Sustainability in the tour operator - ground agent supply chain

This research aims to identify, and critically understand, the key opportunities for and barriers against tour operators and their ground handlers sourcing and selling more sustainable tourism products. The study is framed in literature of organisational culture and buyer-seller collaborations both downstream (sustainable supply chain management) and upstream (business to business marketing). Semi-structured interviews help to identify the tour operators’ barriers, opportunities and key decision making criteria. The findings suggest that a supportive organisational culture is a prerequisite to success for companies that wish to scale up the volume of sustainable products they source and sell. Sustainability only sells when it contributes to an organisation’s ability to meet its requirement of quality of service, especially in relation to suitability of the products to its target markets and reinforcing professional and trustworthy relationships. For services that are keenly priced, and/or that have tight health and safety regulations, buyers and sellers often lack the motivation to consider sustainability requirements unless they are clearly valued and marketed. Business to business marketing requires suppliers to understand the relative importance of sustainability to each of their buyers and, in response, to develop appropriate arguments to explain the importance of sustainability within their buyers’ organisational needs