Assessing Travel Business Partners Using the Critical Incident Technique and the Analytic Hierarchy Process

Abstract

This study is concerned with the evaluation of the service quality performance of the business partners of small and medium-sized travel agencies. Assessment dimensions and criteria were collected from 36 senior travel managers using the critical incident technique (CIT) and from 56 general managers at different travel agencies using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to calculate overall weights and priorities for each criterion. The research results indicated that 'timely information', 'the particularity of the scenic spot' and 'vehicle quality' were the three primary evaluation criteria. The results are intended to assist foreign tour operators in improving their service quality and performance and, moreover, to provide small and medium-sized Chinese travel agencies with objective evaluation criteria for choosing the most appropriate business partners.

Building business resilience to external shocks: Conceptualising the role of social networks to small tourism & hospitality businesses

“…By contrast, the nature of their services requires travel agencies to foster cross-sectoral collaboration with businesses from other fields (Chen & Hsu, 2012). These differences across various sub-sectors of tourism and hospitality businesses should clearly impact upon, and hence should be part of the consideration of, the benefits of social networks.…”

Does satisfaction with package tours lead to successful vacation experiences?

“…However, during the past years European tour operators have had to respond to the presumed crisis in traditional package travel by creating more individualized, diversified, and flexible packages (Bastakis et al, 2004;Bramwell, 2004;Buhalis & Laws, 2001;Casarin, 2001;Shaw & Williams, 2004). In Asia, by contrast, an increasing tourism demand has accelerated the rapid growth of the package tourism market (Chen & Hsu, 2012;Wong & Lee, 2012). Consequently, research on package tourism and tour operators seems to be currently dominated by Asian viewpoints (e.g.…”