In this section, you will learn about how to define the principles of entrepreneurship for tourism businesses and how to get started as an entrepreneur in tourism.
This course will help you start your own business by introducing you the stories of three outstanding people who have started from scratch and became successful entrepreneurs. You will learn about their experiences, challenges and successes.
Who is this course for?
The course is intended for anyone thinking of starting their own business and anyone interested in the topic.
What will you learn?
- You will learn how to define the principles of entrepreneurship for tourism businesses and how to get started as an entrepreneur in tourism
- You will learn how to recall skills and behavior for entrepreneurial thinking and how to apply some methods for entrepreneurial thinking
Keywords: Sustainability, tourism, management, entrepreneurship, tourism business
Lesson 1: Read these Stories of success
Abou Ba: A good guide will do so that the traveler who arrives, not only discovers, but loves his country. This is the role of a guide, discover and make people love your country. My name is Abou Ba, I specialise in tailor-made adventure tourism, to better meet the expectations of travelers.
Baba Mbengue: My name is Baba Mbengue. I am the initiator and the creator of this establishment. To operate you have to learn the job, and that’s why I went to work in various hotels in France. With my experience, I must return to Senegal and invest.
Paloma Sané: Cooking is first and foremost about the love for sharing, It’s a lot of memories for my family. We have this love of sharing moments of happiness around a dish. La Favela is a warm, friendly space. When someone comes to La Favela, they feel like being at home even if they never been here. We really wanted to look for an original space giving you the impression that you are no longer in Dakar.
Baba Mbengue: In the beginning, it was not easy. When we came here, there was no water or electricity. So it took us seven years to find water here. I dug wells myself, I went into wells and I dug everywhere. So it was super complicated but I was very motivated, and I believed in it.
Abou Ba: I say, the guide is like the shepherd. It’s the flashlight. It’s the Pellerin stick. It’s an essential element if you really want to discover a country. At the time when I was starting tourism, we used telex, faxes and all that. Currently, what makes the charm that boosts tourism, is digital experience.
Paloma Sané: Today, I see that both Senegalese and West African cuisine, are beginning to get more recognition around the world. The challenges, are sometimes be to adapted precisely to the products that are on the market. We can have sublime products but at times and according to the seasons and the period, we have to give up on our ideas. We launched a restaurant in the midst of Covid. At that time, it’s not that we regret but we wonder, if we made the right choice, and we asked how we’re going to try to survive.
Baba Mbengue: We were closed for 4 months. We renovated the rooms, changed the bathrooms, had them repainted. But in return, the benefits are nice. My job is my passion. Tourism brings experiences that cannot be found anywhere else.
Paloma Sané: Facing challenges gives you even more strength. I think that, in fact, we must never give up. Adaptability is a key point for success in entrepreneurship.
What is a tourism entrepreneur?
An entrepreneur is an individual who creates or runs a small business, bearing most of the risks.At least, that is the case in theory. But what does it really mean to be an entrepreneur? Fati, Boubacar and Abdou have walked their path to entrepreneurial success.
Paloma Sané: Paloma runs the restaurant La Favela in Dakar. Her goal has always been to create a place that is warm and friendly and where her guests immediately feel at home.
Baba Mbengue
Before Baba opened his hotel, he wanted to gain experience in the hotel industry to be well prepared for the challenges ahead. So he worked in France for a few years before returning to Senegal to open his hotel.
Abdou Ba
After many years as a tour guide, Abdou Ba wanted to become his own boss. In 2001, he created his own agency, a sustainable family business with ten direct and indirect jobs specializing in niche tourism and travel.
Abdou Ba’s primary area of guiding is in Djilor, on the Sine Saloum Delta.
So what does a Tourism Entrepreneur do?
- Have very good self and time management
- Market your business
- Take risks and adhere to new challenges
- Liase with a bank manager for a loan
- Get moral support from your family and friends
- Define what area of tourism you want your business to be in
- Research the tourism industry and tourism trends
- Hire and fire the right people
- Work long hours to ensure your business takes off
- Network with people in the industry that will benefit your business
- Step out of your comfort zone
- Plan a working schedule
Entrepreneurship is the engine that drives any successful industry or economy. It plays a vital role in shaping and transforming the supply of leisure and recreational opportunities and it is considered as a critical factor in tourism development, both regionally and globally.
Check your knowledge
Tourism entrepreneurship can be seen as a wide range of activities related to:
(select those that are correct)
- Creating and operating a legal tourist enterprise
- Working in a large organisation that has complex structures
- Growing your business in a sustainable manner
- Focusing on customer complaints mainly
- Applying creative and innovative business approaches to target the diverse tourism market.
- Having a fixed working day
Do you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur?
Lesson 2: Why is being an entrepreneur important?
Impact your community
Development: You can trigger economic and social development, especially in rural areas. You can help to create new jobs in your area, increase the standard of living and raise the quality of life in your community.
Abdou was keen to make the Sine-Saloum Delta tangible for his guests. Since 2011, the delta has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site as an important breeding ground for birds and wildlife.
Innovation: Have a new business idea in tourism and promote new, future-oriented developments. Foster innovation, creativity and the drive forward in your community.
Celebrating and living Senegalese hospitality was a dream come true for Baba.
Demands: With your small company, you can quickly respond to new demands in tourism and you can develop new products or services that the market really needs.
For Paloma, it was clear from the beginning that she wanted to make African food culture affordable and accessible to all.
Personal rewards
Constant growth and development
Starting a business forces you to constantly improve your skill set, from product development to marketing, from legal issues to finding financial support. There is always more to learn and apply to your business, which can encourage constant professional growth.
Greater self-confidence
Nothing boosts your confidence more than battling self-doubt. You will become more confident in your self-sufficiency as time goes on and you see what you are truly capable of.
Leadership experience
Self-discipline, communication skills, passion, optimism, patience and unrelenting work ethic. Building a small business from the ground up develops leadership traits, which means that entrepreneurship can transform you into an inspiring leader, both professionally and personally.
Autonomy
It turns out that employees who have more control over their work tend to be more engaged and less emotionally exhausted. Just another perk of being your own boss.
Enormous opportunities
Setting up your own business means you will be a critical part of a small organisation rather than being a small part of a large organisation.
Flexible schedule
You can create your own schedule. Start your day early if you’re a morning person or work later in the day if you prefer evenings.
Creating a career that aligns with your values
Aligning your personal values with your business values is an intensely gratifying experience. Entrepreneurship allows you to fashion a career that directly aligns with your core values, like helping others or saving the environment.
Meeting like-minded people
You will join a group of ambitious and helpful people and will be able to reach out for help during tough times.
Unexpected and thrilling experiences
You probably appreciate the value of the unexpected. Not knowing exactly how the day is going to play out when you wake up is exciting. On top of that, responding to unexpected situations teaches you to live in the moment and be more present.
Tourism is one of the largest and fastest growing industries today. With its rapid growth and ever rising expectations from tourists, a diversification of tourism products, services and experiences is needed. And this requires entrepreneurs with innovative, fresh ideas to start out their businesses.
Lesson 3: Who is involved in starting a tourism business?
Starting your business involves a great amount of work, which requires not only a lot of people power and financial resources, but also mental stability.
Starting and running your company cannot be realised by you alone. It is important to get support from a broad network of family, friends, community members, tourism professionals and many more. As small business owners, you need a lot of support to succeed, whether it’s financial, operational or emotional.
Who is part of your support team?
For me, my friends and family have been my most important support. Especially in the beginning, I probably wouldn’t have dared to start my business without their support and motivation. Paloma Sané
Your friends and family are particularly important in supporting you as you start your business. They can provide emotional, financial, material or labour support.
In the beginning, there was no water
In the beginning, there was no water or electricity. It took us seven years to find water here, and I dug the wells myself. Baba Mbengue
Networking is about building relationships, sharing information and finding sources of support. It is important to leave one’s own comfort zone and venture into new territory with new faces and new ideas. It’s time to expand your network and knowledge and meet more contacts who could help get you that much closer to your goals.
I received my certificate in 1991 for the auxiliary professional for tourist guiding and interpreting. So I had training and professional knowledge in tour guiding. But running my own business was something completely different. It was very helpful to have the expertise of people who really know the business. Abdou Ba
You can get support in many different ways, for example by looking for local experts on social media and getting in touch with them. But also a conversation at the local market can be very helpful, not only to find out the needs of the potential guests, but also for a professional exchange.
Just start: Deciding where to start can be overwhelming at first. Make a list of relevant stakeholders to contact. Before you know it, you’ll have an even more impressive network than you could have imagined.
Lesson 4: Is Entrepreneurship for you?
Are you excited thinking about owning and running a business yourself? While it sounds very tempting, being an entrepreneur also means taking on a lot of responsibilities and facing a lot of challenges.
You need to find out if you are capable of running your own business.
Survey: Is Entrepreneurship for you?
Find out if you have the basic requirements of an entrepreneur. Be honest with yourself!
Tick all that apply to you.
- Passion: Are you passionate about running your own business? Are you enthusiastic about making your business a success and are you willing to put it before almost everything else?
- Goal orientation: Are you able to see the big picture and create clear goals for your business? Are you determined to direct all of your endeavors toward achieving your goals?
- Making decisions: When you are confronted with a difficult situation, are you able to keep calm, seek adequate information and make important decisions without postponing or passing the problem on to someone else?
- Taking risks: There is no absolutely safe business idea. You always run the risk of failure. Are you aware of the risks and do you accept the possibility that your business might fail? Have you sought adequate information so that you can honestly estimate how big a risk you are going to take?
- Ability to handle stress: You will have to face a lot of stress when making difficult decisions, managing different business stakeholders and working long hours. Are you able to maintain a positive spirit under pressure? Can you see opportunities in difficult situations?
- Social support: Running your business will take a lot of time and effort. Will you get adequate support from family, friends and other business people?
- Financial situation: Access to financial resources to start your business is important. Have you set some money aside to get your business started? Do you have family or friends who might be willing and able to lend you money? Do you have a savings or credit history with a financial institution that provides start-up loans?
- Business management skills: Business management skills means the ability to run your business efficiently. Are you good in some business management areas, such as marketing, sales, costing or staff motivation?
If you answered YES to most of the questions, then you can consider this ability as one of your strengths. If you answered NO to most of the questions or you are not quite sure about the answers, you need some improvement before you start your business.
Innovation and Entrepreneurial Thinking
Lesson 1: What is entrepreneurial thinking?
Entrepreneurial thinking is all about harnessing passions, skills, experience, knowledge and insights, resources and networks to take advantage of opportunities at the right time and in the right way.
Way of thinking
It is not just about starting a business or spinning out a company from research. It’s a mindset or a way of thinking. Entrepreneurs think and do things differently.
Knowing the tourism industry
Being entrepreneurial can mean knowing the tourism industry inside out, and being able to exploit that knowledge to create new opportunities.
Sharing ideas freely
Being entrepreneurial can mean sharing ideas freely and celebrating so-called failures as learning and growing experiences.
Thinking outside of the box
Being entrepreneurial can mean simply thinking outside of the box, and expecting the unexpected.
What does it mean to be entrepreneurial?
1. Entrepreneurs embrace uncomfortable experiences they can learn from
2. Entrepreneurs take risks and are self-directed
3. Entrepreneurs think critically and are creative problem solvers
4. Entrepreneurs are flexible, adaptable and see opportunities
5. Entrepreneurs stretch their knowledge by asking, listening, reading and connecting
Lesson 2: Who can think like an entrepreneur?
I would say: anyone can think like an entrepreneur.
I am no Bill Gates (Microsoft) or Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), who are fantastic entrepreneurs. But I dared to do something and instead of seeing the risks, I saw the rewards. Abdou Baba
Be proactive
Ask questions and take initiative
A typical 4-year-old asks an average of 100 questions every day. There is never a fear of asking a ‘stupid’ question. Entrepreneurs should ask challenging questions about the true value of their innovation and stretch their knowledge.
Improvise
Put yourself on the spot and adapt to the situation as it unfolds. Find opportunities to come out of your comfort zone and put yourself in unfamiliar situations from time to time.
Be Open to Risk
Employ the OODA Loop, an acronym for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. Making decisions quickly based on the best information you have means risk is part of your day-to-day work. Speed up your decision time in non-critical areas.
Be Self-Driven
Seek to be your own boss, set your own schedule and be accountable to yourself. Develop a sense of self-driven discipline and set clear and challenging goals for yourself.
Expose Yourself to New Situations
The more experience and stimulus you can give your brain, the rawer the material it has for identifying opportunities, making connections and solving problems.
But being proactive alone is not enough. You also need to be flexible, adaptable and open minded.
Be flexible, adapt and don’t be limited
Think ahead
Where do you want to be in 5,10 and 20 years? Entrepreneurs are good at thinking in the present, but should also try to have a vision of the future.
Working across disciplines
Think about the broader picture and the impact of your business. Look for opportunities in not-so-obvious places and find a way to exploit these.
Be ready to fail
Accept, expect, plan for and learn from failure. Making mistakes is healthy and normal. Find out what you can do to make up for mistakes and move on.
Develop transferable skills
Think about the skills you have and how they can be applied to different situations. Entrepreneurs must have a breadth of transferable skills, such as being the developer, marketer, salesperson and accountant for their idea.
Take an interest in others
Be keen to hear other people’s stories and experiences. Our personal experience of the world is limited and the more perspectives we have on a situation, idea or problem, the better we understand it. After all, knowledge is power.
Rest your brain
When we rest, or switch our focus to something else, the unconscious brain sets to work making random links between thoughts and experiences. That’s why we have so many ideas or solve so many problems when we are out walking the dog or taking a bath.
Exercise and be healthy
To maximise entrepreneurial thinking, our brain needs to be in good working order. Eating healthily gives it the nutrition it needs. We need to exercise. When we exercise, we release endorphins which increase creativity and problem solving.
So, being entrepreneurial means being innovative, creative, resourceful and adaptable.
Lesson 3: How can you foster innovation and entrepreneurial thinking?
Without the vision and innovative ideas of entrepreneurs, sustainable tourism examples and success stories would be rare, probably non-existent.
In entrepreneurial thinking, flexibility is crucial to adapt to ongoing changes. It focuses on the creation of new ideas, on challenging assumptions, redefining problems and creating innovative solutions. It encourages us to explore new alternatives, new solutions, new ideas that have not existed before. Paloma Sané
Innovation comes from identifying customers’ needs and providing solutions that meet those needs.
Innovation and entrepreneurial thinking cannot be considered in isolation. It is crucial to set up and run your business in accordance with the needs of your customers.
Now you ask yourself, how can I find out about the needs of my customers?
- By creating a focus group, where you collectively interview a small group of people who represent your target audience.
- By running a survey online.
- By listening to social media where you analyse what is being said about tourism and your niche on social channels.
Design thinking
Find out what your customers really need by designing your service or product with a human-centred design method that is called design thinking. The key components are:
- Searching and understanding your customers’ pain points/problems
- Prototyping potential solutions
- Fast iterations to improve the product or service
Design thinking
What are the individual steps of the method? Find out here!
Step 1: Empathize: Research Your Users’ Needs
Gain an empathetic understanding of the problem you’re trying to solve, typically through user research. Empathy allows you to gain real insight into your customer and their needs.
Step 2: Define: State Your Users’ Needs and Problems
It’s time to accumulate the information gathered during the Empathise stage. Analyse your observations and synthesise them to define the core problems you have identified. These definitions are called problem statements.
Step 3: Ideate: Challenge Assumptions and Create Ideas
Now, you’re ready to generate ideas. The solid background of knowledge from the first two phases means you can start to think outside the box, look for alternative ways to view the problem and identify innovative solutions to the problem statement you’ve created. Brainstorming is useful.
Step 4: Prototype: Start to Create Solutions
Experiment. Identify the best possible solution for each problem found. Produce some inexpensive, scaled-down versions of the product to investigate the ideas you’ve generated. This could involve simply paper prototyping.
Step 5: Test: Try Your Solutions Out
Test your prototype. Although this is the final phase, design thinking is iterative: use the results to redefine one or more further problems. So, you can return to previous stages to make further iterations, alterations and refinements – to find or rule out alternative solutions
Now that you have studied and passed this module you can encourage your entrepreneurial thinking.
MODULE 1: ENTREPRENEURSHIP FOR TOURISM BUSINESS
In this section, you will learn about how to define the principles of entrepreneurship for tourism businesses and how to get started as an entrepreneur in tourism.
This course will help you start your own business by introducing you the stories of three outstanding people who have started from scratch and became successful entrepreneurs. You will learn about their experiences, challenges and successes.
Who is this course for?
The course is intended for anyone thinking of starting their own business and anyone interested in the topic.
What will you learn?
- You will learn how to define the principles of entrepreneurship for tourism businesses and how to get started as an entrepreneur in tourism
- You will learn how to recall skills and behavior for entrepreneurial thinking and how to apply some methods for entrepreneurial thinking
Keywords: Sustainability, tourism, management, entrepreneurship, tourism business
Lesson 1: Read these Stories of success
Abou Ba: A good guide will do so that the traveler who arrives, not only discovers, but loves his country. This is the role of a guide, discover and make people love your country. My name is Abou Ba, I specialise in tailor-made adventure tourism, to better meet the expectations of travelers.
Baba Mbengue: My name is Baba Mbengue. I am the initiator and the creator of this establishment. To operate you have to learn the job, and that’s why I went to work in various hotels in France. With my experience, I must return to Senegal and invest.
Paloma Sané: Cooking is first and foremost about the love for sharing, It’s a lot of memories for my family. We have this love of sharing moments of happiness around a dish. La Favela is a warm, friendly space. When someone comes to La Favela, they feel like being at home even if they never been here. We really wanted to look for an original space giving you the impression that you are no longer in Dakar.
Baba Mbengue: In the beginning, it was not easy. When we came here, there was no water or electricity. So it took us seven years to find water here. I dug wells myself, I went into wells and I dug everywhere. So it was super complicated but I was very motivated, and I believed in it.
Abou Ba: I say, the guide is like the shepherd. It’s the flashlight. It’s the Pellerin stick. It’s an essential element if you really want to discover a country. At the time when I was starting tourism, we used telex, faxes and all that. Currently, what makes the charm that boosts tourism, is digital experience.
Paloma Sané: Today, I see that both Senegalese and West African cuisine, are beginning to get more recognition around the world. The challenges, are sometimes be to adapted precisely to the products that are on the market. We can have sublime products but at times and according to the seasons and the period, we have to give up on our ideas. We launched a restaurant in the midst of Covid. At that time, it’s not that we regret but we wonder, if we made the right choice, and we asked how we’re going to try to survive.
Baba Mbengue: We were closed for 4 months. We renovated the rooms, changed the bathrooms, had them repainted. But in return, the benefits are nice. My job is my passion. Tourism brings experiences that cannot be found anywhere else.
Paloma Sané: Facing challenges gives you even more strength. I think that, in fact, we must never give up. Adaptability is a key point for success in entrepreneurship.
What is a tourism entrepreneur?
An entrepreneur is an individual who creates or runs a small business, bearing most of the risks.At least, that is the case in theory. But what does it really mean to be an entrepreneur? Fati, Boubacar and Abdou have walked their path to entrepreneurial success.
Paloma Sané: Paloma runs the restaurant La Favela in Dakar. Her goal has always been to create a place that is warm and friendly and where her guests immediately feel at home.
Baba Mbengue
Before Baba opened his hotel, he wanted to gain experience in the hotel industry to be well prepared for the challenges ahead. So he worked in France for a few years before returning to Senegal to open his hotel.
Abdou Ba
After many years as a tour guide, Abdou Ba wanted to become his own boss. In 2001, he created his own agency, a sustainable family business with ten direct and indirect jobs specializing in niche tourism and travel.
Abdou Ba’s primary area of guiding is in Djilor, on the Sine Saloum Delta.
So what does a Tourism Entrepreneur do?
- Have very good self and time management
- Market your business
- Take risks and adhere to new challenges
- Liase with a bank manager for a loan
- Get moral support from your family and friends
- Define what area of tourism you want your business to be in
- Research the tourism industry and tourism trends
- Hire and fire the right people
- Work long hours to ensure your business takes off
- Network with people in the industry that will benefit your business
- Step out of your comfort zone
- Plan a working schedule
Entrepreneurship is the engine that drives any successful industry or economy. It plays a vital role in shaping and transforming the supply of leisure and recreational opportunities and it is considered as a critical factor in tourism development, both regionally and globally.
Check your knowledge
Tourism entrepreneurship can be seen as a wide range of activities related to:
(select those that are correct)
- Creating and operating a legal tourist enterprise
- Working in a large organisation that has complex structures
- Growing your business in a sustainable manner
- Focusing on customer complaints mainly
- Applying creative and innovative business approaches to target the diverse tourism market.
- Having a fixed working day
Do you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur?
Lesson 2: Why is being an entrepreneur important?
Impact your community
Development: You can trigger economic and social development, especially in rural areas. You can help to create new jobs in your area, increase the standard of living and raise the quality of life in your community.
Abdou was keen to make the Sine-Saloum Delta tangible for his guests. Since 2011, the delta has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site as an important breeding ground for birds and wildlife.
Innovation: Have a new business idea in tourism and promote new, future-oriented developments. Foster innovation, creativity and the drive forward in your community.
Celebrating and living Senegalese hospitality was a dream come true for Baba.
Demands: With your small company, you can quickly respond to new demands in tourism and you can develop new products or services that the market really needs.
For Paloma, it was clear from the beginning that she wanted to make African food culture affordable and accessible to all.
Personal rewards
Constant growth and development
Starting a business forces you to constantly improve your skill set, from product development to marketing, from legal issues to finding financial support. There is always more to learn and apply to your business, which can encourage constant professional growth.
Greater self-confidence
Nothing boosts your confidence more than battling self-doubt. You will become more confident in your self-sufficiency as time goes on and you see what you are truly capable of.
Leadership experience
Self-discipline, communication skills, passion, optimism, patience and unrelenting work ethic. Building a small business from the ground up develops leadership traits, which means that entrepreneurship can transform you into an inspiring leader, both professionally and personally.
Autonomy
It turns out that employees who have more control over their work tend to be more engaged and less emotionally exhausted. Just another perk of being your own boss.
Enormous opportunities
Setting up your own business means you will be a critical part of a small organisation rather than being a small part of a large organisation.
Flexible schedule
You can create your own schedule. Start your day early if you’re a morning person or work later in the day if you prefer evenings.
Creating a career that aligns with your values
Aligning your personal values with your business values is an intensely gratifying experience. Entrepreneurship allows you to fashion a career that directly aligns with your core values, like helping others or saving the environment.
Meeting like-minded people
You will join a group of ambitious and helpful people and will be able to reach out for help during tough times.
Unexpected and thrilling experiences
You probably appreciate the value of the unexpected. Not knowing exactly how the day is going to play out when you wake up is exciting. On top of that, responding to unexpected situations teaches you to live in the moment and be more present.
Tourism is one of the largest and fastest growing industries today. With its rapid growth and ever rising expectations from tourists, a diversification of tourism products, services and experiences is needed. And this requires entrepreneurs with innovative, fresh ideas to start out their businesses.
Lesson 3: Who is involved in starting a tourism business?
Starting your business involves a great amount of work, which requires not only a lot of people power and financial resources, but also mental stability.
Starting and running your company cannot be realised by you alone. It is important to get support from a broad network of family, friends, community members, tourism professionals and many more. As small business owners, you need a lot of support to succeed, whether it’s financial, operational or emotional.
Who is part of your support team?
For me, my friends and family have been my most important support. Especially in the beginning, I probably wouldn’t have dared to start my business without their support and motivation. Paloma Sané
Your friends and family are particularly important in supporting you as you start your business. They can provide emotional, financial, material or labour support.
In the beginning, there was no water
In the beginning, there was no water or electricity. It took us seven years to find water here, and I dug the wells myself. Baba Mbengue
Networking is about building relationships, sharing information and finding sources of support. It is important to leave one’s own comfort zone and venture into new territory with new faces and new ideas. It’s time to expand your network and knowledge and meet more contacts who could help get you that much closer to your goals.
I received my certificate in 1991 for the auxiliary professional for tourist guiding and interpreting. So I had training and professional knowledge in tour guiding. But running my own business was something completely different. It was very helpful to have the expertise of people who really know the business. Abdou Ba
You can get support in many different ways, for example by looking for local experts on social media and getting in touch with them. But also a conversation at the local market can be very helpful, not only to find out the needs of the potential guests, but also for a professional exchange.
Just start: Deciding where to start can be overwhelming at first. Make a list of relevant stakeholders to contact. Before you know it, you’ll have an even more impressive network than you could have imagined.
Lesson 4: Is Entrepreneurship for you?
Are you excited thinking about owning and running a business yourself? While it sounds very tempting, being an entrepreneur also means taking on a lot of responsibilities and facing a lot of challenges.
You need to find out if you are capable of running your own business.
Survey: Is Entrepreneurship for you?
Find out if you have the basic requirements of an entrepreneur. Be honest with yourself!
Tick all that apply to you.
- Passion: Are you passionate about running your own business? Are you enthusiastic about making your business a success and are you willing to put it before almost everything else?
- Goal orientation: Are you able to see the big picture and create clear goals for your business? Are you determined to direct all of your endeavors toward achieving your goals?
- Making decisions: When you are confronted with a difficult situation, are you able to keep calm, seek adequate information and make important decisions without postponing or passing the problem on to someone else?
- Taking risks: There is no absolutely safe business idea. You always run the risk of failure. Are you aware of the risks and do you accept the possibility that your business might fail? Have you sought adequate information so that you can honestly estimate how big a risk you are going to take?
- Ability to handle stress: You will have to face a lot of stress when making difficult decisions, managing different business stakeholders and working long hours. Are you able to maintain a positive spirit under pressure? Can you see opportunities in difficult situations?
- Social support: Running your business will take a lot of time and effort. Will you get adequate support from family, friends and other business people?
- Financial situation: Access to financial resources to start your business is important. Have you set some money aside to get your business started? Do you have family or friends who might be willing and able to lend you money? Do you have a savings or credit history with a financial institution that provides start-up loans?
- Business management skills: Business management skills means the ability to run your business efficiently. Are you good in some business management areas, such as marketing, sales, costing or staff motivation?
If you answered YES to most of the questions, then you can consider this ability as one of your strengths. If you answered NO to most of the questions or you are not quite sure about the answers, you need some improvement before you start your business.
Innovation and Entrepreneurial Thinking
Lesson 1: What is entrepreneurial thinking?
Entrepreneurial thinking is all about harnessing passions, skills, experience, knowledge and insights, resources and networks to take advantage of opportunities at the right time and in the right way.
Way of thinking
It is not just about starting a business or spinning out a company from research. It’s a mindset or a way of thinking. Entrepreneurs think and do things differently.
Knowing the tourism industry
Being entrepreneurial can mean knowing the tourism industry inside out, and being able to exploit that knowledge to create new opportunities.
Sharing ideas freely
Being entrepreneurial can mean sharing ideas freely and celebrating so-called failures as learning and growing experiences.
Thinking outside of the box
Being entrepreneurial can mean simply thinking outside of the box, and expecting the unexpected.
What does it mean to be entrepreneurial?
1. Entrepreneurs embrace uncomfortable experiences they can learn from
2. Entrepreneurs take risks and are self-directed
3. Entrepreneurs think critically and are creative problem solvers
4. Entrepreneurs are flexible, adaptable and see opportunities
5. Entrepreneurs stretch their knowledge by asking, listening, reading and connecting
Lesson 2: Who can think like an entrepreneur?
I would say: anyone can think like an entrepreneur.
I am no Bill Gates (Microsoft) or Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), who are fantastic entrepreneurs. But I dared to do something and instead of seeing the risks, I saw the rewards. Abdou Baba
Be proactive
Ask questions and take initiative
A typical 4-year-old asks an average of 100 questions every day. There is never a fear of asking a ‘stupid’ question. Entrepreneurs should ask challenging questions about the true value of their innovation and stretch their knowledge.
Improvise
Put yourself on the spot and adapt to the situation as it unfolds. Find opportunities to come out of your comfort zone and put yourself in unfamiliar situations from time to time.
Be Open to Risk
Employ the OODA Loop, an acronym for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. Making decisions quickly based on the best information you have means risk is part of your day-to-day work. Speed up your decision time in non-critical areas.
Be Self-Driven
Seek to be your own boss, set your own schedule and be accountable to yourself. Develop a sense of self-driven discipline and set clear and challenging goals for yourself.
Expose Yourself to New Situations
The more experience and stimulus you can give your brain, the rawer the material it has for identifying opportunities, making connections and solving problems.
But being proactive alone is not enough. You also need to be flexible, adaptable and open minded.
Be flexible, adapt and don’t be limited
Think ahead
Where do you want to be in 5,10 and 20 years? Entrepreneurs are good at thinking in the present, but should also try to have a vision of the future.
Working across disciplines
Think about the broader picture and the impact of your business. Look for opportunities in not-so-obvious places and find a way to exploit these.
Be ready to fail
Accept, expect, plan for and learn from failure. Making mistakes is healthy and normal. Find out what you can do to make up for mistakes and move on.
Develop transferable skills
Think about the skills you have and how they can be applied to different situations. Entrepreneurs must have a breadth of transferable skills, such as being the developer, marketer, salesperson and accountant for their idea.
Take an interest in others
Be keen to hear other people’s stories and experiences. Our personal experience of the world is limited and the more perspectives we have on a situation, idea or problem, the better we understand it. After all, knowledge is power.
Rest your brain
When we rest, or switch our focus to something else, the unconscious brain sets to work making random links between thoughts and experiences. That’s why we have so many ideas or solve so many problems when we are out walking the dog or taking a bath.
Exercise and be healthy
To maximise entrepreneurial thinking, our brain needs to be in good working order. Eating healthily gives it the nutrition it needs. We need to exercise. When we exercise, we release endorphins which increase creativity and problem solving.
So, being entrepreneurial means being innovative, creative, resourceful and adaptable.
Lesson 3: How can you foster innovation and entrepreneurial thinking?
Without the vision and innovative ideas of entrepreneurs, sustainable tourism examples and success stories would be rare, probably non-existent.
In entrepreneurial thinking, flexibility is crucial to adapt to ongoing changes. It focuses on the creation of new ideas, on challenging assumptions, redefining problems and creating innovative solutions. It encourages us to explore new alternatives, new solutions, new ideas that have not existed before. Paloma Sané
Innovation comes from identifying customers’ needs and providing solutions that meet those needs.
Innovation and entrepreneurial thinking cannot be considered in isolation. It is crucial to set up and run your business in accordance with the needs of your customers.
Now you ask yourself, how can I find out about the needs of my customers?
- By creating a focus group, where you collectively interview a small group of people who represent your target audience.
- By running a survey online.
- By listening to social media where you analyse what is being said about tourism and your niche on social channels.
Design thinking
Find out what your customers really need by designing your service or product with a human-centred design method that is called design thinking. The key components are:
- Searching and understanding your customers’ pain points/problems
- Prototyping potential solutions
- Fast iterations to improve the product or service
Design thinking
What are the individual steps of the method? Find out here!
Step 1: Empathize: Research Your Users’ Needs
Gain an empathetic understanding of the problem you’re trying to solve, typically through user research. Empathy allows you to gain real insight into your customer and their needs.
Step 2: Define: State Your Users’ Needs and Problems
It’s time to accumulate the information gathered during the Empathise stage. Analyse your observations and synthesise them to define the core problems you have identified. These definitions are called problem statements.
Step 3: Ideate: Challenge Assumptions and Create Ideas
Now, you’re ready to generate ideas. The solid background of knowledge from the first two phases means you can start to think outside the box, look for alternative ways to view the problem and identify innovative solutions to the problem statement you’ve created. Brainstorming is useful.
Step 4: Prototype: Start to Create Solutions
Experiment. Identify the best possible solution for each problem found. Produce some inexpensive, scaled-down versions of the product to investigate the ideas you’ve generated. This could involve simply paper prototyping.
Step 5: Test: Try Your Solutions Out
Test your prototype. Although this is the final phase, design thinking is iterative: use the results to redefine one or more further problems. So, you can return to previous stages to make further iterations, alterations and refinements – to find or rule out alternative solutions
Now that you have studied and passed this module you can encourage your entrepreneurial thinking.
In this section, you will learn about how to define the principles of entrepreneurship for tourism businesses and how to get started as an entrepreneur in tourism.
This course will help you start your own business by introducing you the stories of three outstanding people who have started from scratch and became successful entrepreneurs. You will learn about their experiences, challenges and successes.
Who is this course for?
The course is intended for anyone thinking of starting their own business and anyone interested in the topic.
What will you learn?
- You will learn how to define the principles of entrepreneurship for tourism businesses and how to get started as an entrepreneur in tourism
- You will learn how to recall skills and behavior for entrepreneurial thinking and how to apply some methods for entrepreneurial thinking
Keywords: Sustainability, tourism, management, entrepreneurship, tourism business
Lesson 1: Read these Stories of success
Abou Ba: A good guide will do so that the traveler who arrives, not only discovers, but loves his country. This is the role of a guide, discover and make people love your country. My name is Abou Ba, I specialise in tailor-made adventure tourism, to better meet the expectations of travelers.
Baba Mbengue: My name is Baba Mbengue. I am the initiator and the creator of this establishment. To operate you have to learn the job, and that’s why I went to work in various hotels in France. With my experience, I must return to Senegal and invest.
Paloma Sané: Cooking is first and foremost about the love for sharing, It’s a lot of memories for my family. We have this love of sharing moments of happiness around a dish. La Favela is a warm, friendly space. When someone comes to La Favela, they feel like being at home even if they never been here. We really wanted to look for an original space giving you the impression that you are no longer in Dakar.
Baba Mbengue: In the beginning, it was not easy. When we came here, there was no water or electricity. So it took us seven years to find water here. I dug wells myself, I went into wells and I dug everywhere. So it was super complicated but I was very motivated, and I believed in it.
Abou Ba: I say, the guide is like the shepherd. It’s the flashlight. It’s the Pellerin stick. It’s an essential element if you really want to discover a country. At the time when I was starting tourism, we used telex, faxes and all that. Currently, what makes the charm that boosts tourism, is digital experience.
Paloma Sané: Today, I see that both Senegalese and West African cuisine, are beginning to get more recognition around the world. The challenges, are sometimes be to adapted precisely to the products that are on the market. We can have sublime products but at times and according to the seasons and the period, we have to give up on our ideas. We launched a restaurant in the midst of Covid. At that time, it’s not that we regret but we wonder, if we made the right choice, and we asked how we’re going to try to survive.
Baba Mbengue: We were closed for 4 months. We renovated the rooms, changed the bathrooms, had them repainted. But in return, the benefits are nice. My job is my passion. Tourism brings experiences that cannot be found anywhere else.
Paloma Sané: Facing challenges gives you even more strength. I think that, in fact, we must never give up. Adaptability is a key point for success in entrepreneurship.
What is a tourism entrepreneur?
An entrepreneur is an individual who creates or runs a small business, bearing most of the risks.At least, that is the case in theory. But what does it really mean to be an entrepreneur? Fati, Boubacar and Abdou have walked their path to entrepreneurial success.
Paloma Sané: Paloma runs the restaurant La Favela in Dakar. Her goal has always been to create a place that is warm and friendly and where her guests immediately feel at home.
Baba Mbengue
Before Baba opened his hotel, he wanted to gain experience in the hotel industry to be well prepared for the challenges ahead. So he worked in France for a few years before returning to Senegal to open his hotel.
Abdou Ba
After many years as a tour guide, Abdou Ba wanted to become his own boss. In 2001, he created his own agency, a sustainable family business with ten direct and indirect jobs specializing in niche tourism and travel.
Abdou Ba’s primary area of guiding is in Djilor, on the Sine Saloum Delta.
So what does a Tourism Entrepreneur do?
- Have very good self and time management
- Market your business
- Take risks and adhere to new challenges
- Liase with a bank manager for a loan
- Get moral support from your family and friends
- Define what area of tourism you want your business to be in
- Research the tourism industry and tourism trends
- Hire and fire the right people
- Work long hours to ensure your business takes off
- Network with people in the industry that will benefit your business
- Step out of your comfort zone
- Plan a working schedule
Entrepreneurship is the engine that drives any successful industry or economy. It plays a vital role in shaping and transforming the supply of leisure and recreational opportunities and it is considered as a critical factor in tourism development, both regionally and globally.
Check your knowledge
Tourism entrepreneurship can be seen as a wide range of activities related to:
(select those that are correct)
- Creating and operating a legal tourist enterprise
- Working in a large organisation that has complex structures
- Growing your business in a sustainable manner
- Focusing on customer complaints mainly
- Applying creative and innovative business approaches to target the diverse tourism market.
- Having a fixed working day
Do you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur?
Lesson 2: Why is being an entrepreneur important?
Impact your community
Development: You can trigger economic and social development, especially in rural areas. You can help to create new jobs in your area, increase the standard of living and raise the quality of life in your community.
Abdou was keen to make the Sine-Saloum Delta tangible for his guests. Since 2011, the delta has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site as an important breeding ground for birds and wildlife.
Innovation: Have a new business idea in tourism and promote new, future-oriented developments. Foster innovation, creativity and the drive forward in your community.
Celebrating and living Senegalese hospitality was a dream come true for Baba.
Demands: With your small company, you can quickly respond to new demands in tourism and you can develop new products or services that the market really needs.
For Paloma, it was clear from the beginning that she wanted to make African food culture affordable and accessible to all.
Personal rewards
Constant growth and development
Starting a business forces you to constantly improve your skill set, from product development to marketing, from legal issues to finding financial support. There is always more to learn and apply to your business, which can encourage constant professional growth.
Greater self-confidence
Nothing boosts your confidence more than battling self-doubt. You will become more confident in your self-sufficiency as time goes on and you see what you are truly capable of.
Leadership experience
Self-discipline, communication skills, passion, optimism, patience and unrelenting work ethic. Building a small business from the ground up develops leadership traits, which means that entrepreneurship can transform you into an inspiring leader, both professionally and personally.
Autonomy
It turns out that employees who have more control over their work tend to be more engaged and less emotionally exhausted. Just another perk of being your own boss.
Enormous opportunities
Setting up your own business means you will be a critical part of a small organisation rather than being a small part of a large organisation.
Flexible schedule
You can create your own schedule. Start your day early if you’re a morning person or work later in the day if you prefer evenings.
Creating a career that aligns with your values
Aligning your personal values with your business values is an intensely gratifying experience. Entrepreneurship allows you to fashion a career that directly aligns with your core values, like helping others or saving the environment.
Meeting like-minded people
You will join a group of ambitious and helpful people and will be able to reach out for help during tough times.
Unexpected and thrilling experiences
You probably appreciate the value of the unexpected. Not knowing exactly how the day is going to play out when you wake up is exciting. On top of that, responding to unexpected situations teaches you to live in the moment and be more present.
Tourism is one of the largest and fastest growing industries today. With its rapid growth and ever rising expectations from tourists, a diversification of tourism products, services and experiences is needed. And this requires entrepreneurs with innovative, fresh ideas to start out their businesses.
Lesson 3: Who is involved in starting a tourism business?
Starting your business involves a great amount of work, which requires not only a lot of people power and financial resources, but also mental stability.
Starting and running your company cannot be realised by you alone. It is important to get support from a broad network of family, friends, community members, tourism professionals and many more. As small business owners, you need a lot of support to succeed, whether it’s financial, operational or emotional.
Who is part of your support team?
For me, my friends and family have been my most important support. Especially in the beginning, I probably wouldn’t have dared to start my business without their support and motivation. Paloma Sané
Your friends and family are particularly important in supporting you as you start your business. They can provide emotional, financial, material or labour support.
In the beginning, there was no water
In the beginning, there was no water or electricity. It took us seven years to find water here, and I dug the wells myself. Baba Mbengue
Networking is about building relationships, sharing information and finding sources of support. It is important to leave one’s own comfort zone and venture into new territory with new faces and new ideas. It’s time to expand your network and knowledge and meet more contacts who could help get you that much closer to your goals.
I received my certificate in 1991 for the auxiliary professional for tourist guiding and interpreting. So I had training and professional knowledge in tour guiding. But running my own business was something completely different. It was very helpful to have the expertise of people who really know the business. Abdou Ba
You can get support in many different ways, for example by looking for local experts on social media and getting in touch with them. But also a conversation at the local market can be very helpful, not only to find out the needs of the potential guests, but also for a professional exchange.
Just start: Deciding where to start can be overwhelming at first. Make a list of relevant stakeholders to contact. Before you know it, you’ll have an even more impressive network than you could have imagined.
Lesson 4: Is Entrepreneurship for you?
Are you excited thinking about owning and running a business yourself? While it sounds very tempting, being an entrepreneur also means taking on a lot of responsibilities and facing a lot of challenges.
You need to find out if you are capable of running your own business.
Survey: Is Entrepreneurship for you?
Find out if you have the basic requirements of an entrepreneur. Be honest with yourself!
Tick all that apply to you.
- Passion: Are you passionate about running your own business? Are you enthusiastic about making your business a success and are you willing to put it before almost everything else?
- Goal orientation: Are you able to see the big picture and create clear goals for your business? Are you determined to direct all of your endeavors toward achieving your goals?
- Making decisions: When you are confronted with a difficult situation, are you able to keep calm, seek adequate information and make important decisions without postponing or passing the problem on to someone else?
- Taking risks: There is no absolutely safe business idea. You always run the risk of failure. Are you aware of the risks and do you accept the possibility that your business might fail? Have you sought adequate information so that you can honestly estimate how big a risk you are going to take?
- Ability to handle stress: You will have to face a lot of stress when making difficult decisions, managing different business stakeholders and working long hours. Are you able to maintain a positive spirit under pressure? Can you see opportunities in difficult situations?
- Social support: Running your business will take a lot of time and effort. Will you get adequate support from family, friends and other business people?
- Financial situation: Access to financial resources to start your business is important. Have you set some money aside to get your business started? Do you have family or friends who might be willing and able to lend you money? Do you have a savings or credit history with a financial institution that provides start-up loans?
- Business management skills: Business management skills means the ability to run your business efficiently. Are you good in some business management areas, such as marketing, sales, costing or staff motivation?
If you answered YES to most of the questions, then you can consider this ability as one of your strengths. If you answered NO to most of the questions or you are not quite sure about the answers, you need some improvement before you start your business.
Innovation and Entrepreneurial Thinking
Lesson 1: What is entrepreneurial thinking?
Entrepreneurial thinking is all about harnessing passions, skills, experience, knowledge and insights, resources and networks to take advantage of opportunities at the right time and in the right way.
Way of thinking
It is not just about starting a business or spinning out a company from research. It’s a mindset or a way of thinking. Entrepreneurs think and do things differently.
Knowing the tourism industry
Being entrepreneurial can mean knowing the tourism industry inside out, and being able to exploit that knowledge to create new opportunities.
Sharing ideas freely
Being entrepreneurial can mean sharing ideas freely and celebrating so-called failures as learning and growing experiences.
Thinking outside of the box
Being entrepreneurial can mean simply thinking outside of the box, and expecting the unexpected.
What does it mean to be entrepreneurial?
1. Entrepreneurs embrace uncomfortable experiences they can learn from
2. Entrepreneurs take risks and are self-directed
3. Entrepreneurs think critically and are creative problem solvers
4. Entrepreneurs are flexible, adaptable and see opportunities
5. Entrepreneurs stretch their knowledge by asking, listening, reading and connecting
Lesson 2: Who can think like an entrepreneur?
I would say: anyone can think like an entrepreneur.
I am no Bill Gates (Microsoft) or Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), who are fantastic entrepreneurs. But I dared to do something and instead of seeing the risks, I saw the rewards. Abdou Baba
Be proactive
Ask questions and take initiative
A typical 4-year-old asks an average of 100 questions every day. There is never a fear of asking a ‘stupid’ question. Entrepreneurs should ask challenging questions about the true value of their innovation and stretch their knowledge.
Improvise
Put yourself on the spot and adapt to the situation as it unfolds. Find opportunities to come out of your comfort zone and put yourself in unfamiliar situations from time to time.
Be Open to Risk
Employ the OODA Loop, an acronym for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. Making decisions quickly based on the best information you have means risk is part of your day-to-day work. Speed up your decision time in non-critical areas.
Be Self-Driven
Seek to be your own boss, set your own schedule and be accountable to yourself. Develop a sense of self-driven discipline and set clear and challenging goals for yourself.
Expose Yourself to New Situations
The more experience and stimulus you can give your brain, the rawer the material it has for identifying opportunities, making connections and solving problems.
But being proactive alone is not enough. You also need to be flexible, adaptable and open minded.
Be flexible, adapt and don’t be limited
Think ahead
Where do you want to be in 5,10 and 20 years? Entrepreneurs are good at thinking in the present, but should also try to have a vision of the future.
Working across disciplines
Think about the broader picture and the impact of your business. Look for opportunities in not-so-obvious places and find a way to exploit these.
Be ready to fail
Accept, expect, plan for and learn from failure. Making mistakes is healthy and normal. Find out what you can do to make up for mistakes and move on.
Develop transferable skills
Think about the skills you have and how they can be applied to different situations. Entrepreneurs must have a breadth of transferable skills, such as being the developer, marketer, salesperson and accountant for their idea.
Take an interest in others
Be keen to hear other people’s stories and experiences. Our personal experience of the world is limited and the more perspectives we have on a situation, idea or problem, the better we understand it. After all, knowledge is power.
Rest your brain
When we rest, or switch our focus to something else, the unconscious brain sets to work making random links between thoughts and experiences. That’s why we have so many ideas or solve so many problems when we are out walking the dog or taking a bath.
Exercise and be healthy
To maximise entrepreneurial thinking, our brain needs to be in good working order. Eating healthily gives it the nutrition it needs. We need to exercise. When we exercise, we release endorphins which increase creativity and problem solving.
So, being entrepreneurial means being innovative, creative, resourceful and adaptable.
Lesson 3: How can you foster innovation and entrepreneurial thinking?
Without the vision and innovative ideas of entrepreneurs, sustainable tourism examples and success stories would be rare, probably non-existent.
In entrepreneurial thinking, flexibility is crucial to adapt to ongoing changes. It focuses on the creation of new ideas, on challenging assumptions, redefining problems and creating innovative solutions. It encourages us to explore new alternatives, new solutions, new ideas that have not existed before. Paloma Sané
Innovation comes from identifying customers’ needs and providing solutions that meet those needs.
Innovation and entrepreneurial thinking cannot be considered in isolation. It is crucial to set up and run your business in accordance with the needs of your customers.
Now you ask yourself, how can I find out about the needs of my customers?
- By creating a focus group, where you collectively interview a small group of people who represent your target audience.
- By running a survey online.
- By listening to social media where you analyse what is being said about tourism and your niche on social channels.
Design thinking
Find out what your customers really need by designing your service or product with a human-centred design method that is called design thinking. The key components are:
- Searching and understanding your customers’ pain points/problems
- Prototyping potential solutions
- Fast iterations to improve the product or service
Design thinking
What are the individual steps of the method? Find out here!
Step 1: Empathize: Research Your Users’ Needs
Gain an empathetic understanding of the problem you’re trying to solve, typically through user research. Empathy allows you to gain real insight into your customer and their needs.
Step 2: Define: State Your Users’ Needs and Problems
It’s time to accumulate the information gathered during the Empathise stage. Analyse your observations and synthesise them to define the core problems you have identified. These definitions are called problem statements.
Step 3: Ideate: Challenge Assumptions and Create Ideas
Now, you’re ready to generate ideas. The solid background of knowledge from the first two phases means you can start to think outside the box, look for alternative ways to view the problem and identify innovative solutions to the problem statement you’ve created. Brainstorming is useful.
Step 4: Prototype: Start to Create Solutions
Experiment. Identify the best possible solution for each problem found. Produce some inexpensive, scaled-down versions of the product to investigate the ideas you’ve generated. This could involve simply paper prototyping.
Step 5: Test: Try Your Solutions Out
Test your prototype. Although this is the final phase, design thinking is iterative: use the results to redefine one or more further problems. So, you can return to previous stages to make further iterations, alterations and refinements – to find or rule out alternative solutions
Now that you have studied and passed this module you can encourage your entrepreneurial thinking.
KITARA FOUNDATION FOR SUSTAINABLE TOURISM: Transforming Communities through Travel Partnerships. Email: kitararcc@gmail.com; 