Business Models for Sustainability: An Application to Ecolodge Ventures

Sammanfattning: Problems related to sustainable development have become more worrying. Global major industries are responsible for these problems and tourism is one of them. Therefore, the travel and tourism industries need to take sustainability seriously, which requires adapting its business practice towards sustainable development to balance natural, social, and economic growth. As a result, sustainable business model literature in tourism is nascent. While the issue remains relevant, there are generally limited foundations to understand what impact new enterprises and entrepreneurial initiatives will create before market launch and early in their tenure. The study analyses the business model narratives of ecolodge managers/owners to understand how those decision-makers, who critically shape the configuration of sustainable BMs, think about sustainable impact as they build and launch their entrepreneurial ventures.  The study employs the Value-Based Business Model (Reinhold, 2014) and the Community Capitals Framework (Flora et al., 2004) to analyse the business models and social impacts of the ecolodges. Five ecolodge cases in Cambodia were chosen and their managers/owners were interviewed using a semi-structured interview on Zoom. Thematic analysis as part of a case study has revealed the perceived business model and social impacts of the new start-up ecolodges. The empirical and conceptual findings from this study contribute to the literature on the sustainable business model in the tourism and hospitality context, more particularly to the theoretical foundations towards developing predictive impact assessment of new ventures.