Modes of ordering tourismscapes
6 Modes of ordering tourismscapes
6.4 Modes of ordering of small-scale entrepreneurs
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However, this interaction of different modes of ordering is not purely ‘local’ as it is also constituted and configured by ‘distant others’. The work of prescription and negotiation also reflects the ability or inability of some (like the National Park Service, former land owners who left the region, and particular investors and entrepreneurs from Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica or even outside Costa Rica) to direct the course of events. Indeed, as Urry (2000: 140) explains, particular tourism regions can be understood as multiplex, as a set of spaces where ranges of relational networks coalesce, interconnect and fragment. Any such place can be viewed as the particular nexus between, on the one hand, propinquity characterized by intensely thick co-present interaction, and on the other hand, fast flowing webs and networks stretched corporeally, virtually and imaginatively across distances. These propinquities and extensive networks come together to enable performances in, and of, particular places.
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managed to get a permit and a loan, however at an excessive interest rate. Other heterogeneous obstacles like bad roads, heavy rainfalls, no telephone connection with the ‘outside world’, not being mentioned in guide books and travel brochures, and no regular contact with the regional tourism office also prevented the albergue from becoming an ‘obligatory point of passage’. In other words, the albergue never became in tune with relevant tourismscapes.
However, millions of other small enterprises do, temporarily or permanently, become tuned in with relevant tourismscapes. And they are an enormous source of employment. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO, 2001), the hotel, catering and tourism sector employs approximately 3% of the world’s total labour force. If indirect effects are calculated in, its share rises as high as 8%. Direct employment in enterprises provides about 80 million jobs. Small and medium-sized enterprises employ at least half of the sector’s workforce and represent a majority of its enterprises. Together, the travel and the tourism industry are estimated to provide close to 200 million jobs globally, or one job in every thirteen.19 Similarly, based on an international review of small and medium-sized enterprises, Morrison and Thomas (2004) conclude that in all the economies presented in their review, small and medium-sized enterprises are seen as the backbone of the tourism industry and the drivers of social and economic transition.
In the following section, I shall examine and discuss the role of predominantly ‘small-scale’
enterprises in performing tourismscapes, and discuss their modes of ordering. However, the examination will be limited by necessity. Contrary to, for example, rural sociology, where over a period of twelve years numerous studies of modes of ordering in farming (‘farming styles’) have been executed, collectively comprising a programme (see Ploeg, 2003: 119 and Commandeur, 2003), a similar programme in tourism studies is largely absent.20
In the following I shall therefore restrict myself to some ‘stories’ of hotel (or pension) owners on Texel and in Manuel Antonio, supplemented with some evidence from other tourism literature, to illustrate the modes of ordering of small-scale tourism entrepreneurs. Thus, the result will not be a typology of small-scale entrepreneurs in tourism based on a careful examination of the way in which ‘they’ structure their work. One might even question the possibility and fruitfulness of doing so.
Instead, I shall project the probability of various modes of ordering by discussing various dimensions along which small-scale entrepreneurs operate (see also Ploeg, 2003: 116-117).
These dimensions function as coordinate systems, that is, as multidimensional fields on which the heterogeneous modes of ordering of small-scale entrepreneurs can be projected and investigated. The emphasis will be on the dimensions of issue of scale (versus scope), patronage (versus brokering), formality (versus informality) and opportunity (versus necessity). Obviously, many more dimensions might emerge as research continues (see also Morrison, 2004; Morrison and Thomas, 2004).
The literature on small-scale entrepreneurs thrives on such dualisms as success or failure, small or big, and informal or formal. As we shall see, these are all rather essentialist categories.
Therefore, before adding an actor-network perspective to these readings, I shall depict how small-scale entrepreneurs are generally understood in the tourism literature.
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6.4.1 Small and big
Small entrepreneurs form a very heterogeneous category (Boissevain, 1997). There is a wide variety of concepts used for small-scale entrepreneurs, varying from small, micro or petty entrepreneurs, family business and self-employment to home and cottage industry. Clearly, the differences between these categories are considerable, demanding more precision as far as size, scope, organization of and the context within which an enterprise operates are concerned. For example, scholars are debating the maximum number of employees that defines an enterprise as a ‘small’ enterprise. Small, however, is a relative concept that varies between countries and between industries in countries (ibid.: 302). For some, a small-scale entrepreneur covers all economic activities or businesses deploying a labour force of no more than 10 people, while for others this number varies from 200 to 5000 employees (Dahles, 1999). In a European-wide context, a small or medium-sized enterprise is defined in employment terms as a company with a workforce of fewer than 250 employees, a definition that embraces the majority of the tourism businesses in Europe (Wanhill, 2000: 134).
Results from research in Costa Rica and in the Netherlands21 also show the importance of small-scale enterprises. In her research in Manuel Antonio/Quepos, Cabout (2001) found that on average most enterprises employ one or two people. Only the more expensive hotels (prices starting at USD 100 a day) have provided work for a lot of employees, ranging from 15 to, in the case of the famous Hotel Si Como No, 120. Similarly, on Texel 32 of the island’s 37 hotels are small-scale enterprises employing fewer than 10 people. Just one hotel (Hotel Opduin) belongs to the top-end category of Dutch hotels (Goudzwaard and Visser, 2003).
One should seriously argue the value of the continuous discussions about ‘small’ and ‘big’, just as one can dispute the usefulness of the distinction between ‘mass’ and ‘alternative’ tourism. As Latour (1998) argues, the notion of network allows us to dissolve the micro-macro distinction that has plagued social theory from its inception:
The small scale/large scale model has three features which have proven devastating for social theory: it is tied to an order relation that goes from top to bottom or from bottom to top – as if society really had a top and a bottom; it implies that an element ‘b’, being macro-scale is of a different nature and should thus be studied differently from an element ‘a’ which is micro-scale;
it is utterly unable to follow how an element goes from being individual – ‘a’ – to collective – ‘b’
– and back’ (ibid.: 4).
Moreover, the scale – that is, the type, number and topography of connections – is to be left to the ‘definition of the situation’ of the actors themselves. For many ‘small’ entrepreneurs, their enterprise is ‘big enough’. As one entrepreneurs on Texel stated (based on Goudzwaard and Visser, 2003):
There are a couple of rules of thumb for building a hotel. Either you build between 15 and 20 rooms, or the hotel has to be much bigger. Increasing from 16 to 25 rooms implicates the need to hire a new member of staff, without a guarantee that turnover relatively increases as well. So the maximum number of rooms is approximately 20.
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And another:
I don’t want to expand; that wouldn’t be very clever. We’ve reached the limit of our abilities. Three or four rooms more would mean expanding the dining room and hiring a chambermaid.
Nevertheless, Shaw and Williams (2002) suggest four main types of firm characteristics, ranging from the highly marginalized self-employed category through the owner-director companies, where management and ownership are clearly separated (see also Boissevain, 1997). The few studies that have been undertaken (Caalders, 2002; Dahles and Bras, 1999; Duim 1997a; Shaw and Williams, 2002) suggest that most of the entrepreneurs in tourism fall into the first two groups as described in table 6.1. In this part of the tourism industry, which to a certain extent is ‘traditional’, the small independently owned establishments are frequently characterized by weak management skills and reliance on family labour. They are typified by low levels of capital investment and are economically marginal (Ioannides and Debagge, 1997; Shaw and Williams, 2002). Although often cited, it proves to be difficult to make the typology operational in empirical research (see e.g. Cela, 2001)
Table 6.1 Organizational structures and entrepreneurial characteristics Category Entrepreneurial characteristics
Self-employed Use of family labour, little market stability, low levels of capital investment, tendency towards weakly developed management skills
Small employer Use of family and non-family labour; less economically marginalized but shares other characteristics of self-employed group
Owner-controllers Use of non-family labour, higher levels of capital investment, often formal system of management control but no separation of ownership and control
Owner-directors Separation of ownership and management functions, highest levels of capital investment
Source: Shaw and Williams (2002: 161)
Despite the hazard of making another generalization, perhaps the most important characteristic of small enterprises is that they are family affairs. Family relationships are vital for the provision of labour, expertise, capital, public relations and general moral support (Boissevain, 1997: 304).
As an entrepreneur on Texel stated:
I mainly work in the kitchen, my mother at the reception and my father is a jack-of-all trades.
My parents enabled me, by giving me starting capital to buy this hotel.(Source: interviews by Goudzwaard and Visser, 2003):
The question now arises whether we should assume one particular dominant mode of ordering per small-scale enterprise, especially where there is no separation of management and ownership, and where family labour prevails.22 Or should we stick to the idea that even in these businesses, different modes of orderings collide?
Basically, I adhere to the latter. To recap the discussion in the above, modes of ordering cannot be defined in terms of persons or personal attributes. They are strategies, and strategies evolve,
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change and conflict. As they all have their visions, but also try to properly organize their work and sometimes even have to make hard decisions, small-scale enterprises may deploy various strategies and use different ‘tactics of translation’ to make the enterprise successful.
Moreover, just like managing a tour operator business or a large hotel, running a small hotel, lodge or pension entails a wide range of tasks. It is all about providing services, food and beverage to guests, making beds, maintaining the building, taking reservations and keeping the books:
I have a lot of duties. Of course, I am co-owner and make decisions together with my husband.
But I also serve breakfast, administer and do the bookkeeping and reservations. (Source:
interviews by Goudzwaard and Visser, 2003).
But it is also about getting banks, suppliers, local governmental agencies and entrepreneurial associations to do one’s ‘dirty work’, as well as about maintaining good relations with family members, potential visitors, employees and the wider community. This broad set of tasks is to be considered as a project, which demands careful coordination in order to create congruence within the enterprise and to keep the enterprise in line with the tourismscapes within which it has to operate (see also Ploeg, 2003). And there is no reason to a priori assume that this ordering work differs between ‘small’ and ‘big’ companies.
6.4.2 Pre-Fordism, Fordism and Post-Fordism
Another rather common but essentialist23 categorization is the distinction made between pre-Fordist, Fordist, post-Fordist and neo-Fordist modes of ordering. It is an essentialist categorization, as the ordering in terms of pre- or post-Fordist producers and consumers does not fit the ways the entrepreneurs themselves narrate their modes of ordering,24 let alone fully encompass the complexities of the ‘market’ (see Verschoor, 1997a). Clearly, in my view, tourismscapes are to be seen as complex mélanges of pre-Fordist, Fordist, post-Fordist and neo-Fordist elements coexisting over time and space (see also Torres, 2002: 88; Ioannides and Debagge, 1997). Nevertheless, for a moment I shall employ the categorization as a clear distinction to illustrate the complexities of performing tourismscapes in a more general sense.
Historically, tourismscapes built on a pre-Fordist type of small-scale production network that targeted reduced markets through non-institutionalized, independently run, artisanal or patriarchal firms. Labour is intensive and family based and the independently owned establishments are frequently characterized by weak management skills and low levels of capital investment. Most often they are economically marginal (Ioannides and Debagge, 1997). In many less developed countries, it is still the dominant modus operandi.
In Manuel Antonio/Queopos and Kenya, a lot of hotels still resemble the pre-Fordist mode of production. However, they persist in Europe, too: family-run micro-enterprises (0-9 employees) make up 96% of hotels and restaurants, and contribute 22% of total turnover and 30% of total employment (Smeral and Evans, in: Bianchi, 2001: 258). Local ‘social’ networks are crucial for the functioning of these small enterprises, and while their basis for building up these networks varies (kin, caste, clan, ethnicity), their deployment turns out to be quite similar across regions (Rutten and Upadhya, 1997: 23).
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In tourism, Fordism became associated with specific mass production characteristics. As we have seen, the nineteenth-century Thomas Cook and Son is the icon of mass tourism, in 1841 already taking charge of the travel of some 2 million people. Fordist performances of tourismscapes are typically characterized as a mode of tourism production by a small number of transnational corporations, like transnational tour operators, airlines and larger hotel companies, which initially introduced more rigid, uniform and standardized modes of service production. Linked to globalization strategies, they pursue increased market share and market concentration. Low wages, unskilled, specialized and seasonal labour, low levels of unionization and high labour turnover are the principal characteristics (Ioannides and Debagge, 1997; ILO, 2001). The dominant mode is ‘vertical’ networking through chains. Not seldom, enterprises that are part of such a chain are ‘islands’ within their local community: to ensure their continued existence, they do not link or have to link up with similar surrounding businesses. Further, the chain approach tends to see networks as being composed in line with particular relations of power and coercive sets of relations dominated by large-scale tourism firms like tour operators (Murdoch, 2000). Via branding, franchising, alliances, takeovers or other ‘tactics of translation’, smaller entrepreneurs increasingly became caught in processes of horizontal and vertical integration. Fordist elements of the tourism industry that exhibit flexibility, offer consumers a greater choice and are more likely to adapt than to disappear, are also depicted as neo-Fordist rather than post-Fordist (see Torrres, 2002)
Post-Fordist modes of tourism production – performing greater flexibility and variety, segmentation and diagonal integration – have increased in the last twenty or thirty years (Milne and Ateljevic, 2001: 378). Functionally flexible and skilled employees are doing their best to meet the demands of more experienced and independent travellers (see also Lash and Urry, 1994). New technologies are strategically used to create horizontal, vertical and diagonal network alliances.
Complex networks of interlinked firms illustrate the pattern of industrial organization known as flexible accumulation. This shift in industrial organization has given rise to new opportunities for independent entrepreneurship by those who have relatively small amounts of capital to invest (Rutten and Upadhya, 1997).
The complexity of tourismscapes is well mirrored by this heterogeneity of constituent firms and networks of firms. Ioannides and Debagge (1997 and 1998) contend that rather than there being a chronological division between pre-Fordist, Fordist and neo- or post-Fordist activities, the tourism industry has ‘permeable boundaries’ and a diversity of ‘linkage arrangements’. Tourismscapes, therefore, in essentialist terms, consist of a complex of coexisting multiple incarnations, ranging from pre-Fordist, ‘craft’-oriented small-scale entrepreneurs, via more rigid, standardized, mass-market Fordist production processes, to elements of the tourism industry demonstrating post-Fordist characteristics, particularly based on new information technologies (Ioannides and Debagge, 1997 and 1998; Torres, 2002; see also Harvey, 1989 and Milne and Ateljevic, 2001).
6.4.3 Patronage and brokering
Recently, Dahles (1999), following Boissevain (1974), introduced the distinction between patronage and brokering. These are two distinct but closely related ‘modes of ordering’. They actually constitute a safety belt that allows small entrepreneurs to operate in a relatively flexible
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manner (Dahles, 1999). Strategic linkages between small entrepreneurs exploit two distinct types or resources, namely first-order resources and second-order resources. The former include the resources (such as land, equipment, jobs, funds and specialized knowledge) that the entrepreneur controls directly, while second-order resources consist of strategic contacts with other people who control first-order resources directly or who have access to people who do. ‘Patrons’ primarily control first-order resources, and ‘brokers’ predominately manage second-order resources. However, in both cases they drag people and things into tourismscapes – patrons by incorporating first-order resources, and brokers by acting as mediators. They bring people in touch which each other and with natural (or cultural) resources directly or indirectly, and they bridge gaps in communication between people (ibid.: 9).
Guides are a good example of brokers. They offer logistical as well as narrative support. They reveal the local network not only of people but also of things (souvenirs, food, historical buildings and sites, natural qualities and the like) and as such enact tourismscapes. Their activities can be regarded as mostly entrepreneurial in the sense that they sell images, knowledge, contacts, souvenirs, access, authenticity, ideology and sometimes even their body (Bras, 2000: 47). These are the intermediaries they put in circulation in order to receive money in return. An important factor in becoming a successful guide is the ability to turn one’s social relations and one’s narratives into a profitable business asset. The ability to do so rests on the art of building a network, monopolizing contacts, exploiting the commission and tipping system, and sensing the trends within tourism (ibid.: 47).
Thus, like ‘size’, patronage and brokering are relational effects and are defined relative to the actor networks at stake. ‘Patrons’ will have to act as ‘brokers’ as well, and brokers can act as patrons, as for example Bras (2000: 111) explains:
Launching a home stay with bed-and-breakfast facilities, being an intermediary in large souvenir purchases, giving private English lessons and being involved in import-export of handicraft products are examples of the sideline activities that are carried out.
Therefore, hotel owners, who primarily patronize their resources, have to be brokers, too. They are truly ‘network specialists’, too, as they endlessly translate tourists, banks, staff members, distributors of food, beverage and furniture, other enterprises and legal and local rules into their project. Take the example of a German entrepreneur in Manuel Antonio. He had to rebuild his hotel to make it a successful project:
When I took over the hotel it was in a terrible condition. I spent more than 15,000 US dollars;
the whole second floor is new. I refurnished the hotel; tables, chairs, bamboo, electricity; all are new (…) But the hotel is not completely new; it still has its old charm. (Source: interviews by Goudzwaard and Visser, 2003)
However, renovation also required a lot of brokering:
You have to know how deals are done. For example, I had to buy materials for reconstructing this place. Compared to the first offer that was made to me, I saved 60 per cent. Can you imagine?
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139 60 per cent! … The architect planning the reconstruction was an engineer from the municipality.
He made the plan, got some money and gave me the permission. Then I reconstructed my hotel totally differently. When he came to see the reconstruction and made objections, I said: ‘Let’s drink a beer!’.
Thus, to make a project do well, human as well as non-human materials had to be utilized. In this particular, case even spaghetti played a part in attracting new customers:
There was a restaurant offering ‘pizza nights’, during which you were allowed to eat as much pizza as you liked. So I did not get any guests at my place for dinner. So what did I do? I started a ‘free pasta’ night. Everybody who checked in could eat spaghetti for free. So then all the people stayed with me. Even more, I was repaid by the selling of beer, Coca-Cola and water. And you know what else? I was paid off by the fact that people stayed longer.
But all in all, brokering is a hard job:
I tried to start a referral programme with taxi drivers, restaurants, stores and people in Quepos.
Both nothing happened … And there’s that guy who contacts tourists as they get off the bus. I made contact with him, but he never used my cards … So now we have to make contact with travel agencies, but we haven’t yet set up agency commissions and stuff like that ... I will have to work on that … (Source: interviews by Goudzwaard and Visser, 2003)
6.4.4 Informal and formal
A fourth common dimension in discussing small enterprises is the distinction between formal and informal. For decades, those who drew up official policies towards the informal small-firm sector took it as their task to replace ‘tradition’ with ‘modernity’ in order to achieve economic development.
However, evidence from both the developing and the developed world clearly shows that development based on such discriminating policies is much too simple. To the contrary, according to Portes and Sassen-Koob (1987) much of the available information contradicts the assumptions that informal activities are essentially transitory and eventually will disappear. Informal arrangements continue to exist or even grow in contexts where they are believed to be extinct or in which they were expected to disappear with the advance of industrialization (Castells and Portes, 1989).
For example, in Kenya the rapid urbanization and modernization experienced after independence, with its accompanied poverty, unemployment and the growth of unplanned areas without social amenities, led to an increasing proportion of new job opportunities in the informal sector. The informal sector in Kenya operates in an informal space with very little shelter: it is therefore called Jua Kall (Kiswhali for ‘hot sun’). Every year Kenya must absorb almost 500,000 new entrants into the labour market. For this to happen the formal sector would have to increase by 17% a year, instead of the actual annual growth of 3.6% over the past decade. The informal sector of Kenya therefore contains 95% of all entrepreneurial and technological business in the country and accounts for 37% of the total urban employment. The tourism sector increasingly provides an important portion of this employment. Experts reckon the percentage of people working in the tourism industry in a place like Malindi to be between 70 and 90% (Marwijk and Joosten, 2003: 21)
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Similarly, according to Arroyo and Nebelung (2002), in Central America almost half of the non-agricultural employment is depicted as informal, and more than 75% of the non-non-agricultural employment takes place in small or micro-enterprises (of which 80% are self-subsistence enterprises, with very little potential for growth). Although specifications for the tourism sector are lacking, there are no reasons to believe that the situation in this sector differs fundamentally from that in other sectors (Beluche, pers. com). Tourism is increasingly providing jobs, especially in Costa Rica. For example, in Manuel Antonio/Quepos, tourism generates 30% of all direct employment. People working in the tourism sector in Manuel Antonio earn around 1.60 US dollars an hour (Duim et al., 2001; see also Chapter 2).
Although the informal sector in tourism absorbs a lot of new entrants to the labour market, the ILO (2001) is concerned about the quality of that labour. They especially point at the working conditions (often characterized by part-time or low-paid jobs, high staff turnover and irregular working hours), the position of migrant workers, and child labour.
The informal economy does not result from the intrinsic characteristics of activities, but from the social definition of state intervention. Castells and Portes (1989: 12) define the informal economy not as an individual condition but a process of income-generation characterized by one central feature: ‘it is unregulated by the institutions of society, in a legal and social environment in which similar activities are regulated.’ As a consequence, the boundaries of the informal economy will substantially vary in different contexts and historical circumstances. Moreover, there is no clear-cut duality between a formal and an informal sector, but a series of complex interactions that establish distinct relationships between the economy and the state (ibid.: 31-32).
Individual workers may switch between the two sectors, even during the same day. Therefore, to position two different types of economies – an informal or traditional, and a formal or modern one – within a single spatial setting, is not is a fruitful starting point (Verschoor, 1997a: 225).
Nevertheless, Dahles (1999) points at the coexistence of the ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ in a
‘dual economy’ in which capitalist development does not absorb the traditional economy, but simply exists side by side in a dual system. However, in this idea of dualism, the informal sector is often erroneously branded as unorganized, underdeveloped and inert. It is often only the lack of an official license, and not its organization or functions, that classifies the activity. According to Dahles (1999: 8), household incomes may come from a variety of sources, as their individual members work in different sectors and change their working patterns many times during their lifetime or even on a monthly or daily basis. Unions or the state might not protect their labour, but often they establish protective organizations themselves that are tolerated by the authorities. It may therefore be more appropriate to present a local economy as a continuum with a formal and an informal end, whereas most business activities are characterized by a combination of formal and informal traits, depending on the specific context and the business under examination.
Bras (2000), for example, shows in the case of guides in Lombok that the focus on licenses is merely a policy through which governmental authorities hope to get a grip on one specific group of actors in tourism:
This is a vain hope as the approach has proved to be ineffectual, because there is no specific attention paid to the underlying strategies and sources of capital which local tourists guides tend to use. The result is that unlicensed guides are branded as unprofessional and that some local guides are even stigmatized as the major source of annoyance upsetting host-guests relations (ibid.: 207).
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However, to gain a good insight into the way local tourist guides operate it is important to focus on local guides’ own perception of their activities. According to Bras, the availability or absence of a license has no bearing on which aspects of the job are emphasized or which elements of the culture are brought to the fore. It depends instead on the effectiveness of local guides’ networks, their position within the tourism industry and their ties with the local community. Bras’ extensive fieldwork among local tourist guides in Lombok revealed a formal-informal continuum, which included four categories of local guides: professional guides, site-related guides, odd-jobbers and network specialists. In most cases, overlap between informal and formal seems to be the rule rather than the exception.
6.4.5 Opportunity and necessity
There are many reasons for starting a hotel, lodge or other tourism business venture. Morrison (2004) suggests making a distinction between opportunity – where individuals perceive a business prospect and take advantage of it, either independently or from a position of employment – and necessity, where individuals become entrepreneurial agents, as they have no better alternative. In the latter case, starting an entrepreneurial project is, for example, instrumentally stirred by social and/or economic marginalization: a financial need to diversify from other, traditional spheres of economic activity or to support family members (ibid.: 10).
In the former case of relative opportunity and free choice, the entrepreneurial activity is often associated with lifestyle goals. Especially Ateljevic and Doorne (2000 and 2003) recently argued that an emerging cohort of ‘tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs’, who do not subscribe to the inevitable path of ‘progress’ as an end in itself, consciously reject economic and business growth opportunities as an expression of their socio-political ideology. Coincidentally, this rejection of an overtly profit-driven orientation does not necessarily result in financial suicide or development stagnation, but provides opportunities to engage with niche-market consumers informed by values common to themselves within rapidly segmenting markets (Ateljevic and Doorne, 2000: 381)
However, opportunity and necessity, wertrational and zweckrational action, lifestyle goals and strategic business objectives are not mutually exclusive. To the contrary, there are many trade-offs between the two and lifestyle goals are constantly evaluated in the light of commercial considerations, which are clearly essential for a continued existence of the enterprise. As an entrepreneur on Texel stated:
Freedom, being accountable only to oneself: that’s the advantage. However, one always has to work. Yesterday I was offered three tickets for a Rolling Stones concert. I had to say no. But in the winter I close the hotel for three months. That pays off. (Source: interviews by Goudzwaard and Visser, 2003)
Similarly, the American owner of a hotel in Manuel Antonio declared that the decision to move to Costa Rica was:
… both a choice and a necessity. I wanted to be my own boss rather than work for someone else.
It was a necessity because I couldn’t get a job; the economy in the US is bad and I had been trying to get a job for more than a year. ... Why Costa Rica? I want to live close to the beach. I want to live