Growth of home stay entrepreneurs with reference to Meemure village, Sri Lanka

Abstract

Meemure is a well-known tourism destination with rich natural and cultural heritage value. Meemure can identify as an attractive, rural village with high tourist value and with great history from ancient Sri Lanka. The growth of tourism industry with niche tourism concept leads to make a lot of tourism business opportunities in rural areas specially like Meemure. This has caused high demand on homestays within the region. Therefore, this study presented of potentials, opportunities and barriers face by homestay tourism entrepreneurs. Study follows a positivistic philosophy, is deductive in its approach, practice qualitative exploratory using in-depth interviews by selecting five respondents through judgmental sampling who are actively participated in the business as homestay business entrepreneurs and operators. As the findings, Financial adequacy and knowledge in business can identify as issues. As the conclusion there is high possibility to develop homestay tourism business within Meemure due to richness on cultural, heritage and natural value of the region with the government support. The finding of the research benefited to all the homestay tourism business entrepreneurs to enhance their business and grab new business opportunities in the tourism industry.