The Small2Mighty tourism academy Growing business to grow women as a transformative strategy for emerging destinations

Purpose - The aim of this practitioner paper is to reflect on the mistakes that most post-colonial, post-conflict or post-disaster destinations make when planning to grow tourism, and to offer a practical and business-driven solution that would help secure a more stable future in spite of potential instabilities. Design/methodology/approach - The paper is the result of three years spent working with micro and small tourism entrepreneurs in Haiti, Brazil, Lesotho, South Africa, Timor Leste, Indonesia, Ethiopia and India. Findings - The paper observes that most post-colonial, post-conflict or post-disaster destinations do not understand that developing tourism goes hand in hand with developing entrepreneurs and their businesses. Practical implications - The paper could kick-start a more holistic approach to tourism development to catalyse long rather than short-term economic and social gains, especially for women. Originality/value - This paper contradicts the common view that tourism growth is about increasing arrival numbers and focusing on infrastructure development. It presents an original solution that focusses on vision (an approach borrowed from Simon Sinek, the third most popular TED speaker and author of Start with Why), and on women empowerment that bypasses existing supra and national development frameworks.