A Pre-Science Style Model of Aquaculture Tourism Businesses

ABSTRACT

This research note introduces a research agenda for the development of aquaculture tourism. The first aim of this research piece is to present the emerging phenomenon of tourism based on aquaculture operations. These businesses may conveniently be collected under the umbrella term aquaculture tourism by designing tourist experiences based on aquaculture farm setup. The second aim is to provide a structure for the investigation of these facilities. Building on three pillars of allied academic effort-sideline tourism, lifestyle entrepreneurship and tourism engagement, this study offers a pre-science model for aquaculture tourism businesses. A model with an incremental insight is introduced based on the notion of visitor engagement, connecting engagement to economic performance in a new context wherein existing aquaculture enterprises adopt tourism to present a new product. The value of this kind of model lies in its potential benefit to those who seek to offer and market a range of opportunities for small scale, less resilient businesses.

KEYWORDS:

• Aquaculture tourism
• sideline tourism
• tourist engagement
• lifestyle entrepreneurship
• small aquaculture businesses

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).