Tourism social entrepreneurship and creating potential value from coastal heritage resources

Social entrepreneurship is a resource development approach that is attracting increased attention and usually involves individuals or an altruistic action by a commercial company. Local organisation based social entrepreneurship is not well documented and is the focus of this paper. The paper contributes to theory relating to coastal tourism social entrepreneurship (TSE) by: (i) documenting experience in a peripheral area of a developed country; (ii) focusing on the repurposing of local built heritage for tourism; and (iii) identifying the roles that seven forms of capital identified by Flora et al. (Citation2004) may play in operationalising projects. A case study was conducted based on interviews and a focus group with a range of stakeholders involved with two tourism projects in Valentia Island, southwest Ireland. The combined roles of seven forms of capital emerged during in-depth inductive analysis of the interview material. The results illustrate that creating value from underused natural, built and cultural resources in a peripheral area of a developed country requires human capital to provide leadership and social and political capital to source financial capital and other supports. Perceived threats to control over property (political capital) required special attention in one of the projects. Value was created through adapting buildings and developing an application for an UNESCO World Heritage nomination which have attracted increased numbers of visitors and contributed to the conservation of local culture. Permanent employment creation depends on extending the visitor season. The evidence points to the importance of incorporating the seven forms of capital in theorising tourism social entrepreneurship.