Characteristics and Factors of Success in the Relationship Between Travel Agency and Tour Operator: The Role of Trade Marketing

Recent destabilizing events (economic crisis, political unrest, catastrofic events, etc.) in certain tourist destinations of primary importance, new Ict technologies, and the arrival of new digital instruments have profoundly modified the decision-making process and purchasing habits of tourists causing phenomenons of disintermediation and reintermediation of organized tourism in the system. This process of destructurization and reorganization of the distribution system has lead to increased complexity and ambiguity in the relationship between parties of the distribution channel (Tran et al., 2016), causing traditional tour operators, the key players in the process of creating value in intermediate tourism, to rethink market strategies and seriously consider using direct online channels in the prospect of multi-channeling. However, in this context of significant circumstantial change, the success of traditional operators of intermediate tourism does not seem to derive from adopting multi-channel/online strategies. Instead, success can be found by limiting these strategies as is the case of the Tour Operator Eden Viaggi that has used careful and innovative trade marketing policies, rather than multi-channeling, to create a loyal commercial network and achieve continued growth in terms of market shares, revenue and employees in the last few years. This exploratory study of several empirical investigations, examines the characteristics of the relationship betweenTravel Agents (Ta)1 and Tour Operators (To), highlighting the important role of trade marketing in the supply chain.