Motives and Commitment of Entrepreneurs in Hospitality/Tourism Firms in Port Harcourt

This aim of this study is to provide both theoretical and empirical insights on entrepreneurs’ motives and commitments in the hospitality and tourism industry in Nigeria, using simple descriptive statistics and complemented with interviews. The study adopted an exploratory research methodology to explore the phenomena of motives and commitment, using descriptive statistics, particularly mea, and standard deviation to present the extent of occurrences in the study subject. The study is based on a sample of 120 entrepreneurs who are owners of small restaurants in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. The results show that entrepreneurs in the hospitality industry are mostly motivated by family related factors such as family tradition, family situation, family line of business, and family prestige. Societal factors are more prominent in the list than both personal and income, financial considerations. The least considered factor that motivates a business start-up is finance or income. The results also suggest that although, entrepreneurs are highly committed to starting and growing their own businesses and are willing to do anything that will help achieve this objective including significant personal sacrifices, they are however, not willing to compromise their family lives.

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