Optimal joint strategies of introducing live streaming and online travel agency channels in the tourism supply chain

Abstract

ABSTRACT With the advent of e-commerce, online travel platforms such as live streaming and online travel agency (OTA) are increasingly developing, which has changed the way people travel and has exerted a significant impact on people’s daily life. In reality, tourist attractions face the challenge of whether introducing live streaming channel, and tour operators face the challenge of whether entering OTAs. To address these challenges, our paper develops theoretical models and presents some insights. The results show that the optimal joint strategy depends on primarily on the fixed fee and annual service fee, but is also affected by other factors such as the size of user traffic, the interactive and review experience, and the consumer's preference. Interestingly, tour operators entering OTAs is always beneficial to tourist attractions, but tourist attractions introducing live streaming is always detrimental to tour operators. Besides, when offline channel and live streaming channel coexist, the total travel package demands will not increase after adding an OTA channel. At last, when considering consumer returns, tourist attractions are more willing to introduce live streaming, but the willingness of tour operators to join OTAs is related to tourists’ acceptance of the OTA channels.