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The purpose of this paper is to examine the entrepreneurial behaviour of small tourism businesses and their ability to contribute to regional development in the context of a transitional economy.

The research, by combining in‐depth interviews and a survey, reports on a case study of Wairarapa, a region of New Zealand that has recently seen a large expansion in the tourism sector.

The paper identifies a number of important criteria for the effective interaction of private‐public sectors as well as illustrating how small tourism firm owners are facing challenges in one of the most liberal economic environments whilst taking action to ensure periphery endurance.

Inductive theory or a bottom‐up model for regional development provides the conceptual structure for the research. The paper argues that the related paradigm is increasingly underpinned by entrepreneurial behaviour of a multiplicity of stakeholders in rural localities where tourism is seen as a key agent for regional rejuvenation on the demise of traditional economic activities.

This paper aims to investigate the economic impacts of the current coronavirus disease, which is globally known as (COVID-19) pandemic, on small businesses in the tourism and hospitality industry, including food and beverages (F&B) industries in Malaysia during and after the enforcement of the Movement Control Order (MCO) and conditional (CMCO) with the emergence of new business models.

In this paper, the implemented methodology involved a secondary qualitative research design based mainly on the existing literature, the World Health Organisation (WHO) reports, the government’s documents, in addition to online sources and observations regarding local business experiences.

The findings revealed that implementing effective strategies of recovery, shaping resilience solutions and supporting policies such as the National Recovery Plan, which is backed by the government played a pivotal role in avoiding the turndown of small businesses.

This critical review is submitted as an original research paper, which aims to provide important perspectives regarding the COVID-19 pandemic impacts on the tourism and hospitality industry in Malaysia. This paper serves as a scholarly platform for further in-depth studies on various resilience solutions of small businesses.

This paper aims to explore the pertinent issues of innovation and service experiences in family firms in the tourism industry, which are mostly small- and medium-sized enterprises.

The conceptual paper, building on social identity theory, undertakes a thorough review of the relevant literature before developing propositions regarding innovation and service experiences for small family firms in the tourism industry.

Small tourism family firms are faced with deficits in strategic orientation and innovation, and cooperation seems to be a means to overcome size deficits in family-run businesses. Customers integrated into the service experience enhance innovative developments and foster innovation in small tourism firms. As a prerequisite, the service experience must be appropriately managed by collecting and evaluating relevant data on customers’ needs, expectations and satisfaction. An open-minded and consumer-focused market-driven strategy seems to be an advantage.

Future research should undertake empirical studies to validate and/or modify the propositions presented in this conceptual paper.

This is one of the few studies to have addressed the relationship between service experiences and innovation for family-run small businesses in the tourism industry.

The paper addresses the relationship between a tourism authority and micro‐tourism businesses in terms of information access and use. The background is the commonly found dysfunction between the strategic intentions of a locality and small business performance. Information seeking is examined theoretically through its relationship to human capital. Given the evidence of entrance to the industry from outside it, it was thought that lack of tourism training would influence information seeking. The study confirmed the low levels of human capital, a modest interest in the larger picture but no evidence of the impact on decision‐making. The study also raises the issue of whether the use of the Internet separates small businesses from the regional tourism strategy.

The digital revolution is causing profound transformations, characterised by the way companies and customers approach the market, helping to significantly transform the tourism sector. The aim of this study is to investigate how small hospitality businesses use internet in terms of marketing.

After analyzing the literature, which concerns the relationship that has gradually developed over the years between small businesses in the tourism sector and the use of the internet, it was decided to carry out an empirical survey conducted among the subjects managing micro-activities in the hospitality sector. The research hypothesis is that the adoption of the website is conditioned by the size of the company and the type of experience one has with small businesses.

The results show how small hospitality businesses make limited use of booking portals and social networks, and it emerges how digital marketing policies are crucial to achieve success, both in Italy and abroad.

It is believed that this work can provide useful insights that can be useful for the local government, aimed at promoting a greater ability of small businesses to participate more actively in the competition.

Crisis management has developed as an established field of scholarly research in tourism over the last three decades. More recently, the concept of resilience has emerged within this body of literature as a longer-term planning process. However, important knowledge gaps remain, especially with regards to the strategic responses of small tourism businesses in destinations prone to repeated crises.

This chapter reviews the literature related to crisis management and resilience in tourism.

Key knowledge gaps are outlined and discussed in the context of tourism research related to crisis management and resilience, with a specific emphasis on research related to small tourism businesses.

Although crisis management and resilience are fields of research that continue to generate a considerable amount of scholarly enquiry in tourism, particularly with studies related to the impacts of terrorism on tourism destinations and, more recently, the short- and longer-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourism, there is very little research related to the role of small tourism businesses in this context, in spite of their key role in the tourism system of destinations around the world.

One Commune One Product (OCOP) program, a rural economic development program in Vietnam, aims to empower local communities for sustainable social and economic welfare development, protect the environment and preserve tradition. This study aims to employ this program associated with tourism to support small family businesses in rural areas cost-effectively.

This study used the geographic location mapping method to design tourist routes that connect tourism resources with OCOP producers. A stakeholder approach was employed to identify suggested practical works that need to be implemented while developing this tourism initiative.

Four rural districts of Bac Giang Province, a northern province in Vietnam known as the place of various indigenous people live and traditional craft villages. Many cultural and historical tourist sites have been chosen as sample areas for this study. By using Google map, based on the Bac Giang Tourist Map and a list of recognized OCOP products in Bac Giang Province, main tourist sites (16 locations) and small family businesses (known as cooperatives and households) that have OCOP products (17 places) in the four districts have been identified. Four notable tourist routes have been formed to propose four thematic tours (two 1-day tours and two 2 days-1 night homestay tours). Suggestions for related stakeholders to ensure the sustainability of this initiative are provided.

This study is supposed to be a model of promoting small family businesses through OCOP programs and tourism activities in a sustainable way in Vietnam. The outcome of this study is in line with the stakeholder theory emphasizing the systematic connection of various stakeholders such as employees, suppliers, local communities, government agencies and others towards complex business sustainability. The results of the study cannot conclude the small family businesses in Vietnam because it adopts geographic location mapping alone. Moreover, this study focused on OCOP programs only. Future research can use other methods of primary data collection, especially from tourists' perspectives. Data triangulation can be done to explore and verify the tourist routes that have been formed according to the four thematic tours proposed. Future research could also compare hotels managed by family businesses with non-family businesses.

This study is supposed to be a model of promoting small family businesses through OCOP programs and tourism activities in a sustainable way in Vietnam.

This paper seeks to find factors that influence the growth intention of female-owned small businesses in the Ghana’s tourism sector. The purpose of this paper is to investigate why some female entrepreneurs achieve growth objectives while others do not.

In this study, the authors seek to understand the growth intention within the tourism sector because it is not clear why some female entrepreneurs in Ghana pursue growth. The study applies quantitative techniques. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 110 female tourism entrepreneurs in Ghana. Data analysis was conducted using the non-parametric procedures of Spearman’s rank correlation.

The findings of this research reveal that female tourism entrepreneurs in Ghana feel they can expand without entrepreneurial ability(ies). However, the growth of the venture is restricted by the lack of financial resources. Opportunities in the tourism sector do generate more customers, but cannot alone determine growth intentions. Furthermore, an important finding of this study is that business advisory services do not contribute significantly to the growth intention of the venture. The research made clear that the pursuance of growth is related to different types of opportunities and finance leveraging.

The study has gender-specific, industry-specific, size-specific and region-specific limitations. Another limitation is focus on entrepreneurial ability, opportunity and business advisory support services as determinants of female entrepreneurs’ growth intention.

This study provides useful information for government, business agencies and academics seeking reasons on why female entrepreneurs have low growth intentions. Policy measures are provided in assisting women in achieving their growth aspirational needs and suggestions are recommended to encourage women to grow their small tourism businesses.

The research will contribute to improve the socio-economic status of women entrepreneurs in Africa.

This paper addresses an under-researched area of female tourism entrepreneurs and their growth intention from the perspective of a developing country such as Ghana.

The development of tourism and the hospitality industry has facilitated the proliferation of many small and medium accommodation businesses in this region. These usually depend on the attractiveness of tourism products offered in each destination. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the entrepreneurial marketing aspect of accommodation businesses in three urban cities and islands in East Peninsular Malaysia.

Mixed‐method research was conducted on 64 urban hotels and 52 island chalet operators in East Peninsular Malaysia. The results indicate that urban operators are more entrepreneurial than island operators.

To ensure their continued existence in the industry, these operators have adopted different marketing practices. Each tourist destination attracts a different set of tourist profiles and features varying marketing practices. The significant differences in the types of entrepreneurial marketing practiced by urban and island operators are explored in detail in this study.

In implementing a new economic model towards being a high income‐generating country, the tourism sector has become a main driver contributing to the Malaysian economy. With the main objective of maximizing the advantages of a strategic location, together with the comparative advantages arising from its natural resources, the findings are rather fit to the tourism industry.

Discussion and analysis of small businesses tends to work on generalised, popularised understanding and knowledge of what their motivations are and how they behave in a business environment. The need to explore below these generalisations into the submerged variables and relationships is argued in this paper if academics and policy makers seriously want to interpret and induct theory and practice from the key actors within their natural habitat. Thus, this paper provides a conceptual framework relative to small, urban tourism business performance, which is used as an analytical framework to guide the interpretation of qualitative research undertaken with small businesses in the City of Glasgow. Specifically, discussion and conclusions focus on the complexity and multi‐dimensional nature of small tourism business performance, aspects pertaining to competitive advantages, and the enterprise development issues arising from the prioritisation of lifestyle objectives over those of a more explicit economic nature. Conclusions are drawn relative to research, managerial and enterprise policy implications.