A Case Study of Ethnic Minorities as Tourism Entrepreneurs: Their Involvement in Sustainable Tourism Development

Most tourism activities excluding the e-tourism activities as matter of their nature (service taker and provider) take place face to face between people. In addition tourism activities encourage bonding people both for tourists and the tourism services providers. Tourism creates cohesion for many different cultural groups. One of the cities in Turkey, Izmir is a good example with including too many culturally oriented groups such as Levantines, Greek, Jewish, rarely Armenians. In this paper there are two research questions are hold; how is being the other (ethnic minority) as tourism entrepreneurs in tourism industry in Izmir and their involvement in sustainable tourism development is investigated and if tourism activities help connecting different cultural groups together and closer is investigated. So regarding these research questions, the research methodology in this paper is qualitative. For that reason, semi structured interview technique is applied to people are belong to different cultural groups and identities whom entrepreneurs in tourism industry. Semi structured interview technique is a commonly used an interview method depending on providing deep understanding of participants` perceptions, thoughts and behaviors. In general, understanding of the other brings feeling respect to others` cultural beliefs and lifestyle and this will make peace and harmony to where they live together. As a result, with the light of these research questions being the other entrepreneurship in sustainable tourism development in Izmir is evaluated. Furthermore, in this research is tried to indicate the advantageous and disadvantageous and importance of different cultural groups for sustainable tourism development.