Current Issues in Tourism

Background

Tourism supply chain (TSC) is crucial to ensure the sustainability and growth of the tourism industry. TSC involves a wide range of businesses and organisations to sustain the optimal production and distribution of tourism products and services. TSC is complementary to the management of tourism products and services that enhances inter-destination cooperation (Dong et al., 2012), collaboration between suppliers (Rodrigue & Wang, 2022), as well as coordination among destination stakeholders and suppliers (Papatheodorou, 2021). Within a destination, the share of TSC knowledge among the stakeholders could increase their collaborative relations and improve the destination’s sustainability performance (Cooper, 2018; Eckardt et al., 2021). In addition to the practices of companies in TSC impact tourists’ satisfaction (Modica et al., 2020). The goal of a TSC management is to achieve tourist satisfaction through making tourism products and services available when and where they are needed in the right form and at the right price.

TSC has continued to increase in popularity over the last two decades. Although there are basic theoretical frameworks established to help analyse the growing complexities of TSC in the context of global disruptions (i.e., the COVID-19 pandemic, Global Financial Crisis, natural disasters, and blocking of the Suez Canal). Yet the impacts of growing uncertainty of product and service supplies, increased volatility and unpredictability of tourism demand, ever-changing tourist expectations and satisfaction, and the rapid digital transformation of travel and touring services in a globalised marketplace remained largely unknown and under-researched. Additionally, the rapid transformation of world economic order and AI-enabled digital marketing are most likely to disrupt tourist flows, travel behaviour and consumption patterns. The validity of current tourism models to analyse highly agile and lean tourism service chains is highly questionable in terms of their ability to fulfill just-in-time demand for diverse tourism experiences (Ahmadimanesh et al., 2019; Nilashi et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2009). New and innovative ways of thinking and modelling are thus crucial to unfold this complex, dynamic and interdependent tourism operations across the tourism supply chain.

Earlier studies (Huang, 2018; Szpilko, 2017) have made major contributions to analyse key issues affecting suppliers’ interactions and coordination to successful delivery of tourism products and services from a tourism perspective (Zhao et al., 2022). Despite various attempts to develop theoretical models and frameworks to guide in designing TSC to optimise and deliver tourism products and services, many models have been prematurely abandoned or deemed a failure due to invert looking perspective, a lack of disciplinary integration, and limited access to the right data. Furthermore, a comprehensive analysis of TSC resilience and agility to respond to unpredictable global disruptions has only been sporadically addressed and are very limited (Mandal & Saravanan, 2019). New knowledge is now needed to evaluate the impacts of global disruptions, such as the COVID-19 pandemic on TSC resilience and agility (Gössling et al., 2021; Jain et al., 2022) and tourism sustainability (Tasnim et al., 2022). There is also a growing awareness of AI-enabled and data-driven decisions that enable tourism and hospitality decision makers and practitioners to respond better and navigate the impact of a prolonged global crisis.

Aim of the Special Issue and Topics

This special issue aims to consolidate TSC research that examines the dynamics of the tourism industry and highlight the current operational challenges and business opportunities in the current global tourism markets. The special issue explores the latest trends and practices of TSC management and explores future research directions in the face of ever-changing consumer expectations, demands and technological advancements during the post-COVID-19 era. More specifically, the special issue explores current issues in building resilience to TSC and designing effective business strategies to mitigate the impact of global disruptions. A specific focus of this special issue is to examine the cascading and compounded impacts of disrupted modes of tourism transport on tourism products and services supply chains from the point of origin to the point of destination.

We aspire to break down existing silos between tourism and other disciplinary fields relevant to different transportation modes (air, land and sea), logistics and supply chain management, as well as ensuring that the tourism field is enriched through transdisciplinary fusion of transdisciplinary approaches, models and theoretical development and industry practice.

The following research areas are of interest for the special issue:

• Tourism supply chain management and disruptions
• Tourism supply chain sustainability, resilience and agility
• Tourism resilience and COVID-19
• Tourism transport and logistics
• Airline networks and destination connectivity for tourism
• Airports as tourism spectacles
• Aerotropolis and airport-centric tourism growth models
• Rail expeditions and rail tourism corridor development
• Cruise tourism and nodal development
• Supply chain risk management in tourism
• Tourism supply chain as-a-service / Cloud tourism supply chain
• Collaborative relationships and partnerships in tourism supply chains
• Innovation and technology in tourism supply chains
• The role of AI technologies in tourism supply chain coordination and management
• Emerging trends and challenges in tourism supply chains
• Strategies for managing the complexity of tourism supply chains

These topics are indicative, and they are not exhaustive. Instead, they are intended to stimulate thinking about the role of TSC from inter-organisational to intra-organisational perspectives at large.

We are interested in studies using any of the full range of qualitative and quantitative investigative methodologies. We welcome the spectrum of philosophical approaches, from interpretive to positivist to design. We also welcome both empirical and theory-building studies and theory testing.

The special issue welcomes original research articles, case studies, and literature reviews that contribute to the advancement of knowledge in the field of TSC management. Papers should be original and not currently under review by other journals.

All submissions will be peer-reviewed by experts in the field. Manuscripts should be submitted through the journal's online submission system and should follow the journal's formatting guidelines.

Important dates:

Submission open date: 15 October 2023

Manuscript submission deadline: 15 March 2024

Manuscript submission information:

Please submit your manuscript before the submission deadline of 15 March 2024.

Manuscripts submitted to the special issue must be uploaded through the journal’s submission platform.

When prompted for the article type, please select "Tourism Supply Chain Resilience to Global Disruptions".

All submissions will first be subject to a rigorous screening by the Guest Editors, before being subject to the standard double-blind review process established by the Current Issues in Tourism.

Submitted papers should be original works and should not have been previously published or currently considered for publication elsewhere. The manuscripts should be prepared according to the Guide for Authors

Instructions for AuthorsSubmit an Article