Tourism overview: changing end markets and hyper competition

This overview of tourism research conducted by Capturing the Gains covers cases from Asia (China, Indonesia and India), and Africa (Kenya, South Africa and Uganda). The tourism value chain is outlined and changes in the relative roles of different agencies discussed. The paper analyses the changes in the composition of tourists in these countries and the resultant change in relative importance of national and international tour agencies. Our findings suggest that benefits from the growth of tourism are unevenly distributed, with the oligopolistic nature of the tour agencies and hyper-competition among service providers even resulting in some cases of below-cost provision of destination services. These commercial value chain dynamics have led to precarious employment arrangements. There is a synthesis of the nature of employment in tourism, with a large presence of own-account and other forms of informal employment. Ways of dealing with the oligopolistic buyers’ market are discussed, including branding and organization by destination service providers. Methods of improving the gains of women and other workers are also addressed, such as the role of workers’ organization and state-supported social security measures.