Rita D. Medina-Muñoz

Understanding European tour operators’ control on accommodation companies: an empirical evidence

Abstract Accommodation companies offer a product of strategic interest to tour operators insofar as it determines to a great extent the cost of a package vacation, while it also significantly influences the degree of satisfaction of the tourists who purchase such packages. That, together with the increasingly competitive rivalry among European tour operators, suggests how important it is for the tour operators to exercise some control over the accommodation companies with which they deal. This study describes the control that German and British tour operators exercise over the accommodation companies with whom they do business and the characteristics of the two types of companies that influence that control.

Building the valuable connection: hotels and travel agents

Abstract The elements of a strong relationship between a hotel company and its travel agencies include communication, trust, and making clear who does what.

Critical issues in health and wellness tourism: an exploratory study of visitors to wellness centres on Gran Canaria

The growing commodification of health care and therapeutic landscape, as well as the recent growth in international demand for wellness services and treatments, has led to the proliferation of destinations and enterprises that have selected health and wellness tourism as part of their corporate strategy, including coastal tourism destinations such as the Spanish island of Gran Canaria. This study discusses the commodification of health care and landscape, the relationship between everyday life and going on holiday, as well as the motives for medical and wellness tourism. Wellness tourism development on Gran Canaria is also analysed as a case study that could prove useful for those working on diversification within coastal tourism. An exploratory study of European visitors to wellness centres on the island is also presented. Major findings and contributions relate to socio-demographic characteristics, motives for the visit to the island, the importance of the wellness offer, tourist and travel behaviour and wellness behaviour both at the destination and at the place of residence. Another contribution refers to differences in the use of wellness centres and treatments among visitors, based on their place of origin, gender, age, marital status and job situation. Management and marketing implications are also suggested.

Tourism and Innovation in China and Spain: A Review of Innovation Research on Tourism:

Given the current economic contribution of tourism to the Chinese and Spanish national economies, tourism innovation in these two countries becomes a vehicle for improving tourism competitiveness and sustainability. This article presents a comparative analysis of the relevance, recent growth and particularities of tourism and innovation in China and Spain, with the objective of identifying the tourism innovation needs of each country. Innovation research on tourism is also reviewed as a means to a better understanding of tourism innovation activities in each country. This review of the academic literature further examines the levels of analysis, the research topics and the major conclusions. In light of their findings, the authors then offer recommendations on how to enhance the tourism innovation performance and improve research on tourism innovation in China and Spain.

The impacts of tourism on poverty alleviation: an integrated research framework

This paper aims to contribute to the academic research on tourism and poverty alleviation, by providing an integrated research framework on the impacts of tourism on poverty. First, a conceptual discussion is presented in order to understand the potential of tourism to reduce poverty, as well as different approaches to promoting a direct link between tourism and poverty alleviation. Second, empirical studies published between 1999 and July 2014 were critically analysed in order to generate an empirical research framework that embraces the following issues: geographical scope, level of analysis, tourism context, study methods and poverty measure. Moreover, an integrative discussion of the empirical evidence regarding the contribution of tourism to poverty reduction is included. The proposed framework, which is intended to be useful for guiding future empirical research in this field, suggests associations between tourism initiatives, the poverty rate and the economic, socio-cultural and environmental conditions of the poor.

Tourism Competitiveness Assessment: The Current Status of Research in Spain and China:

This paper examines the status and progress of academic research in assessing and explaining tourism destination competitiveness in Spain and China. The authors first present a theoretical framework for understanding and determining destination competitiveness. Second, in the context of this framework, they analyse major tourism indicators in China and Spain to assess their respective tourism competitiveness. Third, the authors review research on destination competitiveness in China and Spain over the last decade in order to understand how it has been assessed and explained. In all, 25 articles on tourism destination competitiveness in China and Spain are analysed and compared in terms of the approaches and indicators used. The main results of this study lead to a proposal for a model to measure and explain destination competitiveness.

Control and success in collaborative strategies

The establishment of cooperative relationships with other organisations is becoming crucial to businesses, in a way that interorganisational relationships constitute an important topic for research in management literature. This study analyzes interorganisational control, which represents one of the processes within interorganisational relationships that is receiving greater attention in the literature. Besides describing its concept and dimensions, there is an analysis of what influence the extent, the focus, the types and the mechanisms of control have on the success of the interorganisational relationships. To be specific, empirical evidence is provided by our study of the relationship between tour operators from Germany and the United Kingdom and the accommodation companies, which revolves around the control exercised by the tour operators over the accommodation companies.

Hotels and Travel Agents: Building the Valuable Connection

Despite the rise of internet sites that allow guests to book a hotel room directly, travel agencies remain an important part of most hotels’ marketing mix. Indeed, Poon suggests that the role of travel agencies is expected to grow in importance for the following three reasons. (1) They are close to the industry’s consumers and often play a key role in determining the type of travel and leisure services that travelers purchase. (2) Although travel agents do not develop computerized reservations systems (CRSs), they connect to them and the internet to have access to information about the products and services available through tourist suppliers (e.g., hotels, airlines, rental cars), and therefore they are key players in expanding the use of new technology, including CRSs and the internet. (3) CRSs and the internet offer travel agents tremendous opportunities to package holidays flexibly, according to the specific needs and preferences of each customer. Our research centers on the relationship between travel agents and hotel corporations operating in the United States. To address the ways in which hotels and travel agents could establish satisfactory business relationships, we first reviewed existing studies on the successful evolution of interorganizational relationships (IR) with a view to identifying the following dimensions that might be determinants of successful relationships. We developed the following list of factors: extent to which the relationship is formalized, commitment to the relationship, conflict resolution, and interorganizational dependence, trust, and communication (including coordination, communication quality, information

Tourist Competitiveness of the Canary Islands in the European Nordic Market: An Analysis Based on Demand Evolution and Perception

Abstract Taking into account that competitiveness may vary based on the tourist market from which a particular destination receives tourists, a greater presence of research examining the competitiveness of one particular destination in specific markets would be expected. Accordingly, the overall objective of this research is to explore the competitiveness of the Canary Islands in the European Nordic market, in comparison with other nationalities visiting the archipelago, particularly from Germany and the UK. Firstly, a definitional approach in measuring destination competitiveness is adopted and a list of specific indicators is identified from the research on destination competitiveness in Spain over the last decade. Secondly, most of those indicators are considered with a view to exploring the ability of the Canary Islands to attract and satisfy European Nordic tourists, as well as looking at their tourism expenditure in the archipelago. Results confirm the relative competitiveness of the Canary Islands as a sun and beach tourism destination in the Nordic market. Nevertheless, the archipelago should improve its ability to attract Nordic tourists for alternative types of tourism, including nautical, wellness and rural tourism. Moreover, some attributes of the archipelagos tourist offer should be enhanced in order to better satisfy these tourists.