The beginning of the 21st century in global tourism is marked by the strengthening of tour operators – wholesalers of tourism products with an international reach, dealing with, among other things: defining the concept of a tourism product, its preparation, promotion, and distribution, which means connecting individual suppliers of tourism products with recipients. This means that the idea of tour operators is to offer tourists standard packages of tourism products. In this case, standard does not mean identical tourism products, but refers to quality aspects. In practice, the role of tour operators boils down to assembling individual components of tourism products such as: transport, accommodation and catering, transfers, various types of services (guide, tour leader), organization of tourist events (excursions, sightseeing), travel insurance, and others. As can be seen, among the listed components of tourism products, there are those that directly concern logistics. These aspects of logistics will be presented using the example of selected German companies operating in the tourism sector.
From the group of German tour operators, due to their dominant position in the market of this sector, the TUI DEUTSCHLAND concern and the Steigenberger Gruppe will be discussed.
The scale and size of TUI DEUTSCHLAND’s operations are illustrated by the following economic information:
– sales revenue
– operating costs
– net profit – 8.722 million euros
– fixed assets – 156 million euros
– current assets – 270 million euros
– equity – 75 million euros
– market share by turnover – 26.4%.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 2003/4.