Micro-Tourism Entrepreneurship in India

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.