NS34 Session 12

Tourism SMEs - many of them family-owned - are central to destination economies, yet succession in tourism is repeatedly experienced as a change-management challenge rather than a simple technical handover (Zehrer & Haslwanter, 2010). Family firms in tourism must balance continuity with pressures for innovation, navigating factors such as seasonality, labour intensity, emotional attachment to place, and blurred family–business boundaries. These realities shape what “readiness” looks like and how it can be developed, particularly as digital disruption, sustainability demands, and competitive pressures accelerate (OECD, 2018; Rodrigues et al., 2024). 

This session invites research that connects succession readiness with entrepreneurship and enterprise renewal in tourism and hospitality SMEs. We welcome empirical and conceptual contributions that treat readiness as a learnable competence set, including strategic foresight, leadership transition, governance, financial and legal literacy, and the relational work of intergenerational communication and conflict navigation (Leiß & Zehrer, 2018; Porfírio et al., 2020). We particularly encourage papers examining successor-led entrepreneurial pathways: business model innovation, experience redesign, digital entrepreneurship and automation, and ESG or regenerative transitions that emerge during or because of generational change (Rodrigues et al., 2024). 

We also invite contributions on the role of education, advisory ecosystems, and destination organisations in supporting these transitions, especially approaches that foster intergenerational dialogue and practical competence-building, that translate research into modular learning and usable tools for SMEs. 

Keywords: Family business succession, Entrepreneurship in family firms, Business model innovation, Small- and medium-sized tourism enterprises, Governance and family business practices 

References 

Leiß, G., & Zehrer, A. (2018). Intergenerational communication in family firm succession. Journal of Family Business Management, 8(1), 75–90. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFBM-09-2017-0025 

OECD. (2018). Analysing megatrends to shape the future of tourism better. No. 2018/02, OECD Publishing, Paris. https://doi.org/10.1787/d465eb68-en    

Porfírio, J. A., Felício, J. A., & Carrilho, T. (2020). Family business succession: Analysis of the drivers of success based on entrepreneurship theory. Journal of Business Research, 115, 250–257. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.11.054  

Rodrigues, V., Breda, Z., & Rodrigues, C. (2024). The implications of Industry 4.0 for the tourism sector: A systematic literature review. Heliyon, 10(11), e31590. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e31590 

Zehrer, A., & Haslwanter, J. (2010). Management of change in tourism – The problem of family internal succession in family-run tourism SMEs. Electronic Journal of Family Business Studies, 2(4), 147–162.