Does Experience overrule innovation? [Towards a model for female owned successful homestays in West Bengal]

Tourism has been identified as an essential contributing aspect to the economic growth of adeveloping nation (Mahajan, 2013). The tourism clusters in West Bengal invite foreignexchange earnings, generate employment and income in the accommodation and transportsector and souvenir industry, and accelerate infrastructure development (Richins&Scarinci,2009). It may be significant to point out that a particular tourism branch gaining popularityhere is homestay tourism. In homestays, guests are either accommodated in the family homesor separate quarters near the homes of the owners running them. (Sood, Lynch et al., 2017).Homestay tourism, an emerging trend that involves staying in smaller family-owned housesrather than in big, marketed hotels and resorts, is quite popular in the Himalayan regions ofWest Bengal (Bhattacharya, 1986; Pasanchay and Schott, 2021). In this paper, the districts ofDarjeeling and Kalimpong have been identified as the focal region. In these districts, homestaysare predominant due to their abundance of natural beauty and cultural abundance, attractingtourists (Mondal and Samaddar,2020). It is evident from a simple internet search whichshows79 thousand results for homestays in Darjeeling and Kalimpong (Gauli, Regmi et al.2022). In a continually changing business environment, it is observed that homestay operatorshave to be more enthusiastic about taking risks to have a competitive advantage over their rivalsby differentiating and creating a sustainable position in the market (Rothaermel, 2008;Shirokova et al., 2016). This study explores the Entrepreneurship Orientations of womenrunning homestays in this region. Primary data was collected through face-to-face interviewsand inferences were drawn to identify the competitive edge of the entrepreneurs using astructured questionnaire and a 7-point Likert scale for measuring entrepreneurial orientations.It can be concluded that the risk-taking capacity of the homestay owner, their age, and theperiod of running the homestays all significantly influence the homestay business to flourish.2Such a study may be useful for policymakers in encouraging women to promote homestay astourism highlights that will bring about greater economic development to this otherwisedeprived remote location.