Abstract:
The purpose of the paper is to examine the entrepreneurial and ecopreneurial possibilities of microtourism
business and their ability to contribute to regional development through generation of
employment and income. The study combines a survey and in‐depth interviews, reports on a case
study of Porbandar, a strategic port city of Gujarat in India that is recently witnessing a possible
expansion in the tourism sector. The paper identifies a number of important issues for effective
interaction of private‐public participation as well as illustrating the challenges being faced by the
micro-tourism firm owners in one of the rapidly growing economic environments while suggesting
actions for ensuring periphery endurance and its nationwide applicability. A bottom‐up model for
regional development reveals the conceptual structure for the study. The paper discuses that the related
paradigm is required to be underpinned by entrepreneurial behavior of a multiple stakeholders in rural
and suburban localities where tourism is still seen as a luxury for regional transformation in place of
traditional economic activities.
Description:
Thirteenth Biennial Conference on Entrepreneurship/ Edited by Sasi Misra, Sunil Shukla, Ganapathi Batthini
