Supply chain management of tourism enterprises

With the emergence of customized demand for tourism products, it is large, comprehensive and self-sufficient? Vertical integration? The supply mode of tourism products has gradually lost its competitiveness. The implementation of integrated supply chain management can help tourism enterprises to closely connect with their partners. It can not only integrate various elements and organize the production of tourism products according to the individualized and diversified needs of tourists, but also eliminate high-cost obstacles under the premise of strategic cooperation, thus enhancing the competitiveness of enterprises and improving the satisfaction of tourists.

first, the typical structure of the supply chain of tourism enterprises

structurally, the supply chain of tourism enterprises is a network chain relationship around core enterprises, such as the relationship between core enterprises and suppliers, suppliers of suppliers and even all forward relationships, and the relationship between sellers, retailers, end customers and even all backward relationships. Take the package tour products mainly operated by China's travel agencies as an example. Their supply needs to take the travel agency as the core, and build a supplier (such as food raw material supplier, hotel equipment supplier) and all forward suppliers, including food (catering enterprises), lodging (tourist hotels), transportation enterprises, travel (tourist attractions), shopping (tourist shops) and entertainment enterprises. In this functional network chain, any tourism enterprise is only a node of the supply chain, a provider of products or services, and a enjoyer or consumer of products or services. Upstream enterprises are suppliers and service providers of downstream enterprises, and downstream enterprises are the driving force of upstream enterprises' production, the feedback source of information and the key to realizing profits.

because tourism products are intangible, it is impossible to realize the spatial and ownership transfer through ordinary economic exchange, that is to say, unlike other products, tourism products can not be transported from one place to another, and there is a circulation process. Therefore, except for a few substantive material products (such as food and tourist souvenirs) delivered to tourists through tourism supply chain, the quality, innovation and value embodied by tourism products and services are more manifested. The quality of service and the value of tourism products directly determine the overall efficiency of the supply chain and the speed of profit realization. Therefore, improving service quality and providing higher value for tourists have become the common pursuit of all enterprises in the supply chain.

2. Implementing integrated management of supply chain of tourism enterprises under the guidance of system thought

Integration is the combination and construction according to certain rules, and its purpose is to improve the functions of the organic whole and system. Supply chain is a system. As the organizer and manager of this system, if tourism enterprises want to give full play to the competition and value-added functions of the supply chain, they must use the system idea to effectively control and coordinate the logistics, information flow and capital flow in the supply chain, cross the boundaries of enterprises, and organically integrate the internal value chain with the external supply chain for management.

based on the actual situation of the tourism industry, its contents mainly include the following aspects:

1. Based on the tourism demand and the core competitiveness of enterprises, the business process reengineering of tourism enterprises is implemented

The tourism supply chain system is a system composed of three levels: the internal value chain of tourism enterprises, the supply chain of tourism enterprises and the open global network supply chain based on the Internet, which are integrated, interactive and mutually restrictive. Based on systematic research? Elevator principle? The premise of integrated supply chain management is to implement organizational changes within enterprises in the supply chain and carry out business process reengineering.

the integration of resources and core competence of upstream and downstream enterprises is an important internal driving force of supply chain integrated management. C. K. Pranhalad and Gray Hamel pointed out that what are the core competencies? Cumulative knowledge in the organization, especially about how to coordinate different production skills and organically combine multiple technical flows. That is, the core competence is the skill and technology that enables an enterprise to provide special benefits to customers. It is a combination of a series of complementary skills and knowledge within the enterprise, which has the characteristics of value superiority, heterogeneity, non-tradability and irreplaceability. In the tourism supply chain, it is impossible for any enterprise to have comprehensive core resources, nor can it compete with all other competitors alone. Each enterprise can only seize the key business that creates core value and is more competitive than its competitors. For non-core business, it can quickly respond to demand through efficient allocation of resources in the supply chain, thus winning market opportunities. Therefore, the essence of tourism supply chain management thought is the management based on the core competitiveness of tourism enterprises. Many successful tourism enterprises at home and abroad can have a long-term and stable supply system in a complex and changeable competitive environment because they have unique core competitiveness at first, which is integrated with enterprise strategy, cooperates with partner enterprises and ultimately supports the growth of enterprises. For example, the core competence of American Express, one of the largest travel service providers in the world, is mainly reflected in the close combination of financial services and travel business. Credit card+traveler's checks? Seamless cooperation mode; Rosenbruce, a large multinational travel company in the United States, is based on? Cooperative business travel management? Its service mode is to open a business travel service account for the company it serves, and send a special person to provide business travel plan management for the company it serves, thus forming a creative business travel service chain. Therefore, under the integrated management mode of supply chain, the primary goal of tourism enterprises is to cultivate and strengthen the core competitiveness of enterprises, and on this basis, by integrating the effective resources of enterprises and enterprises, enterprises and tourists, enterprises and supply chains, supply chains and supply chains, the cost combination is minimized, so as to maximize profits.

At the same time, the improvement of core competitiveness of tourism enterprises depends on business process reengineering. Business Process Reengineering (BPR) aims at reshaping the original business process of an enterprise, including adjusting the corresponding resource structure and human resource structure, realizing the optimal integration of internal functional departments of the enterprise, and making great progress in key indicators such as profitability, production efficiency, product development ability and speed, and customer satisfaction. Facts show that most enterprises' product production and delivery processes are inefficient, most of which are due to the lack of effective connection between internal departments and groups. Therefore, to give full play to the advantages of the core competitiveness of tourism enterprises, fundamentally speaking, it depends on the overall optimization of the internal structure and processes of enterprises, that is, enterprises must take tourists' needs and corresponding tasks as the center, coordinate the relationship between horizontal functional departments and between vertical superiors and subordinates, promote the effective dissemination of information on internal stakeholders, realize the integration and coordination of internal resources, and form a flat, mesh consortium with unclear boundaries among multiple departments, thus ensuring that enterprises maintain a high degree of flexibility and pertinence in the process of maintaining cooperative relations with other enterprises.

2. Attach importance to the strategic alliance of tourism enterprises and build a new enterprise relationship

The core concept of supply chain management is the integration between enterprises, but in different industries, the close relationship between members of the supply chain is also very different, which can be roughly divided into three types. The first supply chain relationship emphasizes logistics, that is, there is no obvious leading enterprise between upstream and downstream, and the relationship between enterprises is mainly manifested in the flow of materials, while the flow of information outside logistics is quite limited. The second is partnership-oriented, in which all enterprises * * * share the same database to realize full information flow and complete information sharing. The third type emphasizes the core enterprises, and achieves mass customization and customer-oriented production capacity through information interaction between enterprises. In the tourism industry, because all node enterprises (such as restaurants, catering enterprises, travel agencies, scenic spots, etc.) produce service-oriented products and have the ability to provide products and services directly to tourists, the relationship of tourism supply chain is mainly manifested in the second type-that is, cooperative partnership.

the cooperative relationship among members of tourism supply chain is the cooperative relationship between suppliers and producers, and between producers and sellers in a certain period of time, in which * * * enjoys information, * * * takes risks and * * * gains. It can also be understood as the interactive and interdependent relationship among components in a system. This relationship is formed in a specific environment, based on * * * the same interests and has * *. In this mode of cooperation, individual independence and overall coordination are unified in a network with full information exchange, complete information sharing and parallel operation. Under the premise of exerting their own core competitiveness, the member enterprises of the supply chain can achieve the effects of continuously reducing the total cost of the supply chain system, continuously improving the product quality, further accelerating the market response speed and further improving the customer satisfaction through synchronized cooperative operation, so that all the member enterprises of the supply chain can benefit from the realization of the overall goal of the system. Therefore, this cooperative partnership embodies the systematic idea of resource integration and optimal utilization among enterprises.

strategic alliance is a concrete form of cooperative partnership in tourism supply chain, that is, two or more enterprises form a loose network organization with complementary advantages, risks and two-way or multi-directional flow of elements through various contracts to achieve strategic goals such as * * * sharing the market and * * * using resources. Globally, hotels, catering enterprises, travel agencies, airlines, computer and communication companies, and financial services companies have formed various forms of strategic alliances. These strategic alliances are established for different purposes: in order to establish marketing and reservation systems among hotel companies and gain market share in different geographical regions; In order to acquire new information and communication technologies; For the distribution of products and cross-marketing between catering enterprises and hotels; Distribution and cross-marketing between banks and hotel companies by using co-branded credit cards; In order to establish network services among travel agencies, airlines, restaurants, entertainment companies and car rental companies. It can be seen that the strategic alliance of tourism enterprises has been widely involved in the innovation of tourism service products, the establishment of information platforms, project planning, marketing mix, strategic development and joint entry, etc. It does not emphasize the comprehensive compatibility between partners, but pays more attention to the * * * use of some business resources and capabilities between them. Because the starting point of strategic alliance is to focus on the market, highlight the needs and interests of tourists, compete in cooperation and cooperate in competition, it has become a powerful way of competition.

of course, as an enterprise development strategy, strategic alliance, like other strategies, also has the risk of failure. This requires tourism enterprises to carefully choose alliance partners, flexibly respond to various changes, avoid conflicts between the alliance and their own goals, and finally achieve the goal of improving the market environment through strategic alliances and achieving win-win or win-win with partners.

3. Establish a tourism information system supporting supply chain management

Integrated supply chain management regards the supply chain as a system, which always exists in a certain environment and constantly interacts with the environment. This requires that enterprises in the supply chain no longer go their own way, but must maintain the required transparency to their partners, share the obtained information for the overall benefit, and realize information integration.

generally speaking, tourism enterprises can realize the integrated management of supply chain information by constructing two levels of information systems: Intranet and Extranet:

(1) internal information system. Intranet of tourism enterprises is a powerful tool for management, which connects the information systems originally scattered in various departments, so as to facilitate the real-time sharing of information of various departments in the enterprise. The management of the supply chain is also inseparable from this powerful tool. The data storage, transaction processing and collaborative computing related to the supply chain are all built on the Intranet of the enterprise, and the exchange of information with the outside is also based on the information provided by the Intranet.

(2) external information system. Extranet is an extended Intranet, which extends the idea of Intranet management of internal information resources of tourism enterprises to enterprise groups, and regards enterprise groups as enterprises in a broad sense to realize extensive information sharing. Intranet ensures the information integration of enterprises, while Extranet provides a way for enterprise groups to integrate information. Extranet enables the information system to integrate information among tourism enterprises, including price information from suppliers, customer information, market information from tourism wholesalers, service feedback information from tourism retailers, etc., so as to optimize the overall behavior of forming enterprise groups, such as shortening the advance booking period and improving products and services, and also make the decision-making and planning level of tourism enterprise management reach the height of overall situation. Moreover, due to the application of Internet and Web, which have the advantages of openness, flexibility, convenience and universality, Extranet can unite tourism enterprises in different regions to manage the supply chain, so that the optimization of the supply chain is no longer limited to a certain region. The breaking of geographical restrictions means that the supply chain can choose partners in the world, and it also means that enterprises can accept invitations from supply chains in any range.

in recent years, the development of internet and information technology has improved the breadth and speed of tourism information channels, and enhanced the self-help and directness of tourism transactions. Many tourism enterprises have taken active and effective measures accordingly. On the one hand, the internal informatization construction of tourism enterprises has been strengthened. Enterprises have set up internal information platforms such as transaction processing system (TPS), management information system (MIS) and decision support system (DDS). On the other hand, tourism enterprises actively develop external informatization and carry out online business. The booking system of international airlines, the central booking system of hotel groups, the global distribution system organized by GDS and the destination information system of countries or regions have become important tools for online booking and marketing of tourism products. Many travel providers have also begun to strengthen cooperation with online travel agents such as Travel locity and Expedia to increase the sales of their products. It can be seen that the development of tourism informatization has promoted the seamless link of information inside and outside tourism enterprises, and formed a supply chain information integration platform, thus providing a more solid technical foundation for realizing distributed parallel work among supply chain node enterprises and quickly responding to tourists' individual needs.

3. dynamically updating the tourism supply chain

the tourism supply chain is an open and dynamic system, and its openness and dynamics require the supply chain managers of tourism enterprises to assess the situation and update the supply chain in time. That is to say, in the integrated management of supply chain, it is necessary to emphasize the dynamic combination of the core competence of enterprises from different nodes. This combination is a response to the fast-changing market, and the whole supply chain shows certain timeliness. Once a node enterprise can't meet the interests of itself or the whole supply chain system, it will take the initiative to leave and join other supply chain systems.