the characteristics of the global tour operations market
During the past few decades, the term globalization has been a growing public sense on par with concern worldwide. Globalization plays a vital role and has considerable impact on all different kinds of industries throughout the world. Without any doubt, the global economy has been through "radical changes" and so has "the business of tour operators" (Cavlek, 2013). The most obvious and direct effect, which the globalization has posed, is on the tourism. The rapid globalization of the world economy, according to Cavlek's (2013) claim, to certain degree, has increased internationalization of the tourism business while also has raised the demand level of extensive internalization of tourism. Under this circumstance, the global economy has pushed all tourism-bound companies to be reaching their furthers connections with other larger corporations for making great use of the advantages of extension of globalization of the economy.
All in all, much to say that plentiful of evidences reveal the entire global tour operations market or tourism industry has turning out to be extremely competitive through the different global strategies and comprehensive analysis of advantage or disadvantages adopted by each organized corporation. In addition, research into the talk of globalization has a long history. In 1999, Nooteboom referred that the concept of globalization highly relates to a variety of phenomena, including politics, technology, consumer behavior, firm strategy, markets, trade flows and capital flows, which could also defined globalization as "the highest development level of internationalization" (Peric, 2002). However, prior to entering into the detailed and wide-ranging discussion on tour development, it is critically necessary here to explicitly identify the characteristics of the global tour operations market so as to introduce tour concepts, ideas while the relevant criteria would be explained in order to meet the identified needs.
Feige (1998), in light of his viewpoints regarding the characteristics of globalization in tourism market, identified and grouped the characteristics into several categories containing "economy," "technology," "culture," "ecology," and "politics." Economy in global tour operations market refers to the use of horizontal and vertical integration strategies of tourism enterprises while a great amount of foreign investment in hotels and tourist attractions (global tourism markets) would be absolutely encouraged. More than that, global players and strategic alliances, such as airliners, hotels, tour operator would also come out with the ideas of helping together create a win-win beneficial business in tourism. Technology in terms of global tour operations market pertains to global booking system, which literally means the service of reservation all over the world; meanwhile, the standardized technologies in transport systems are also included. Culture in light of global tour operations market can be linked with the global tourists from all various different countries with dissimilar traveling practice (or uniform traveler behavior). On the other hand, the creating of a global tourist village is crucially considered as the other main key element in worldwide tourism operation market. Seemingly, the common and same understanding of a global tourism business would be shedding the light on the establishment of global village for all global tourists regardless of the sharp competitiveness among corporations. On "ecology" perspective, ecological system in tour operations market regards tourism as a "global syndrome of ecology problem," which would possibly mean that the ecology of tourism market can pose the wave-like impact on the entire traveling ecological system. For example, the climate changes would be the most obvious impact which could affect travelers' traveling willingness and their decision on destinations--if metaphorically speaking, it can be described as one small mistake can cause a chain reaction. Regarding the politics factor, all the government or administration worldwide should emphasize the increasing importance of international tourism organizations while recognize and raise the necessity for global coordination and regulation of passenger circulation along with the sustainable development, quality and dominantly valuable ideas to be drawn.
As has been noted, the ultimate goal as well as destinations in global tourism operation market tend to expand the marketing levels for the international tourists instead of focusing on "national level," "regional level," or "domestic level," which would be likely matching up with Klancnik's (2003) remarks as that global tourism market "has increased the interdependence between countries, economies and people. It does not involve only giant corporations, but also small and medium sized business together with family-run firms"