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Abstract
Research into tourism and hospitality businesses, because of its breadth of scope, has been unable to provide specific insights into visitor attraction businesses. On the contrary, visitor attraction research, while defining ownership as an important variable, has yet to explore the motivations or characteristics of small business owners. Gersick et al.’s (Citation1997) family business development model, devised around the three axes of family, business and ownership, was used to examine the population of open‐farm businesses in Northern Ireland. Following a general survey of 12 farm attractions, detailed interviews were conducted with owners of seven open‐farm attractions. The findings indicated that there was a wide degree of variation in terms of the scale and success of open‐farms. In terms of the family and business axes they shared many similarities with other small family tourism businesses such as rural location, the provision of a multi‐product experience and a strong emphasis on lifestyle needs. However, the involvement of children from an early age is unique to the family dimension and integral to the finding that lifestyle issues took precedence over business growth. The model also emphasised a generational progression in terms of ownership control that was not as relevant to these businesses where succession is generally not a consideration. Open‐farms operate on a pragmatic basis and in addition to family needs, various factors such as insurance, increasing costs, the need to re‐invest and update the product are currently affecting their competitiveness in the marketplace. A revised model of family business development is proposed reflecting these differences.