Entrepreneurship and Tourism: The Nexus for Tourism Industry Development

Entrepreneurship in general has emerged as an innovative pursuit for achieving myriad of socio-economic objectives. Amid competitive tourism markets, entrepreneurial strategies are poised to significantly impact the growth of tourism market as well. Alternatively, the entrepreneurship and tourism combination arguably possesses great potential for fostering economic development of nations. Nevertheless, there are feeble evidences supporting the positive role of entrepreneurship in tourism market. In consideration of above, the present research was undertaken with the primary purpose of exploring the role that entrepreneurs play in the development of tourism sector. The paper adopted a review methodology by intensively reviewing the literature regarding entrepreneurship and tourism development. Existing studies on innovation in hospitality and tourism were reviewed. Results show that entrepreneurship has got a positive influence on the performance of tourism industry. It was also found that tourism industry primarily innovates to improve service quality and the most important obstacle to innovation is cost of innovation activities. The research represents a novel initiative to explore the nascent aspects of this arena. The outcome of the research is expected to aid the researchers to build a more strong literature thread in this field.