The Insight of Tourism Operators in Contemporary Business Environment

Abstract

Tourism operators historically have been an important part of the tourism industry and have remarkably contributed to the development of mass tourism as well as other forms of tourism. In the meantime, business environment is experiencing ongoing transformation which involves socio-economic changes, traveller habit alterations and emergence of new business forms. For tourism operators and other traditional tourism and hospitality management organizations these are new challenges and they require prompt reaction to transform existing business models in order to maintain competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is to explore and identify peculiarities of the tourism operators in contemporary business environment. Results of the paper are based on quantitative research involving 118 respondents, representing tourism operators from different countries and of different size. Respondents have been question and results have been processed based on survey consisting of 45 questions, aiming to analyse present market situation, market transformation changes, the role of customer and supplier relations, as well the understanding and ability to interpret factors related to the tourism enterprise management. Based on acquired results, author identifies most substantial characteristics of contemporary business environment. They give several indications in relation to tourism operator perception and operation as well develops ideas regarding tourism product distribution, emphasizes the importance of employee social skills additionally to practical knowledge. Results confirm author’s assumption that contemporary business environment is a substantial basis to state that the management of tourism operators is increasingly dependent on enterprise ability to respond ongoing international tourism market changes.