DOES TOURISM FIRM'S PERFORMANCE CONDITIONAL ON ITS SUPPLY CHAIN INTEGRATION?

Review on existing literatures indicates that there are limited number of studies within Tourism Supply Chain (TSC) area as much of existing Supply Chain Management (SCM) studies focus greatly on manufacturing sector and very moderately on services sectors particularly in tourism sector. The existing TSC studies consist of more conceptual rather than empirical works where most of these studies mainly concentrated in developed nations, e.g., Europe and America which implies that there is very less empirical TSC study within South East Asia and Malaysia, in particular. As such, this study is intended to fill this gap. This study explores the supply chain practices within Malaysian tourism sector with the focus on TSC integration and its impact on the overall TSC performance. About 331 questionnaires were electronically mailed to tour operators and agents where the response rate was about 36%. Findings indicate that majority of surveyed firms had integrated their TSC practices at lower level and they enjoyed higher growth in non-financial areas instead of financial areas