Exploring a conceptual Small Tourism Enterprise Performance Model.

Abstract

The tourism industry in South Africa is a growth industry. Small tourism enterprises are mainly run by owner-managers who are the key decision-makers. Owner-managers therefore need to possess key qualities in order to establish and maintain their performing enterprises. Self-leadership; ethical orientation and entrepreneurial proclivity characteristics have been identified to be important for owner-managers of performing tourism enterprises. It is in this context that this paper considers the Van Zyl and Mathur-Helm (2007) conceptual model. This model also contains market orientation and relationship marketing orientation as strategic orientations which are used to link the enterprise to the external environment where customer satisfaction plays an important role. This paper applies a systems perspective to contextualise the contributions of the owner-manager as entrepreneur; the customers from within the transactional environment and some internal organisational variables to enterprise performance. Customer satisfaction assessment models like SERVQUAL and ECSI are considered while the number of tourists; number of employees; the profitability and the turnover of the venture are found to be reliable indicators of tourism enterprise performance.