The Study of Licensed Leisure Farms' Business Model

[[abstract]]The activities in leisure farms are becoming increasingly important in Taiwan domestic travel. However, through July 2005, only 34 out of over 1100 relevant leisure farms obtained legal license. The purpose of this study was to analysis the business model of licensed leisure farms. This study based on the business model which developed by Fry, Stoner, and Hattwick（2004）.Key elements of the business model include: 1.Vision and Mission, 2.Indicators of success, 3.Assessing the environment and its impact, 4.Providing excellence in products and services, and 5.Evaluating results and making changes. This study collected data from document analysis, non-participated observation and in-depth interviews with 8 licensed leisure farm owners that conducted from August 2005 to October 2006. The two major findings were listed as following: 1.This study divided leisure farm into 2 types:（1）Working farm: In working farms, the farmers grow and sold agricultural products. They also provided activities for visitors to learn some knowledge about agriculture.（2）Recreational farm: In recreational farms, the owners invested and developed farmland for providing recreational activities. They were not necessarily grow or sold agricultural products in their farms. They provided activities by new recreational facilities. 2. There are two business models in leisure farms:（1）The working farms tried to innovate value from their farms’ resource to provide high quality agriculture products and good services in the competitive environment.（2）The recreational farms tended to invest the farmland became a theme recreational farm with creative facilities and new activities in rural area. From the results, there are two suggestions:1.The suggestion to working farm: The study suggests to cooperate with local tourism attractions and/or with other interesting farms for packaging 1 or 2 days tour; create new agricultural activities which can provide visitors added value experience in appreciating the beauty, ecology & sustainable of agricultural; also the family members need to have lifetime learning attitude for upgrading related know how to keep the farm always compatible in the market.2.The suggestion to recreational farm: The study suggests to access the potential attractions which already exist in the farm, rather than investing on new facilities, follow by developing the farm with new technology in protection of natural resources for controlling the maintained expenses and operation cost; to create appropriate activities and consider fun, entertaining element into the activities to provide added value for visitors and increase the repeated rate.