Title: Disintermediation in the tourism industry: an investigation of Thai tourism SMEs

Authors: Laddawan Kaewkitipong

Addresses: Department of Management Information Systems, Thammasat Business School, Thammasat University, 2 Prachan Road, Pranakorn, Bangkok 10200, Thailand

Abstract: Disintermediation has become increasingly intense, particularly in the tourism industry where many suppliers have successfully utilised the internet and website as a direct channel to sell to their customers. This paper investigates disintermediation situations and argues that in practice disintermediation, despite becoming increasingly intense, will just require travel agents to acclimatise rather than to be removed from the tourism supply chain. Four in-depth case studies of Thai tourism SMEs are presented to show how or whether the hotels have attempted to disintermediate travel agents and how the travel agents responded to the disintermediation.

Keywords: disintermediation; e-business; electronic business; tourism supply chains; Thailand; SMEs; small and medium-sized enterprises; travel agents; hotels.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEB.2011.045290

International Journal of Electronic Business, 2011 Vol.9 No.5/6, pp.516 - 535

Published online: 04 Feb 2012 *

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