ISO 9000 and performance of small tourism enterprises: a focus on Westons Cider Company

While the tourism industry generally rejects ISO 9000 as a standard irrelevant for this sector, the article aims to assess potential impacts of ISO 9000 accreditation upon the performance of small tourism enterprises (STEs). Limited research within this area encouraged the use of primary research techniques for collecting the relevant data. Due to an insufficient number of STEs fulfilling the sampling criteria, a case study approach was adopted with Westons Cider constituting its subject. The research revealed that ISO 9000 significantly contributed to the improved performance of this company. The benefits and advantages of the ISO 9000 system depend, however, on the age of the system and are subject to a company's conformance to critical success factors. The study also uncovered that the usefulness of ISO 9000 needs to be assessed against the particular situation of an individual company rather than against the sector to which a company belongs.