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Visit Village is a newly established Swedish cooperative rural tourism venture. It is a novel approach to rural tourism development that is designed to facilitate entrepreneurship, collaboration, and local participation. The guiding notion is that an inclusive and cooperative structure promotes the responsible use of locally available resources and the creation of attractive value propositions that are grounded in the unique features of the place. The Visit Village model was developed in a project by Coompanion Dalarna, a non-profit consultancy organisation, Visit Dalarna, the regional DMO, and local actors from four Swedish villages. This study is part of ongoing research that has been closely following the Visit Village project for nearly three years. This particular paper is concerned with the process that led to the formation of this collaborative venture, and it applies the Civic Wealth Creation (CWC) theoretical framework for stakeholder engagement (Lumpkin & Bacq, 2019) to explore interactions as a means to facilitate entrepreneurship. 

CWC is a stakeholder theory that provides a framework for studying interactions between the local community, commercial enterprises and supporting regimes (enabling organisations and the public sector) to create positive social change, economic well-being and community wealth. CWC is concerned with the entrepreneurial ecosystem and mechanisms such as resource mobilisation, collaborative innovation and engaged participation (Bailey & Lumpkin,2023). The CWC theory is particularly relevant in the context of Visit Village, considering Coompanion’s extensive role as the project’s leader and initiator and the explicit intention to involve the local community in the Visit Village enterprise. Moreover, the CWC framework can be pertinent for rural and community-based tourism research as it focuses on local processes of creating entrepreneurial communities and opportunities, developing a shared vision and the exaptation of locally available resources (Dowin Kennedy, 2021). 

This exploratory qualitative research case study focuses on the project that led to the formation of the Visit Village venture. Close collaboration with the project’s leaders and steering committee gave me an exceptional opportunity to observe entrepreneurial processes as they happen. Since its start in January 2021, I have regularly attended many project activities, including workshops and steering group meetings. In addition, the close collaboration granted me access to project documents, meeting protocols and Coompanion’s internal review of the project. Further data and insights were collected in twelve in-depth interviews and several informal conversations with project members and other local actors.

The analysis illustrates how such projects can facilitate tourism entrepreneurship. The project gave tourism business owners a framework for engaging with opportunities and developing new products. It involved guided work towards creatively reimagining the villages and their features as tourism experiences. Moreover, the cooperative model provides validity and a sense of responsibility, which are imperative for accessing and utilising locally available resources. Furthermore, the project framework is a network and a forum for co-learning where tourism entrepreneurs and other local actors discuss ideas and exchange experiences and expertise with other project members from different villages. The project and cooperative model also provide support and encouragement and remove barriers for locals who want to engage in tourism entrepreneurship but are not yet ready to start a business. 

Nevertheless, the project had its challenges. A project format, especially one organised through periodic workshops with multiple stakeholders, is incompatible with entrepreneurial initiatives, which demand continuous and dedicated engagement. Likewise, the democratic and inclusive nature of the process slowed down entrepreneurial processes. However, Coompanion, the enabling organisation and project initiator, were quite successful in generating positive momentum and engagement with local entrepreneurs. Coompanion maintained its leading role throughout the project, providing structure, knowledge, balance, and coordination of activities. Concurrently, Coompanion gradually handed over the responsibility for the content and the authority to make decisions to the participants. Encouraging project members to assume ownership over the cooperative model and its development was pertinent to ensure the venture proceeds once the project ends.

CWC is grounded in the involvement of local communities as central stakeholders. This is one aspect in which Coompanion’s project has somewhat fallen short. While all project members are from the four villages (excluding Coompanion’s project team), there was little engagement of locals who were not directly positioned to benefit from the venture commercially. This could be attributed to several reasons. First, this has been a relatively large and complex project. Presumably, accommodating many more participants would have been a real challenge. Furthermore, much of the project was about co-creating a new cooperative tourism model. Project members were reluctant to invite and involve others from their local communities before sufficiently developing the model and forming the cooperative enterprise. Nevertheless, much suggests that more local people will participate and benefit from future Visit Village activities. The cooperative enterprise is open to new members, integrated into existing local associations, and guided by an explicit appreciation of the place and its people.