Resource dependence of tourism enterprises.

Seppala-Esser, Raija. (2006) Resource dependence of tourism enterprises. Doctoral thesis, University of Surrey (United Kingdom)..

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Abstract

Small and medium-sized tourism enterprises (SME) constitute the great majority of tourism businesses. They are a fundamental component of the tourism product, they affect the image of destinations, and they also act as brokers between tourists and local societies. Scarcity of resources has been identified as one of the features typical of SMEs. National Tourism Organisations (NTO) usually carry the responsibility for marketing countries as tourism destinations and often also have development functions. Although the public sector budgets of NTOs are declining, they may maintain the level of tourism investment by having good cooperation with the private sector. This research was an attempt to explore interorganisational relations between tourism SMEs and NTOs. These relations were surveyed by identifying exchange of resources between organisations. More specifically, the focus of this research was on resource dependence which results from the exchange of resources between SMEs and NTOs. Cooperation was suggested to reduce the resource dependence and, therefore, its influence was also explored. In order to measure the level of resource dependence a survey was carried out in Finland of tourism SMEs using a postal and online instrument. This presented the dependence-defining factors. The level of dependence of the Finnish SMEs on the Finnish Tourist Board, the national tourism organisation of Finland, was reported to be at a moderate level, thereby suggesting that the SMEs retain substantial resource autonomy. Differences in the level of resource dependence were established between different types of enterprises. Size of enterprises, number of their foreign guests, their marketing activities, and their cooperation with others affected the level of resource dependence. The SMEs were most dependent on such FTB resources as destination marketing and marketing knowledge. A factor analysis revealed two factors underlying the resource dependence of SMEs on NTOs. They were named "International activity" and "Information service".

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Divisions :	Theses
Authors :	Name Email ORCID Seppala-Esser, Raija.
Date :	2006
Contributors :	Contribution Name Email ORCID http://www.loc.gov/loc.terms/relators/THS
Depositing User :	EPrints Services
Date Deposited :	09 Nov 2017 12:18
Last Modified :	20 Jun 2018 11:42
URI:	http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/id/eprint/844396

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