Tourism enterprise cooperation specifics : comparative study of Riga and Novosibirsk travel agencies

Abstract

Enterprise cooperation has been analysed from many aspects – global competition, new innovations in technology advancements, tendencies of direct sales in tourism, increase of tourist experience; these are the main driving forces that are pushing traditional travel agencies out of the market and transforming the tourism intermediates into new open business model. Cooperation and networking creates ability to achieve goals that an enterprise is not capable of achieving on its own, thus giving rise to a new phenomenon referred to as collaborative advantage. Networking and collaboration in the tourism sector has gained importance particularly since these networks promote the spread of information and strengthens the connections between heterogeneous sectors of tourism industry, private and public companies, international partners, contribute to more sustainable tourism development that has greater actuality this year as the United Nations General Assembly announced 2017 as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development. Research is based on qualitative research method of 5 case studies from each of two destinations Riga and Novosibirsk; using semi-structured interviews with company managers that allows interaction with each study object and gives advantage of collecting more detailed information, analysing motivation for involvement in cooperation. Article aims to investigate if there are cooperation peculiarities for the different types of travel agencies and tour-operator enterprises. Cooperation factors for analyses include cooperation importance, objectives, motives, trust, coordination, networking coverage, frequency and other important indications. Despite the fact that all examined tourism enterprises are involved in cooperation activities, in conclusion the study indicates the differences in cooperation habits, advantages and disadvantages of these studied tourism enterprises.