tourism

International Journal of Hospitality Management 36 (2014) 31–40

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International Journal of Hospitality Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhosman

Entrepreneurs choice in business venture: Motivations for choosing home-stay accommodation businesses in Peninsular Malaysia
Syed Zamberi Ahmad ∗ , Fauzia Jabeen, Mehmood Khan
Management Department, College of Business Administration, Abu Dhabi University, P.O. Box 59911, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

a r t i c l e

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Keywords:
Home-stay accommodation entrepreneurs
Motivation factors
Push and pull factors
Tourism management
Service industry

a b s t r a c t
Tourism is an important industry for Malaysia, and home-stay accommodation businesses play a significant role in aiding the success of the tourism industry. The aim of this paper is to analyse the start-up motivation factors and business challenges for home-stay accommodation businesses. The data were gathered from a survey of 1250 home-stay entrepreneurs in the country with a usable response rate of
(n = 853) or 68.24 per cent was achieved, and was analysed descriptively. To get more in-depth understanding of the phenomenon, interviews with selected 35 home-stay accommodation entrepreneurs were also conducted. It was found that the main motivations of home-stay entrepreneurs are different to those of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) business in other sectors. The identification of motivational factors in this study provides a clearer account of what actually motivates entrepreneurs to ventures into home-stay accommodation businesses – an under researched area. The paper propose a revised model of motivations factors of home-stay accommodation entrepreneurs, which incorporates two distinct sets of push and pull factors – one that applies to the entrepreneurs of SMEs in other industry and one applies to entrepreneurs in home-stay accommodation tourism

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