Embedded Entrepreneurs: Nascent Tourism and Diasporan Pacific Islanders

Few researchers look behind engagement in the formal tourism industry to choices that some cultural communities make not to take part in tourism. This research investigates an assumption made by diasporan peoples that community-initiated cultural tourism, successful as an enterprise strategy in homeland nations (where tourism is central to GDP), should transfer readily to a market economy model. In this setting it might contribute to improved social and economic well-being but flaws are revealed in that assumption. The research presents a new business paradigm for cultural tourism that combines western and Pacific epistemes (worldviews) but from an emic view of tourism, as seen by nascent diasporan Pacific entrepreneurs.