Coordination of complementary tourism supply through a destination card: The pursuit of profitability in the presence of a foreign tour operator

Carmen D. à lvarez-Albelo and José Alberto Martínez-González

Tourism Economics, 2024, vol. 30, issue 5, 1166-1188

Abstract: A destination card has been widely used by destination management organizations to coordinate the complementary tourism supply. Such coordination, which involves pricing a destination card, is challenging when a foreign tour operator is present. Though the literature shows that cooperative pricing between a destination management organization and a tour operator increases total profits, the most advantageous profit sharing for a destination has not been addressed. With a theoretical model of base and add-on products, this paper identifies the arrangement between a public destination management organization and a foreign tour operator that will accrue the highest profits for a destination. It is found that the most profitable option for a destination is a cooperative agreement in which the foreign tour operator is offered the same profits as a price leader under non-cooperation. This result comes from the fact that non-cooperation entails an unstable situation in which the tour operator is not willing to relinquish price leadership. The findings are of practical interest to help achieve economic sustainability in tourism destinations that rely on foreign tour operators and seek to coordinate their complementary tourism supply.

Keywords: coordination of complementary tourism supply; destination management organization; foreign tour operator; cooperation; destination’s tourism profits (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13548166231190424 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:toueco:v:30:y:2024:i:5:p:1166-1188

DOI: 10.1177/13548166231190424

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Tourism Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().