Resumen de Catering to the backpacker: enclaves in Vietnam
Kate Lloyd
Traveller cafes have played an important role in the development of backpacker enclaves in Vietnam, providing a network and infrastructure used by independent travellers. Yet, there is little known about how these enclaves evolved, who established and ran these businesses, their motivation, skills, finances and the entrepreneurial culture and climate in which they developed. This paper examines the emergence of small-scale tour operators and the development of their traveller cafes in the emergingF, tourist destinations of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. Si tuated within the context of a transitional economy, this paper explores the development trajectory of these entrepreneurs who established small private businesses throughout the 1990s to cater to a burgeoning number of mainlt western backpacking travellers. Drawing, on in-depth interviews with these traveller cafe entrepryneurs overan eight-year period, the paper explores the impact of a range of internal and external factors in influencingthe development of the traveller cafes. These factors include the role of backpackers in shaping the services provided, regulation of private government entrepreneurs in the context of a transitional ec:onomv and the role of historical and regional factors. The findings dennonstrate a differentiation in the development and operation of cafes in the north and south of Vietnam. The paper argues that the development of backpacker enclaves in Vietnam are context-specific and that the country's socialist legacy and its complex transitional environment has shaped the way in which traveller cafe` ors ners operate their businesses and the development trajectories of the backpacker enclaves.
