Abstract
II. Abstract World Travel and Tourism Council’s Travel and Tourism 2011 report forecasted the global travel and tourism industry to sustain a high growth rate from 2011 to 2021. Travel and tourism (T&T) is a highly fragmented industry because there are many stakeholders in the travel service value chain [TS-VC], for both distribution and service fulfilment. The advent of the internet has fundamentally changed the relationships among the stakeholders in [TS-VC]. In particular, service fulfilment providers of [TS-VC]’s strong desire to establish direct relationship with the travellers, together with the increasing acceptance of self-booking tools by the travellers have created a significant threat for stakeholders in the distribution component of the travel service value chain. On the service fulfilment side, the concept of a seamless traveller experience is a concept that is gaining importance, but if one is to look at the traveller experience through every touch point of the [TS-VC] today, the traveller’s experience is far from seamless. Despite technological advances in travel distribution solutions, service fulfilment providers in the [TS-VC] continue to serve travellers independently and with little to no collaboration. From a technology perspective, the concept of service collaboration among service fulfilment providers in the [TS-VC] is both a gap to be fulfilled and an opportunity to create value for the traveller. To date, there has been no significant development in travel service collaboration technology for service fulfilment providers in T&T, due to the lack of [1] data integration strategy among service fulfilment providers and subsequently [2] a viable business model to motivate stakeholders in the travel service value chain to invest in such technology. This report recommends a [1] a high level customer centric data sharing concept to serve as a basis for the development of a data integration strategy to enable collaboration among service fulfilment providers and [2] a business model (“To-be” business model) for the development and adoption of service collaboration technology, named as the Traveller Centric Service Collaboration Platform for travel service fulfilment providers to bring about a more seamless traveller experience for the high yield Fully Independent Traveller (FIT) segment. This report also compares the “As-is” business models for selected companies in the distribution component of [TS-VC] to the “To-be” business model based on a SWOT analysis on the 9 Blocks Business Model Canvas to determine the company with the highest rating to adopt the “To-be” business model.