Third International Conference on Tourism & Leisure Studies

Abstract

Immigrants are attracted to tourism destinations due to staffing problems in the local human resource markets and migration flows to regions with higher quality of life. Many of those immigrants make the decision of starting a new venture in the destination, since they identify an opportunity there or are forced out of the labour market with entrepreneurship being the only option left in the host country. These migrant entrepreneurs need knowledge to manage the new firm successfully. The knowledge these entrepreneurs require is obtained from several sources and places. More specifically, education, work experience, networks, both in the home and in the host country, as well as local institutions and Internet and written material are all knowledge sources where immigrants can learn and construct their knowledge from in order to set up their new ventures. This study attempts to analyse the immigrant entrepreneurs’ knowledge sources and origins they have used to create their new ventures in the restaurant sector in a tourism context. The data for the empirical analysis were obtained from a survey to immigrant entrepreneurs who have created new restaurants in the tourism sector of Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote (Canary Islands, Spain). With data from 108 immigrant entrepreneurs, interesting results are obtained. Thus, the knowledge sources and origins are described, the existence of differences in knowledge sources by origin are explored, and groups of entrepreneurs based on their knowledge are identified and analysed.