Crowdsourcing: An Alternative for the Dynamic Development of Entrepreneurship in the Romanian Tourism

Popescu, Dan; State, Cristina Article Crowdsourcing: An Alternative for the Dynamic Development of Entrepreneurship in the Romanian Tourism Amfiteatru Economic Journal Provided in Cooperation with: The Bucharest University of Economic Studies Suggested Citation: Popescu, Dan; State, Cristina (2015) : Crowdsourcing: An Alternative for the Dynamic Development of Entrepreneurship in the Romanian Tourism, Amfiteatru Economic Journal, ISSN 2247-9104, The Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Vol. 17, Iss. 38, pp. 162-179 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/168909 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ AE Crowdsourcing: An Alternative for the Dynamic Development of Entrepreneurship in the Romanian Tourism Amfiteatru Economic 162 CROWDSOURCING: AN ALTERNATIVE FOR THE DYNAMIC DEVELOPMENT OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE ROMANIAN TOURISM Dan Popescu¹ and Cristina State² ¹) ²) Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Romania Please cite this article as: Popescu, D. and State, C., 2015. Crowdsourcing: An Alternative for the Dynamic Development of Entrepreneurship in the Romanian Tourism. Amfiteatru Economic,17(38), pp. 162-179 Abstract Developing entrepreneurship is not only a challenge but also a natural consequence of the approach towards success. Entrepreneurship sustainability is conditioned by how the national business environment influences the education and mentality of the population to have the desire and courage to initiate and develop performance measures in a changing business environment more and more fluctuating and unpredictable. Our research, conducted over nearly two years aims, as main objective, to outline how implementing crowdsourcing as a way of solving, online, some problems regarding activities of major interests at organizational level (in our case, external communication), may contribute to the development of entrepreneurship in Romanian tourism. In this regard, we assumed that, despite the empirical mode of action (of priority being intuition and personal experience), only having reliable information on the perception, primarily, of their customers about the quality of the benefits they received, entrepreneurs in the tourism and hospitality industry will be able to adapt and/or develop their businesses in accordance with the main trends and characteristics of the environment in which they operate. The methodology used (analysis of variance - ANOVA correlated with SPSS for Windows, version 15) to test research hypotheses was the logical consequence of the questions used in questionnaires launched on two websites specially created. In this context, we investigated the biunivocal relationship between the phenomenon of entrepreneurship and business tourism and hospitality industry from the perspective of external organizational communication trends of profile units in the digital age, trends expressed by both managers and also by their customers. Finally, based on hypotheses testing, we found that, in a world of rapidly changing, boosting entrepreneurship became dependent on both the accuracy of the image the managers of tourism units have about their own activity and also on their customer perception on the quality of services they receive. So, on the one hand, crowdsourcing has become a viable resultant for the development of entrepreneurship in tourism and hospitality industry as, on the other hand, entrepreneurs need to motivate the participation of their own customers at crowdsourcing. Keywords: crowdsourcing, entrepreneurship, change, sustainability, digital era JEL Classification: J26  Corresponding author, Dan Popescu - [email protected]e.ro Fostering Entrepreneurship in a Changing Business Environment AE Vol. 17 • No. 38 • February 2015 163 Introduction With varying degrees of intensity, each of us is marked by a large and complex process of confrontation, identification, assessment and action (Paton, 2004, p. 39), which generates the need for permanent improvement of their performance and also creating new opportunities capable of producing change. In this context, the dynamism and richness of a country depends on the competitiveness of business and organizational performance which, in turn, rely on the entrepreneurial capacities proven through skills and innovative initiatives capable of generating national wealth. As a direct result of the development of desire to succeed and to identify the new capable of generating performance and progress, entrepreneurship has become a condition of sustainability and viability of the enterprise (Dinu, 2011, p. 6). One of the most important resources for economic growth is the tourism. Worldwide, in 2013, the number of international tourists was nearly 1.1 billion (UNWTO, 2014), which represents about 15% of the world population. Considering that, in the same reference year, according to official statistics (NIS, 2014) Romania was visited by 1.7 million foreign tourists, this shows that our country has only about 0.16% of world tourism. According to the same official sources, the total number of Romanian tourists was 6.2 million (with approximately 364% higher than the number of those who have visited our country). Average annual increase in the number of tourists was in 2013, compared with 2012, 5% for foreign tourists and only 3.2% for Romanian (NIS, 2014). Obviously, these data reflect the existence of a huge growth potential of the Romanian tourism, especially in the field of entrepreneurship, in particular by identifying some diversified ways to attract new and new tourists and to make loyal the existing ones. In this context, we intend to identify to what extent crowdsourcing, as a way to obtain needed services and/or ideas by soliciting contributions from large groups of people and/or communities, using online resources and not traditional employees or suppliers (Merriam-Webster Online, 2014; Howe, 2006; Brabham, 2008), may be an alternative for the dynamic development of entrepreneurship in Romanian tourism. 1. Literature Review In any modern and competitive economy, to entrepreneurship is given major attention. The term "entrepreneur" has evolved diverse but, generally, with the same sense. Thus, in the early eighteenth century, Say (apud. Vlăsceanu, 2010, p. 155) defined the entrepreneur as "... a person who transfers resources from an area with lower productivity in one with higher productivity and with higher profit, creating therefore value"; In the opinion of Cantillon, "... the entrepreneur is essentially an independent speculator of goods" (Peters, Freha and Buhalis, 2009, p. 395); Schumpeter considered him "... a person willing and able to turn a new idea or invention into a successful innovation" (1976, p.27); Finally, according to Drucker, the entrepreneur is "... a person who capitalize a new possibility with maximum profit" (2006, p.29). For its part, the term "entrepreneurship" has known different meanings. For example, for Cole, it was "... an activity dedicated to initiation, maintenance and development of a profit-oriented business", for Drucker "... an act of innovation, which involves endowing existing resources with wealth-producing capacity", Stevenson appreciate that it "... is the pursuit of opportunity, regardless of the existing resources", and Heron and Robinson "... the set of behaviors that initiates and manages the reallocation of economic resources and whose purpose is value creation through those means" (as cited. Rusu, 2014, p.7). Currently, the education to stimulate the initiative to undertake has become a component part of both public policies and AE Crowdsourcing: An Alternative for the Dynamic Development of Entrepreneurship in the Romanian Tourism Amfiteatru Economic 164 also of private organizational ones. However, the fear to assume responsibilities and risks, still exists too many people who think that to open your business, you need, first, a lot of money. On the other hand, there are opinions according to which although "... in universities there are some entrepreneurship courses ... they suffer from several points of view and often fail to achieve their purpose ... Suffer, primarily because they are not taught by entrepreneurs, but by the consultants or academics who have not developed or owned, never in their lives, a business" (Ghenea, 2011, p.25). Obviously, this is a way to question the competence and skills of trainers, which is unfavorable for the image of our education system. At the opposite, are those who exaggerate, promising and even guaranteeing the success of potential entrepreneurs: "... I assure you that if you are a" seeker ", there is a business model that you can do it successfully, regardless of the circumstances in which you are or what experience you have experience in business! ... THE KEY is YOUR commitment on 3-5 years during which you turn your dream into a successful business! If everything is clear, let's start the journey towards SUCCESS and HAPPINESS ..." (Onetiu, 2014, p. 13). And yet, in the desire to seek the new, there are many young (and not only) which read this kind of literature, but do not have the courage to undertake. Beyond any opinions, one thing is quite obvious: "... the stagnation means regression, and whoever is not able to adapt as quickly, to the external environment changes and global competition, is likely to stand outside" (Egger, Gula and Walcher, 2015). Many specialists believe that "... Entrepreneurship is an engine of sustainable development", convinced that "... the innovative power of entrepreneurship will lead to the next industrial revolution and towards a sustainable future" (Pacheco, Dean and Payne, 2010, p.464). Consequently, there have been a number of new conceptual notions as, for example, sustainable entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship of the environment, ecoentrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, etc. "Entrepreneurs see change as something normal and healthy. Usually, these changes are not made by themselves. But - something that defines entrepreneur and entrepreneurship - the entrepreneur always seeks the change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity" (Drucker, 1985, p.28). Regarding the opportunity, in our opinion it has created and not "found". Although some authors consider that "... the chance to respond to a market need (or desire or interest), through a combination of creative resources to provide superior value" (Rusu, 2014, p.35), we consider that opportunities like demand on the market, must be created, in order to be exploited. It is therefore obvious that entrepreneurship is a sine qua non condition for success in life, a mandatory premise to succeed, in general, to depend on as few people as possible, acting brave, dynamic and effective (Popescu and State, 2014 p. 12). Perhaps no other sector offers so many opportunities of entrepreneurship affirmation like tourism and hospitality industry. As a result of these, in the previous 25 years in Romania were created thousands of hotels and especially pensions, for whose promotion should deal not only specialized institutional organizations, but also the (from our research, performed between 30.06. 2012 - 06.30.2013) 3000 registered travel agencies nationwide. Tourism and hospitality industry as a whole and, more recently, according to some authors, and leisure (Rusu, 2014, p.76), is based primarily on entrepreneurship and on the activity of small and medium seized enterprises - SMEs - (Peters, Freha and Buhalis, 2009, p. 396). In general, entrepreneurship in tourism includes all commercial enterprises or activities located in urban or rural areas owned by small individual entrepreneurs, groups or business partners, private or public companies offering a wide range of services in the tourism industry (Lordkipanidze, 2002 , p. 35, cited. Rusu, 2014, p. 76). This depends on the involvement of local people, through their role of employees or entrepreneurs, as well as, Fostering Entrepreneurship in a Changing Business Environment AE Vol. 17 • No. 38 • February 2015 165 especially, on the hospitality (courtesy, kindness etc.) of hosts towards tourists; So basically, on the socio-cultural, ideological, religious, ethical aspects, etc. (Blackstock, 2005, p. 39; Krce-Miocic, Vidic and Kovacevic, 2014, p. 144). As we mentioned, the tourism development is a source of national wealth, in a general sense, and to enhance the income of local communities, in particular. Consequently, the innovative contribution of all tourism units for the revenue growth in the area is very important (Ateljevic and Page, 2009, p. 149). Finally, all units operating in the tourism and hospitality industry are dependent in their results, on the development of creative products and innovative entrepreneurship. In this context, the cooperation and building networking and linkages with the environment are particularly important factors for success in business, as a result of adaptability to market situations under constant change. It is also important to stress that within an information technology enabled knowledge economy the management of services is profoundly changing, “in the sense of it being knowledge-driven, and relying on people’ s continuous development, network intense collaboration (sharing ideas and knowledge), and value co-creation so as to attain sustainable competitive advantage” (Plumb and Zamfir, 2009, p. 380). Simultaneously, we have to take into account the fact that individual entrepreneurs and also small and medium from the tourism area conducts many activities in competition with big profile multinational chains. Under these conditions, very few entrepreneurs will be able to grow significantly and therefore require multiple skills to be feared in competition with large companies, which employ specialists, especially given that the business prospects of the first are limited temporal. (Ateljevic and Page, 2009, p. 165-167). Revenue growth, resistance to a business environment that is constantly changing, requires from any type of entrepreneurs, especially the small and medium ones, knowledge of the real customer opinion (or what we consider that, wrongly, Romanian legislation calls tourists). In this respect, in our study we stopped at an innovative way to consult and take into account the opinion of entrepreneurs customers from tourism area: crowdsourcing. After analyzing more than 40 definitions in the literature, the most comprehensive definition of crowdsourcing was provided by Estellés-Arolas and Ladrón-de-Guevara: "... type of online activity, participatory, in which a person, an institution, a nonprofit organization or a company (commercial - a.n.) proposes to a heterogeneous group of people with different knowledge, by an open and flexible call, the voluntary undertaking of tasks of variable complexity and modularity... The benefit will be mutual: the user will get the satisfaction of a certain type of need (economic or social recognition, self-esteem, developing individual skills etc. while the crowdsourcer will get and use in his interest, all information provided by the user" (Estellés-Arolas and Ladrón-de-Guevara, 2012, p. 8-9). Crowdsourcing is a complex compound of concepts crowd and outsourcing (Howe, 2006, p. 3) and comes from the words (English) crowd and source. Crowdsourcing differs from outsourcing, last one defining activities from external sources without them being ordered/requested by a group (managerial) inside the beneficiary organization. The outsourcing of services through crowdsourcing appeals to online platforms such as, for example, AmazonMechanicalTurk, Crowdsprings and DesignCrowd. The addressability of crowdsourcing includes, in competitive regime, individuals and/or groups of people and not employees or contractors, as in the case of outsourcing. Transferring crowdsourcing through internet was motivated by the reality that individuals tend to behave much more open on a specialized website, feeling more secure without the supervision from third parties, of their way of thinking and, especially, to act (Smith, Gharaei-Manesh and Alshaikh 2013, p. 23). This, all the more as the atmosphere generated by online work provides extra attention and concentration of the tasks performers from a project, higher than the specific AE Crowdsourcing: An Alternative for the Dynamic Development of Entrepreneurship in the Romanian Tourism Amfiteatru Economic 166 situations of interpersonal communication such as "face to face". From a technical standpoint, through crowdsourcing, entrepreneurs can, on the one hand, to identify new developments in their field and also store them according to the interests they pursue. On the other hand, may entrust on specialized designed platforms "basic tasks" (task-based crowd) to exchange information with customers, related with, for example, their satisfaction with the services they received. This will be achieved, operative, anonymously (Smith, Gharaei-Manesh and Alshaikh 2013, p. 23). At the individual level, those who turn to crowdsourcing have two reasons (Howe, 2008, p. 19; Henk van, 2010, p. 8; Brabham, 2012, p. 27-28): intrinsically (social interaction, intellectual stimulation through competition etc.) and extrinsically (financial gain). From another perspective, crowdsourcing can be a source of stimulating entrepreneurship as an attractive form of promotion and manifestation of itself (De Ridder, 2008). For example, it can be not only a simple occupational alternative of entrepreneurs, but also a genuine form of dynamic connection of enterprises (in particular, the small and medium enterprises) to the realities imposed by changes in the nature of innovation in the digital age (Mwila 2013, p. 1293), in both cases with a positive impact on general economic and social progress. In this context, deeply favored and generating sustainability, viability and durability at both macro and micro levels, crowdsourcing represents an efficient way to stimulate social entrepreneurship, helping to create new jobs and facilitating social inclusion of persons in situations of risk (Egger, Gula and Walcher, 2015). Without presenting an exhaustive list, but relevant for how crowds can be called and used to perform tasks, a typology of crowdsourcing could include as forms: the crowdvoting; the crowdfunding; the microwork; creative crowdsourcing; etc. (Howe, 2008; Saxton and Kishore, 2013; Lombard, 2013; Brabham, 2012). 2. Objectives, hypotheses and research methodology The main objective of our applicative research was to outline the way in which crowdsourcing can contribute to the development of entrepreneurship in the Romanian tourism. As we pointed out, in order to initiate and/or to develop their business, tourism entrepreneurs must on the one hand, to have a real perception of the degree of satisfaction of their clients for the services they receive and on the other hand, to encourage them to appeal at crowdsourcing. This implies the professionalization of external organizational communication, in terms of using the means offered by the digital age. In the context of our research, we considered crowdsourcing from the perspective of the interaction between tourism entrepreneurs and customers, as a new form of external organizational communication. In this sense, given that, so far, in Romania, there is no study in the investigated field, we focused our research approach on two axes, respectively, on the ways in which is: a) designed and built by entrepreneurs, the external organizational communication of tourism units (basically how they offer their services to customers); b) perceived by customers (tourists), the image of tourism units in the light of their feedback via crowdsourcing, concerning the degree of satisfaction with the services they received. We started our approach with the following dilemma (which was also the main hypothesis): why, given that, about the results of Romanian tourism, people speak generally, in praise terms, the approach of organizational communication in tourism units is empirically and is based primarily on intuition and experience. In our opinion, this is potentially generating false perceptions of customers about the services of tourism units and therefore may affect, major, directly and unfavorable, organizational performance. Fostering Entrepreneurship in a Changing Business Environment AE Vol. 17 • No. 38 • February 2015 167 The three secondary hypotheses relevant to the role of organizational communication in and for obtaining sustainable economic performances by the tourism units were: I.1 Entrepreneurs/managers of tourism units does not take a consistent approach for the organizational communication, based on the substantiation, development and implementation of strategies and/or appropriate tactics to attract tourists. Consequently, in many situations, promoting the tourism units is a direct result of advertising carried out by the media; I.2 Organizational communication processes (both internal and external) are initiated, usually ad hoc, depending on current issues without being based on coherent plans of action and/or customer feedback. This is likely to jeopardize the sustainability of the specialized units activity, including towards reducing desire to develop tourism businesses; I.3 The substantiation and the adoption of the decision to purchase goods or services is determined, primarily, by documentation taken by customers of tourism units and not by the efficiency of the way in which entrepreneurs in the field promote their own image. We decided that after testing three hypotheses, to formulate a set of proposals able to ensure competitiveness and sustainability of the activity of units in the field and especially, as a result of crowdsourcing, to become a viable alternative to the dynamic development of entrepreneurship in general, to the tourism and hospitality industry, in particular. Methodologicaly, both the professionalism analysis shown by tourism entrepreneurs in promoting their own image as well as the degree of customer satisfaction were made by crowdsourcing, as a potential method of qualitative inquiry, the instrument of information collection was a questionnaire placed on each of the specially constituted two platforms. Basically, what we propose is an implementation crowdsourcing's debut in tourism, especially if we consider that we haven’t committed any micro-tasks to the participants nor we haven’t rewarded financially respondents of the questionnaires created (procedure requires that, on average, a micro-task solved - a questionnaire, in our case - to be paid by 15-20 cents). From a financial standpoint, the effort of the websites creators would not be consistent when measured against the importance of the results (respectively, a more realistic picture on the quality on the one hand, of organizational communication and on the other hand, of services which benefited the customers of tourism units). For example, in addition to the cost of achieving online platform, in the case of its access by entrepreneurs in tourism (direction in which the National Association of Travel Agencies (ANAT) could make an important contribution), compensation of each micro-task (questionnaire, in this case) would require approximately 15000 units for the Romanian tourism units (hotels, hostels, pensions etc. and travel agencies - data source: author's calculations, based on all available sources of information), expenses of about 3000 USD. Regarding the implementation of crowdsourcing in tourism as a means of stimulating the entrepreneurship, on the one hand, we wanted to raise awareness of entrepreneurs in the industry to use this procedure in order to get to know the satisfaction degree of their customers and, on the other hand we aimed to demonstrate that, in the digital age, the possibilities for interaction between entrepreneurs and customers are more diversified, efficient and responsive to the environment changes. Questions of the two questionnaires (one for managers/entrepreneurs in tourism, the other for customers of tourism units) were designed based on surveys models developed and applied in the field (Fuller, 2000 by Veert, 2007 apud. Deaconu et al., 2014, p.698) in collaboration with experts (academics) in psychology. Each questionnaire included 20 questions each, in our research being covered the subsumed of the intended purpose. Methodologically, in our research the knowledge of the respondents' opinion was made by AE Crowdsourcing: An Alternative for the Dynamic Development of Entrepreneurship in the Romanian Tourism Amfiteatru Economic 168 their free consent to access the websites specially created and not as a result of calling the recipients already known. Being announced, through various social media ways, on the opportunities to interact with entrepreneurs in tourism units and their clients, respondents accessed, when and where they wanted (time interval for which we consulted the accessing of the two websites was February, 15 to August, 30, 2014), online platforms available to them at <http://goo.gl/sgzjU> (for assessing the quality of organizational communication in tourism units) and at <http://goo.gl/ JUaLx> (to assess customer satisfaction towards the quality of organizational communication in tourism units). We reveal that these platforms are permanently operative. The first questionnaire, the one offering to entrepreneurs from tourism the opportunity to access the platform available at <http://goo.gl/sgzjU>, included questions about aspects with character: a) general concerning the organization and in the broad sense organizational communication; In this context, we sought to identify whether the profile activity is followed at the managerial level or at the one related with some organizational specialized subdivisions (as, for example, the marketing department, department of communication and public relations, etc.); b) specific, about who and how performs profile activities and what methods are used to stimulate and facilitate effective networking of tourism units, on the one hand and to ensure the development of training their employees, on the other part. This questionnaire has been accessed by 157 entrepreneurs/managers from tourism. There were some situations where those who accessed the online platform did not answer to all questions. The second questionnaire available at <http://goo.gl/JUaLx>, offered to any customer of tourism units to formulate opinions on: travel frequency (internal and external) on interest category (private, for business or mixed); the documentary sources called before making the trip and whether they were helpful; their perception about the professionalism of entrepreneurs in tourism, from the perspective of the way to design and conduct organizational communication in accordance with their expectations and, especially, from the effectiveness of customer loyalty programs on tourism units (whether it is tourism accommodation units or the travel agencies). The number of respondents who accessed voluntarily specialized websites was of 2478. From methodological point of view, to characterize the degree of professionalism of external organizational communication from tourism units, we used the analysis of variance - ANOVA coupled with SPSS for Windows, version 15. Using ANOVA (according to Ostertagova and Ostertag, 2013, p. 256, "... most often cited research method in the literature of business" was a logical consequence of the questions used in the questionnaire. In our case, we started from the fact that ANOVA is used when:  are analyzed differences between groups (tourism units classified by category of classification) from the perspective of one or more variables (each question);  the participants (respondents) were tested (interviewed) in the study only once;  are compared more than two groups (tourism units). Briefly, ANOVA One-Way procedure (Ostertagova and Ostertag, 2013, p. 256-261) considered that we have values of the random independent and normal variables (tourism units, by type of classification) Xi,j, where: i = 1, 2, …, k and j = 1, 2,…, ni, with the mean µi and with standard deviation constant σ, Xi,j - N (µi, σ). Alternatively, each Xi,j = µi + εi,j, where εi,j are normally distributed , have values of errors εi,j - N (0, σ). Be N = n1 + n2 + … + nk total number of tourism units (n1 being hotels from first group, with the classification of 5 stars). The parameters of this model are each question µ1, µ2, …, µk, standard deviation σ. Fostering Entrepreneurship in a Changing Business Environment AE Vol. 17 • No. 38 • February 2015 169 Next it is proceeding to testing the null hypothesis (H0): H0 : µ1 = µi = … = µk (1) compared to the alternative hypothesis (H1): H1 :  1 ≤ i,l ≤ k, where µi ≠ µl (2) (there is, finally, a pair of unequal values) Next, we accept that represents the sample mean i (i = 1, 2, … , k): (3) x  is the high mean, respectively the average of all data: (4) If we accept that si 2 represents the sample variance: (5) and s2 = MSE is an estimation of the σ2 variance, common to all samples (tourism units): (6) then ANOVA One-Way is focused around the idea of comparing the difference between groups (levels) and the sample’s variance by analyzing the differences between them. If we define the SST - total sum of squares, by ESS - total sum of squared errors and SSC - sum of squares between groups, then we have: (7) (8) (9) Let us consider that the deviation from a certain level of the mean is written as follows: (10) x i 1 nxij j1 ni  , x1 Nx ij j1 n i  i1 k  , si 21 ni1(xij j1 n i  xi)2, s 2 1 Nk(n i 1) i1 k s 2 i . ,)( 2 11    k i n j ij i xxSST ,)1()( 2 111 2i k i i k i n j iij snxxSSE i    SSC (x i x) 2 j1 ni  i1 k  n i i1 k  (x i x) 2 . )()( xxxxxx iiijij     AE Crowdsourcing: An Alternative for the Dynamic Development of Entrepreneurship in the Romanian Tourism Amfiteatru Economic 176 in crowdsourcing activities, their desires and requirements may be established and retained" (2013, pp. 24-25). Currently, worldwide, there are some great crowdsourcing projects in tourism, from the collection of comments and descriptions relating their experiences of tourists, to the collection of images of the places they visited in order to create reference albums. Our study is the first of its kind in Romania. A limit of our research could be that the two online platforms for data and information collection are only a first attempt of crowdsourcing, not giving crowdsourced services or micro-tasks, to be paid. However, we believe that with further research, including by making available to those who represent entrepreneurs in tourism and their interests (Romanian Minister of Tourism, ANAT etc.) ideas and potential ways of concrete action, we can sensitize decision makers in the creation of crowdsourcing platforms in order, first, to facilitate the collection of information from customers of tourism units, extremely useful information for future business development in the field and/or improvement of existing ones. In this sense, an example of how crowdsourcing can contribute to the stimulation of entrepreneurship in tourism is provided by Wikitravel, a project that aims to create an online travel guide available for worldwide use. Another very good example is Holidaycheck, a crowdsourcing platform through which increasingly more tourists are informing before starting a journey. In Romania this is possible by creating, for example, a portal where customers should express their impressions, evaluations and advices for prospective customers and entrepreneurs and/or managers in the tourism and hospitality industry. We made these considerations because our study aims to reveal how crowdsourcing can contribute to the development entrepreneurial spirit in Romanian tourism. As a result of analyzing the views expressed by respondents who accessed the websites available at <http://goo.gl/sgzjU> and at <http://goo.gl/JUaLx>, we demonstrated that, at present, the approach to organizational communication of units tourism is primarily empirical and based on experience and intuition of the decision makers. As a direct consequence, both entrepreneurs and/or managers from tourism (157 respondents) and the beneficiaries of their services, customers (2478 respondents, of which, to a question answered only 2411 people), are likely to base their decisions on subjective perceptions, respectively on personal effort documentation. The fact that in many of the tourism units in our country there is no consistent scientific approach to activity promotion and development of their image, which should be based on reliable information from beneficiaries of the services offered, this can be improved substantially and decisively by appealing to crowdsourcing. Basically, through crowdsourcing, entrepreneurs can, on the one hand, stimulate customers of tourism units involvement in the improvement of profile activities and, on the other hand, they can redesign and/or extend development strategies taking into account their opinions. The results of our research approach (approach which will be extended in a more ample work, first in the domain of methods for improving organizational communication in tourism units from Romania) constitutes a first step towards a new way more constructive, scientifically more rigorous of substantiating the services offered by tourism entrepreneurs to their customers on their expressed feedback on crowdsourcing platforms. Finally, we express our belief that appealing to crowdsourcing practice is much more than just a necessity, it constitutes itself into an alternative for developing dynamic, viable and sustainable entrepreneurial spirit in Romanian tourism. Fostering Entrepreneurship in a Changing Business Environment AE Vol. 17 • No. 38 • February 2015 177 Acknowledgment This work was co-financed from the European Social Fund through Sectorial Operational Programme Human Resources Development 2007-2013, project number POSDRU/159/1.5/S/142115, project title “Performance and Excellence in Doctoral and Postdoctoral Research in Romanian Economics Science Domain”. References Ateljevic, J. and Page, S., 2009. Tourism and Entrepreneurship-International Perspectives [online] Available at: <http://www.crowdsourcing.org/document/crowdspring-the-story-behind-thestart -up/1366/17.10.2008> [Accessed 27 November 2014]. Bardhan, D.A. and Kroll, C., 2003. The New Wave of Outsourcing. Berkeley: Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics. Bendor-Samuel, P., 2000. Turning Lead Into Gold: The Demystification of Outsourcing. Provo, Utah: Executive Excellence Publishing. Blackstock, K., 2005. A Critical Look at Community Based Tourism. 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