Entrepreneurs in rural tourism: Do lifestyle motivations contribute to management practices that enhance sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems?

Rural territories may benefit from the entrepreneurial dynamics created by small tourism businesses, especially if associated to lifestyle motivations of respective entrepreneurs. Despite distrust amongst some researchers regarding small tourism businesses' contribution to rural economies, their potential role for enhancing rural development, should not be neglected. Given the relatively scarce empirical evidence regarding particularly the role of lifestyle entrepreneurs for the development of sustainable entrepreneurial rural ecosystems and communities, the present case-study research, conducted in a rural hinterland region in Southern Portugal (Alto Alentejo), seeks to fill this gap and reveal these entrepreneurs’ role for the regeneration of rural economies, in diverse dimensions. The study explores motivations and management practices of rural tourism entrepreneurs as well as the consequences of their actions, considering data obtained from eight small tourism accommodation units, whose owners participated in semi-structured interviews. Content analysis reveals that the entrepreneurs are motivated by different factors, with lifestyle motivation playing a central role. Challenging the findings of other studies on small businesses in tourism, business efficiency and success are evident as a constant concern, and management practices, although informal, prove to be accurate. In fact, particularly those entrepreneurs more driven by lifestyle motivations show sustainability concerns, reflected in strategies of cross-selling, investments in biological agriculture, ecologically sound management, or the manifold setting into value of local culture. Interestingly, these projects are rewarding to their owners, reveal long-term planning and tend to generate robust networks, which clearly contribute not only to a dynamic but also more sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem of tourism in rural areas.