Countries and regions in various parts of the world have entered different stages of population ageing. The prevalence of SMEs in the hospitality and tourism industry is a crucial feature of the sector. In the context of active ageing, seniors' entrepreneurship in the hospitality and tourism industry is a viable option in later life. From the local government perspective, elderly entrepreneurship helps mitigate the adverse effects of population ageing. This study seeks to understand the determinants of the elderly choosing to start businesses in the hospitality and tourism industry and their actual performance in the industry. It also aims to identify the barriers to becoming entrepreneurs and support of the needs required by entrepreneurs in this age group, as well as the impact of their entrepreneurship on individual and social dimensions. This research confirms the following determinants of the elderly entrepreneurship, i.e. motivation by pull and push factors, and heterogeneity of the group members, are also present in the hospitality and tourism industry. With varying experiences, elderly entrepreneurs' management acumen relies on informal processes. Elderlyentrepreneurs are inspired by their lifestyle issues and expertly use social media and personalised service to build customer loyalty to gain a competitive advantage. Their motivation for achievingbusiness growth is driven exclusivelybypull factors. However,thefollowing barriers to entry to entrepreneurship exist: lack of supporting policies by the government and lack of knowledge about existing supporting programmes, and consequently, lack of entrepreneurial training. Despite that, participants' advanced age and self-confidence are perceived advantages when starting a business. As for the impacts of elderly entrepreneurship on individual, social and economic dimensions, the following impacts hold true. Firstly, being an entrepreneur is perceived to contribute to good physical and psychological health, and in its turn, good health further promotes engagement with entrepreneurship. Secondly, being an entrepreneur improves the social image of the elderly. Thirdly, being an entrepreneur increases income both for the individual and their region.
Previous hospitality and tourism studies researching the older people mainly focused on senior tourists. At the same time, many previous studies on entrepreneurship are focusedoncollegestudentsand youth.Olderpeopleashospitalityandtourismsuppliers also require more investigation. At the time of writing, no other research has been undertaken on China's elderly entrepreneurship, exclusively in the hospitality and tourism industry. With little evidence of determinants and experiences of elderly entrepreneurs in hospitality and tourism, especially in the context of China, current knowledge on this subject is limited. This research applies active ageing theory to fill in this knowledge gap. This study fills in the gap in knowledge of elderly entrepreneurship in the hospitality and tourism industry in China by localising active ageing theory, thus providing a theoretical contribution to the field of elderly entrepreneurship. This study's practical contribution is suggesting possible policy and entrepreneurial training programme development for local governments to encourage elderly entrepreneurship in the hospitality and tourism industry as means to mitigate the negative consequences of the ageing population. The dissertation concludes with a statement of the limitations of this study and recommendations for future research.