Tour Operators. What do Tour Operators do Internet and the economics role of Tour Operators — страница 8

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explained above in the market for lemons example, the exchange of low quality goods is not impeded by the existence of asymmetric information. 3 Internet and intermediation in the tourist sector In the previous section, we have laid down the economics of intermediation in the tourist vertical chain. As Shapiro and Varian write in their 1999 book Information rules: “Technology changes. Economic laws do not”. Thus, with the framework laid down above, we should be capable to discuss the impact of internet and other ICTs on the vertical organisation of the tourist industry. Up to now, we have undertaken our analysis abstracting from the existence of internet and other ICTs; rather, in a sense, we have assumed we were in a scenario previous to the emergence of internet. Even

though it has been long since the tourist vertical chain has incorporated several ICTs systems such as CRS (computer)/ However, in spite of the increasing importance of large hotel chains, many hotel establishment through-out the world are stand-alones or belong to a small chain, just like many other final sellers in the tourist industry (such as car rental companies, restaurants, etc.). As a matter of fact, there is quite some evidence on the importance of such des-intermediation: Garau, for instance, shows that the use of package tour on the trips to Mallorca (one of the largest Mediterranean tourist destinations) has decreased in a large manner, dropping from an 80% to a barely 50% in just a few years. Our approach here is to review to what extent the role of a TO (and other

intermediaries) in reducing search costs, in increasing the efficiency of coordination among the several components of the package tour, and in providing truthful and credible information on the quality of the several components of the tourist product, is affected by the apparition of internet. Following the transaction cost framework laid down above, we assess to what extent transaction costs of either organisational alternative (direct market exchange or intermediation by a TO) are affected by internet and, thus, in which way the optimal organisational architecture is affected. 3.1 Tour operator and the consumer search for information Online search offers a tremendous advantage over physical search. To begin with, by using computer technologies such as search engines, consumers

may be able to search the whole information space at a very low cost in terms of time and transportation.12 Furthermore, online search allows consumers (potential tourists) to process a wide arrange of information other than price – e.g., location and name of vendors, terms of sales, quality and performance variables, and other product characteristics. Even more, in some cases one may wonder whether search costs are always positive: there are consumers who seem to enjoy searches instead of costing them something, specially so in the planning and design of a vacation. Internet based search also allows consumers to remember and compare information gathered from many virtual web stores. As a consequence, and according to some, consumers will not need search intermediaries and

there will be a des-intermediation whereby TOs role in the search process will disappear. However, in spite of the importance of internet in reducing the search costs, there are still at least two reasons that may justify, at least partially, the existence of intermediaries in the search process. One is that the duplication of traffic of information as discussed above (see figure 2) still persists, and intermediation by a TO still makes sense since an intermediated search market dramatically reduces duplicated traffic and enhances network efficiency. The other is that in internet, the disadvantage of physical limitation is replaced with a difficult problem of locating and processing the relevant information, not because of the lack of such information but because of the very

abundance of it. In this case, a tour operator (an intermediary) may still play a role in the filtering of information, so that the searcher/consumer accesses only the relevant information. 4. References International. 1. Renshaw, MB (1994): ”Consequences of integration in UK tour operating”; Tourism Management. 2. Sheldon, Pauline J. (1986): “The Tour Operator Industry: An Analysis”, Annals of Tourism Research. Vol. 13. 3. Sinclair and Stabler: The economics of tourism; Routledfe, London and New York. 4. The Economist: “Click to fly”, Survey on E-Commerce. 5. The Economist magazine. 6. Tirole, J.: The theory of industrial organisation. 7. Shapiro, C. & Varian, H. Information Rules. 8. Williamson, O. E.: The Economic Institutions of Capitalism. 9.