Tourism entrepreneurship : challenges possibilities in small tourism businesses

The aim of the thesis was to find problems and possibilities in small tourism entrepreneurship. The objective of this report was to present an analytic report about the existing psychological, economic, legislative, and social problems in these types of businesses and to find out the reason why many students do not reach their goal of running tourism business. In addition, the researcher has tried to find out the future prospects in this field, possibilities of having a business of one’s own in this sector. To complete the research, some field exploration was done, where some small tourism entrepreneurs were interviewed. This report is an overview of their thoughts and the existing business. Most of the information was collected from them and from several kinds of other sources. The terms entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial activities were included in the theoretical part in order to make the research clearer and compare the relativity with purpose: the elements of being an entrepreneur, how they grow up, what really makes them think to reach decisions. Analyzing the present business environment and the required environment to establish a business was an important part of this research as well, where the present situation in Finland was discussed. The research was focused on small tourism business so it was necessary to write about the small tourism businesses and their characteristics and the importance of market research. In this report, the challenges when starting a new business, why people are losing their motivation and some other relative questions were discussed. A structured scenario of a small tourism business, has shortly been introduced as well as small tourism businesses, their problems and possibilities. The findings were quite satisfactory, where the respondents have mixed reflections on the tourism business and how tourism strategy should be developed to enhance the tourism business