“…To date, however, the issue of channel design in tourism distribution has all but been ignored (Kotler, Bowen, & Makens, 1996;Green, 2005), with the focus in published work being variously on channel structure, roles, relationships, and the impact of new technologies (Buhalis & Laws, 2001;Alcá zar Martínez, 2002). This is in marked contrast to manufacturing and some service sectors where the importance of channel design has been explicitly recognized for some time and is now a distinctive field of study (Cespedes, 1988;Stern, Sturdivant, & Getz, 1993;Mallen, 1996;Fava Neves, Zuurbier, & Cortez Campomar, 2001;Sharma & Mehrotra, 2007). Much of this work has involved large corporations.…”