BUSINESS GOALS OF FAMILY-OPERATED ACCOMMODATION ENTERPRISES:

ABSTRACT. Middleton (2001) noted that in Europe 95 percent of tourism businesses, generating perhaps one-third of total tourism revenue, are micro-business and most of these are family businesses (Getz, Carlsen and Morrison, 2004). Contrary to their importance in the economic well-being of the country, they suffer a wide range of strategic disadvantages and weaknesses preventing them from a sustainable development and yielding desired outcomes (Yolal and Emeksiz, 2007). At the most basic level a family business can be defined as “... an enterprise which, in practice, is controlled by members of a single family ” (Barry, 1975). The dominance of small and medium sized enterprises in the tourism industry calls for extensive research on the businesses and it is important to expand the knowledge family businesses and the entrepreneurial business goals of these firms. The paper aims at examining business goals of family operated accommodation enterprises. The sampling frame for the survey is the family-operated accommodation enterprises employing 1 to 10 employees. A total of 105 questionnaires were collected in February and March 2009. The results of the study showed that almost two third of the entrepreneurs were first generation in the family business. The results revealed that the business goals of the family businesses in the study are growth, retirement and slow down. The results also indicated that the entrepreneurs ar mostly lifestyle entrepreneurs. The study concludes with discussions based on the findings