which revolutionizes businesses and prompting economic development across the globe. It encompasses huge range activities, natural or man-made attractions, amenities and facilities, transportation, marketing and information systems. It is also an important export for 83% of the developing countries and the main export for one third of them. In 2000, developing countries recorded 142.6 million international arrivals an increase of 95% compared to the figures of 1990.However, only developing countries with effective natural and man-made tourism supporting and enhancing infrastructure have been able to develop their tourism sector and seize the attendance advantages. Rural areas of Nigeria possess some distinctive peculiarities which can be transformed into attractive tourist centers.</p><p><br />In spite of all these, rural tourism areas are still faced with myriad problems which include poor finance inadequate awareness and education, lack of progress in developing the rural of progress in developing the rural tourism potentials inadequate legislation, insecurity, entrepreneurial inertness, over-dependent on oil among others. This paper focuses on the impact and challenges of rural tourism entrepreneurship as strategy for economic development in Nigeria. It reviews literature rural tourism, tourism entrepreneurship potentials and classifications of Nigerians tourism potential’s destinations. The paper concludes that Nigeria Government should encourage rural based tourism entrepreneurship development by addressing the challenges facing rural tourism entrepreneurship in the country.</p>

Two sides of the same coin: Dutch rural tourism entrepreneurs and countryside capital in Sweden

This article contrasts Sweden's tourism policy considering sustainable growth and increased employment with experiences and evaluations of Dutch rural tourism entrepreneurs in Sweden. The study employs notions of countryside capital, investigating the effects on Dutch rural tourism entrepreneurs of experiences with Swedish national tourism policy aims and local populations. A tourism-migration nexus occurs where the entrepreneurs are attracted by countryside capital before migration and use this capital in their firms to attract new tourists after migration. Interviewees tell of experiences which frustrate optimal utilization of countryside capital. In combination with flexible attitudes conceptualized as multi-local living and strategic switching, this results in the risk of losing the entrepreneurs' socio-economic impetus for lagging rural areas. The article relates this loss to incomers' rural tourism business transfers after the initial start-up phase and questions the alleged transition from countrysides of production to countrysides of consumption.

The importance of local area as a motivation for cooperation among rural tourism entrepreneurs

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the issue of entrepreneurial motivations among rural tourism entrepreneurs in choosing to engage in cooperation. It analyzes literature which deals with the role of entrepreneurs and the development of rural destinations and highlights the fact that the role of entrepreneurs has been understated. Using mixed research methods and studying two rural areas in Ireland it addresses research questions such as why do rural tourism entrepreneurs engage in cooperation? How did this cooperation emerge? And how do they choose who to co-operate with? The key finding is that while these entrepreneurs are motivated to co-operate as they think it will have a positive impact on their business, for many, a key motivation is also the impact on their area. As such it is concluded that we need to be cognisant of the fact that rural tourism entrepreneurs are motivated not just by profit and individual gain and that the local area is also an important motivator.

The importance of local area as a motivation for cooperation among rural tourism entrepreneurs

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the issue of entrepreneurial motivations among rural tourism entrepreneurs in choosing to engage in cooperation. It analyzes literature which deals with the role of entrepreneurs and the development of rural destinations and highlights the fact that the role of entrepreneurs has been understated. Using mixed research methods and studying two rural areas in Ireland it addresses research questions such as why do rural tourism entrepreneurs engage in cooperation? How did this cooperation emerge? And how do they choose who to co-operate with? The key finding is that while these entrepreneurs are motivated to co-operate as they think it will have a positive impact on their business, for many, a key motivation is also the impact on their area. As such it is concluded that we need to be cognisant of the fact that rural tourism entrepreneurs are motivated not just by profit and individual gain and that the local area is also an important motivator.

Value of silence: mediating aural environments in Estonian rural tourism

This paper concentrates on the creation of value(s) by rural tourism entrepreneurs via intangible and atmospheric natural resources, the aural environment. The creation of value is analysed with regard to how the rural tourism entrepreneurs facilitate and mediate the aural environment of their farms to their guests and how by doing so the notions of rurality and rural environment are constantly (re)created and (re)negotiated. The paper concentrates on the notion of ‘silence’ which the tourism farmers regard as one of the most valuable qualities of their environments and shows how the personal experience of the host is one of the most important aspects when creating and mediating the experience for the visitors. The paper begins with a theoretic discussion of the idea of rural idyll, after which the research background is described with a brief overview of the Estonian rural context and the description of the methodology and empirical data of the article. This is followed by the analysis of the gathered data which is divided into two main topics: the creation of value by the tourism entrepreneurs when constructing the rural sound idyll and the question of competing values in the rural tourism context.

Rural Tourism Entrepreneurship Research

The 2012 Rural Tourism Entrepreneurship Conference, hosted by the Laurier Centre for Research in Entrepreneurship, LCRE (formerly the NeXt Research Centre), at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterlo...

Entrepreneurship by women in the rural environment: tourism as a spur to development

The important role of women in rural development has been brought repeatedly to notice in the literature, but the role of women entrepreneurs in rural development is a more novel issue. Rural tourism has provided a fundamental opportunity for women to join the job market and earn recognition of their economic independence and professional status, but little evidence exists of the real impact of rural tourism businesses run by women. The objective of this research therefore is to evaluate the economic situation of women rural tourism entrepreneurs, determining what variables affect the probability that a woman owner or manager will earn her basic or fundamental income from running tourist accommodation (a country cottage). The results confirm that running rural tourist accommodation normally brings in supplementary income, although the rural environment seems to be witnessing the rise of a new profile in female entrepreneurs, where there is less dependence on the traditional family structure and greater proximity to both personal and economic independence. Keywords: Women, entrepreneurship, rural tourism, rural development, profile of women entrepreneurs, logit model.

Tourism shopping in rural markets: a case study in rural Iowa

PurposeThis study aims to focus on the unique challenges of retail service delivery in rural tourism markets. This paper specifically seeks to address: factors attracting individuals to a rural tourism community; factors motivating resident and tourist customers to engage in tourism shopping; satisfaction of resident and tourist customers with local retailers; and strategies to assist retailers in successful service delivery.Design/methodology/approachUsing Dillman's survey techniques, data were collected from two different groups: resident customers and tourist customers in a rural Iowa tourism community. Given the study's exploratory focus, a case study methodology was selected.FindingsShopping experiences were much less satisfying for resident customers than for tourist customers in this study. Tourism retailers may not be effectively differentiating their customer service and providing adequate attention during the shopping experience, particularly to resident customers.Research limitations/implicationsOne limitation is that the study represents an initial test of self‐designed and/or modified scales to capture the variables of interest in a single rural tourism community in Iowa. Therefore findings may only be generalizable to the unique nature of an established tourist population in Midwestern regions of the USA.Practical implicationsAn important implication from this study is rural tourism retailers need to develop a comprehensive customer relationship management strategy to encourage repeat shopping and sustained patronage behavior.Originality/valueThis study provides valuable strategic implications for rural tourism entrepreneurs, business consultants and economic development professionals in rural tourism communities, and fills a void in the tourism and patronage literature.

Objective quality and business performance in service environments: moderating effects of entrepreneurs' knowledge and involvement

This study considers two main research issues: the relationship between objective quality and business performance and the moderating role of an entrepreneur's knowledge (education and experience) and involvement (exclusiveness in professional dedication) in that relationship. A sample of 103 rural tourism entrepreneurs in Spain serves as the study setting. Results indicate the positive influence of an establishment's quality on performance. Moreover, both knowledge and involvement have direct effects on performance, but involvement influences performance to a greater extent and even reaches profits. Positive moderating effects of experience and exclusiveness also emerge, as does an unexpected negative moderating effect of education.

Home Stay: A Rural Tourism Entrepreneurship Business

This article addresses the concept and characteristics of home stay programs as a new rural tourism product. Home stay is a combination of rural tourism, agro-farm tourism, cultural tourism, and recreation activity operated under minimal funding by small entrepreneurs from villages, by assistance of the government in Malaysia. This study presents an overview on the development, procedures, operation, evaluation, and limitations of the home stay program as a rural tourism entrepreneurship business. Implications of the results of this study and suggestions are also discussed.

Rural tourism and livelihood strategies in Romania

Substantial changes in the Romanian countryside accompanied by the need for more robust economic activities have caused some families to turn to tourism as an economic diversification strategy. A qualitative study of selected rural tourism entrepreneurs indicates positive experiences, both economically and in other aspects of their lives. However, the development of rural tourism is highly uneven spatially and the Romanian Government should act more incisively to support families establishing guesthouses.

Turismo rural en Cataluña. Estrategias empresariales

In the present article we expose the findings of a research that aims to reveal the nature of the strategies of rural business creation. These strategies are situated according to the unequal social position and the connection with the rural world of rural tourism entrepreneurs. In accordance with their social and professional position in the rural habitat, we have identified three types of owner operators: a) farmers, b) professionals with no agricultural activity and c) neo-rurals. These types are explained by the processes of deagriculturalisation and a differentiation between agriculture and tourism. We emphasize that the motive for the development of rural tourism is property ownership and fundamentally originates from those who have been able to take advantage of the deagriculturalisation process and the new distribution of property resulting from the rural exodus that has occurred in the region during the last few decades.

Rural tourism and the challenge of tourism diversification: the case of Cyprus

Rural tourism has long been considered a means of achieving economic and social development and regeneration. More specifically, it has been widely promoted as an effective source of income and employment, particularly in peripheral rural areas where traditional agrarian industries have declined. More recently, however, a number of established tourism destinations have also turned to rural tourism in order to diversify their tourism products and markets and to spread the benefits of tourism away from the coastal resorts into the hinterland. The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which this latter role for rural tourism represents a realistic tourism development policy. Based upon research into the development of ‘agrotourism’ in Cyprus, it highlights the challenges and problems encountered by rural tourism entrepreneurs, identifying a number of issues which militate against the success of rural tourism development. In particular, it identifies high development costs but low returns, low demand, a lack of essential skills and the dominance of mass tourism operators as major challenges. It concludes, therefore, long-term financial and technical support is essential if tourism is to play an effective rural development role.