One way of upgrading the competitiveness of companies is to establish direct sales channels to customers. Extending activities to meet more and more of total tourist demands is another strategy taken by all parties. ‘Holiday-makers’ such as cruise lines and amusement parks and resorts are examples of total vacation services. At destinations, service providers are challenged by the changing consumer demands and a growing global competition to attract tourists. To meet this challenge and develop competitive strategies, companies at destinations have to cooperate with each other and the local authorities.
Tourist Information
From the point of view of the consumer, the tourist process starts with his/her need for information. Traditionally, this information was provided by travel agents, but nowadays increasingly via the Internet.16 When you have decided on your destination, guide books are another traditional and widespread source of information. The next step is the decision to use individually organized transportation (e.g. car, airplane or railway) or a tour operator and whether you want to book directly or to do so through a travel agent. That includes the choice of accommodation, visiting local attractions, participating in organized activities and finally, the return journey.
The large economic importance of tourism, increasing competition and consumer demands have caused tourism companies and tourism organizations to upgrade local and national information throughout most of the world.17 Public tourist organizations coordinate national or local tourist information for all private and public service providers, linking companies of transportation, accommodation, entertainment, culture, etc. by way of their web sites. Consequently, every person with access to the Internet anywhere in the world might directly search relevant information and book and buy rooms, tickets, etc. according to his wishes. In many ways, each developed country present itself as a whole on the Internet, including detailed information on all parts of its tourism value chain. One Internet site gives you access to all national activities, for example visitbritain, visitfrance, germany-tourism, italiantourism, usatourist, visitjapan and cnta.gov for China. Finally, you have even global tourism information sites, such as virtualtourist and worldtravelguide. Much of this and other kinds of tourism information are being available on mobile phones, too.
The widespread use of web-based national tourism portals and interactive sites has reduced the importance of printed guide books, on the one hand. But on the other hand, the endless information opportunities on the Internet seem to have created greater interest in more knowledge and informative guides on individual destinations. The printed guide is still a widely used source of tourism information that has been around for almost two centuries.
During the 19th century, German Baedeker and British Murray pioneered the classical guide book. Baedeker continued as the well known Blue Guides in the 20th century.18 After the Second World War, national travel publishing houses emerged in all developed countries, covering many parts of the world in their domestic language, for example Politiken in Denmark.19 Large international guide book publishers such as Fodor’s, Lonely Planet, Michelin and Rough Guides, have marketed guide books that cover most parts of the world.20 Fodor’s and Rough Guides are now part of two global media conglomerates, Bertelsmann and Pearson, respectively, just as other national guide book publishers are normally owned by large media corporations. This is part of the global consolidation process across any source of information and media.
A separate industry of maps is added to the industry of guide books.21 These maps build on the works of scientifically based national institutions that are responsible for exact and detailed mapping of the individual country and who publish maps of their own, too. Internationally leading map corporations are for example French Michelin.22 Just like guide books, maps have also been invaded by the Internet. Free maps of any global destination may be found on the Internet (for instance by Google) and this has made the map industry come up with new strategies and business models. Finally, electronic maps have found their way into cars, enabling the driver to guide him to his destination.
Current weather forecasting information is a natural part of all travel preparations as well as during the vacation itself. Tourists are informed by way of the Internet and other media that continuously are updated by international, national, and local weather report stations, based on meteorological organizations through out the world.23 Skiing resorts even provide webcams to inform tourists of weather and skiing conditions.
Travel
Transportation is the largest sub-sector of the tourism industry. Of all transportation means, private cars are the most widely used way of domestic transportation for American tourists as well as for West European tourists.24 In most cases, the tourist therefore uses his car instead of transportation companies. The expanding post-war car industry, petrol industry and freeway system have added much to the growing tourism industry. While cars dominate domestic transportation, airlines are the preferred way of international travelling. Less important are railways and ferries, and even more so busses. In economic terms, total global passenger transportation spending in 2005 was at least $2500 billion, of which the United States and Western Europe each shared one-third.25 Perhaps one-third of all transportation spending may be accounted to tourism.26 Most spending is attributed to cars, but an increasing share is spent on airlines. Because the car is a common daily transportation means, probably a higher share of spending on air transportation is attributed to tourism than private car transportation.
Although cars and airlines dominate passenger transportation, the large American and European national railway companies, such as Amtrak, Deutsche Bahn, French SNCF and British Arriva are all active suppliers of travel, including cooperative arrangements with other parts of the tourism value chain. For example, SNCF cooperates with the large international hotel and service chain Accor.27 Shipping companies, for example Stena Line and Scandlines cooperate with travel organizers and provide organized tours themselves.28 Worldwide, ferries annually transport more than 1 billion passengers, half the number of airlines.29 Cruise lines are a specialized kind of shipping company that encompass most parts of a vacation from beginning to end (see below). Compared to all these transportation industries, bus companies constitute a small business. Well known are the American Greyhound busses.
While the car industry is more indirectly a part of the tourism industry, airlines is clearly direct providers of tourism services.
The Airlines Industry
While most domestic tourists travel by car, international travel is dominated by airplanes, depending on the size of the country, too. Modern mass tourism depends on the enormous multitude of cars, airplanes and the industries that produce these transportation and energy means as well as a highly developed infrastructure allowing for fast and flexible movements around the world. The automobile industry and even more, the airplanes industry, is concentrated worldwide in a few global corporations, such as GM, Ford, Volkswagen, Peugeut/Citroën and Toyota and the two leading aircraft manufacturers American Boeing and West European Airbus. Transportation means producers are part of the tourism economy that work to make the tourism industry feasible and may be seen as impacts of the tourism industry, i.e. the tourism economy in a wider sense.
Whereas the global airplanes industry is highly concentrated within the Atlantic business community, the majority of the world’s countries have one or more airlines. For historic reasons, one airline dominates in most countries, i.e. the airline that used to monopolize national flights. Alone, USA, Japan and China have more than one large airline. In Western Europe, the core area of international tourism, aviation is still dominated by the previous monopoly companies, led by Lufthansa, British Airways, Air France, SAS, Alitalia and Iberia. Liberalization of the air transportation has only to a certain degree resulted in a consolidation process, mainly because governments have kept ownership of national airlines. Since the late 1990s, however, liberalization, has given rise to new and expanding discount airlines. Ryanair and EasyJet have developed into two of Europe’s largest airline companies, followed by other growing