People-First Tourism Lab Blog

Most destination communities remain relegated to the role of passive “tourees” who are unable to participate in economic opportunities often controlled by tourism retail monopolies.  In a recently published manuscript in the African Journal of Information Systems, Payton et al report that micro-entrepreneurs in rural and peri-urban South Africa demonstrated deep interest in increasing their involvement in the tourism industry but they had limited access to tourist markets.  They used their cellphones extensively in their business activity connecting with proximal suppliers and customers and would be ready to use these devices to connect with business partners in tourism industry's formal sector, as well as to connect directly with tourists through a frugal web2cell platform like People-First Tourism . The South African government has identified the development of micro and small tourism enterprises as a critical strategy to promote equitable and sustainable  rural development. 

In this age of information mastery, enterprises routinely seek to obtain competitive advantages through interpretation of big data analysis. Analytic competency is, however, an institutional skill that is not inherent in many smaller organizations. Tourism micro-entrepreneurs often lack the resources, access to data, and analytical training to dependably use data to inform their decisions.   They generally make decisions intuitively.   Accordingly, as a participatory action research project, People-First Tourism continuously records data about the performance of project participants to understand their path to success.   Additionally, the project attempts to share key data with the micro-entrepreneurs and with the empowerment agents that support them in the attempt to give these micro-entrepreneurs a competitive edge in their respective markets.  One of the ways this project seeks to “inject” data to the decisions of participating micro-entrepreneurs is through the disseminat

People-first Tourism Inc. (P1T) is a for-profit, S-Corp company with a social mandate led by an interdisciplinary team at North Carolina State University whose goal it is to use the power of cellphones to connect the socially conscious tourist with the struggling micro-entrepreneur. The global reach of tourism has made it important to many countries around the world, including the United States. Tourism brings much needed income to communities but often brings unequal distribution of income, changes in the social and cultural health of the community and the potential for environmental degradation. People-First Tourism provides an opportunity for what we call micro-entrepreneurs, often rural, experiencing vulnerable livelihoods to connect directly with tourists wanting a genuine experience at the grassroots level unmediated by the industrialized international tourism industry that objectifies heritages and local identities and transforms people into passive tourees.  People-Fir