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The purpose of this study is to explore household tourism decision making. There is an extensive literature on consumer choice in general.1-3 In terms of tourism, the main focus has been on motivational factors,4-6 but as part of the emergence of a literature which studies the issues of tourism and gender, there are some authors who focus on holiday decision making.7-9 In this context the focus here is on the distinctive roles and power relations within a couple. The study is exploratory in nature and employs a self-administered questionnaire. It is concluded that the overall consumption of a holiday is largely a joint decision, but when the purchase is broken down into different stages females have a dominant role in the early stages of the process, possibly making them the gatekeepers.

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A relatively small body of literature in tourism concentrates on the issues of small firms and entrepreneurs and ‘this area of inquiry is vastly under-researched’ (Thomas, 2004, p 1). A key piece of research (Rimmington et al, 1999) classifies entrepreneurs in the tourism sector, and one category that has received research attention has been that of lifestyle entrepreneurs. This article outlines the literature on lifestyle entrepreneurs and concludes that much of the focus to date has been on the individual entrepreneur. The paper investigates how lifestyle entrepreneurs interact with other entrepreneurs in the location where they operate, and their involvement in the local dynamics of the place. The area studied in this regard is Westport, Co Mayo, Ireland. Rather than focusing within the boundaries of the firm, the attention here is on the interaction between firms and within the location. The first section discusses the literature on lifestyle entrepreneurs and the nature of inter-firm relations; the second outlines the research objectives and the methodology; the third describes the location of the study; and the fourth outlines and analyses the findings of the research. In conclusion, the author considers what contribution this research makes to the literature and understanding of lifestyle entrepreneurs.

Purpose – The aim of this study is to empirically investigate the additional motives, aside from the social interests that motivate social entrepreneurs. This paper does so by using an inductive approach and specifically carrying out a re-examination of two pieces of research examining social entrepreneurship that were carried out independently by the two researchers in South Africa and Ireland. Design/methodology/approach – The method used for the paper is content analysis. Research using qualitative content analysis focuses on the characteristics of language, talk and conversation (Sarantakos, 2005) with attention paid to the content or contextual meaning of the text. Thus, a qualitative content analysis is concerned with an examination of the uses of language. According to Downe-Wambolt (1992, p. 314), the aim of content analysis is “to provide knowledge and understanding of the phenomenon under study”. Findings – The findings indicate that the informants do have additional motivations with respect to their business ventures including lifestyle motives, receiving acknowledgement and generating profit. Originality/value – Few published papers investigate the motives of social entrepreneurs and explore if there are indeed any additional motivations aside from community interests. The results in this study identify that indeed social entrepreneurs are motivated by an array of motivations. The motivations we discovered in our research illustrate an individual who is mutually concerned with their communities, the environments in which they live in, lifestyle interests, acknowledgement and profit which may suggest that such community contributions could be sustained over time.