Innovation is regarded to be one of the main factors of the competitiveness of enterprises. This paper is aimed at showing the road leading to creation of product innovation in service industry illustrated by a tour operator. The article consists of three parts, introduction and conclusions. In the first part methodology is presented. The second part describes product innovation in enterprises acting as tour operators. In the most comprehensive third part the author presents two models to achieve product innovation. The author applies the deduction method, the questionnaire survey method and the Delphi method. The results of the research done by the author and the constructed models could be used by tour operators and also by other services to create product innovation.
In the article, the author draws our attention to a dynamically developing segment of tourism – exotic tourism, i.e. to non-European countries. The text touches the issue of exotic trips specific character as well as the rules of organizing such trips. It also draws a profile of a tourist deciding to take such a trip and it presents the most important organizers of such trips, indicating the ten which count the most in the national market of exotic trips tour operators.
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly paralyzed tour operators’ activities around the world. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the state of tour operators using the example of Slovakia and to point out its specifics that may affect its recovery. This paper identifies active tour operators, recognizing them in terms of selected criteria and uses cluster analysis to reveal consistent groups of enterprises. It is based mostly on content analysis of relevant websites. The results show a moderate level of concentration that characterizes Slovak tour operators with four large enterprises generating more than a third of all revenues. A typical tour operator in Slovakia is an outbound micro-enterprise with 3S mass product which intervenes in the activities of travel agency. The authors estimate that due to the Covid-19 pandemic measures, many tour operators will disappear, transform into pure travel agency or leave mass holiday product.
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