Internationalization of service SMEs : the case of the language travel market

Recently, services are becoming increasingly important in the global economy as more and more service firms are going abroad. Therefore, internationalization of services is emerging as an important research area. The fact that services are a driving force and the fastest growing sector in international trade attracts researchers to follow the changes taken place in the service industry. This research wants to contribute to this by analyzing the internationalization patterns of service SMEs in a major tourism niche market within the tourism industry. More specific, this research provides an analysis of the internationalization of service SMEs in the language travel market. It describes and proposes more meaningful understanding of the internationalization patterns of these firms.