African Entrepreneurship: Weighing Adventure Travel Business Opportunities

Shreshthi Mehta, Marilyn Anthony

Product #:W31908_P

Supplier:Ivey/Concordia

Discipline:Entrepreneurship, Strategy

Setting:Rwanda, Uganda, 2021

Details:Case (PDF) • 14 pages • 2023-07-07

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It was June 2021 and the international tourism industry was beginning to show signs of revival after the COVID-19 global pandemic. Small business owner Tony Byarugaba was surveying the scenic grounds surrounding his tourist lodge in Uganda. Byarugaba had built his enterprise by offering international clients a superior African vacation that included Uganda and the neighbouring countries of Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. From his beginnings as a self-taught tour operator, Byarugaba had diversified into the hotel business. His two early-stage companies, Mamaland Safaris and Woodland Lodges, had already survived very tough times—a global recession, the outbreak of Ebola, and, most recently, the pandemic.

Byarugaba now had to weigh the potential risks and rewards of a number of options for ensuring the growth and stability of his businesses. As a small entrepreneur with limited access to capital and labour, he could only afford to choose one direction to pursue. The future of his company depended on making the right choice.

This case was the first prize winner of the 2022 John Molson Business Ownership Case Writing Competition.

Learning Objectives

This case provides the opportunity to practise concepts already covered (e.g., Porter’s Five Forces; global, demographic, political and legal, economic, socio-cultural, and technological [GDPEST]; valuable, rare, imitable, and organization [VRIO]; and generic strategy) while introducing the many factors shaping the strategic decisions around growth for an early-stage company with limited resources. After working through the case analysis and making strategic recommendations, students should be able to do the following:

Understand the pros and cons of being a small business owner in a niche market trying to expand in an established industry.
Determine what steps companies take to gain or maintain a competitive advantage in current and new locations.
Explore how to identify market opportunity in the tourism industry using Porter’s Five Forces and global, demographic, political and legal, economic, socio-cultural, and technological (GDPEST) analysis to develop a market entry strategy.
Apply a VRIO (valuable, rate, imitable, and organization) analysis to identify competitive advantage.
Understand the impact of generic strategy on market positioning in a dynamic environment, taking into consideration the needs of the target audience to determine business viability.
Determine the options for expansion: joint venture, wholly owned, geographic saturation versus regional growth, vertical integration, and so on.
Weigh the opportunity costs and benefits to determine the optimal growth option.

African Entrepreneurship: Weighing Adventure Travel Business Opportunities

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Learning Objectives