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Online reputation management (ORM) plays a significant role in the tourism industry. Tourists are more and more interested to express their opinions about their experiences/satisfaction not only with their friends but also on social media. ORM is largely used not only by tourist destinations but also by other companies operating in the tourism industry. This chapter aims to draw attention to the importance of intermediaries in tourism, their reputation in general, and especially their ORM and its specifics. This contribution also characterizes different types of intermediaries and their different roles in the distribution process of tourism services. These roles are important and can be even more significant in the “new normal” post-COVID-19 time. In the scientific literature and research, there is not much attention given to intermediaries as a whole and even less to their ORM and its specific solutions. But practical contributions can be found. Due to the specific activities and roles of different types of intermediaries, also their reputation is influenced not only by tourists but also by their suppliers. Their ORM has also some specifics and needs specific solutions. Their reputation is depending not only on customers' satisfaction with their own services but also on the reputation of tourism service providers, whose services they offer and mediate either individually or in the form of their own product, e.g., package tours. Specific attention in this chapter is given to intermediaries such as OTAs (Online Travel Agencies/Agents) and tour operators. At some time, these two types of intermediaries help to increase the reputation of tourism services providers, e.g., hotels. The chapter describes the situation in the field of intermediaries with a conceptual model, their ORM, and summarizes its specifics.

This paper investigates tourism distribution channels in a small island destination with capacity constraints and contributes to understanding distribution in an emerging economy. Using the case of Fernando de Noronha in Brazil, the structures and factors underlying channel choice behaviour of tourism suppliers and intermediaries were investigated.

41 in-depth interviews were conducted with the private sector (tourism suppliers based on Fernando de Noronha and intermediaries, based on the island as well as mainland Brazil) as well as governmental organisations. A stratified purposeful sample was taken to select suppliers and data were examined based on thematic analysis.

Both direct and indirect distribution channels are used, with limited airline tickets influencing the suppliers' choice of channels in this small island and capacity-constrained destination. Many suppliers focused on relationships with destination-based ground operators. These local intermediaries are important and extremely relevant to small island destinations building an effective business network to connect the destination to geographically distant markets and intermediaries.

Limitations include the absence of air and cruise operators as interviewees.

The paper provides a comprehensive representation of the structures and analysis of tourism distribution channels in fragile small island destinations, specifically, in an emerging country context. This includes emphasising previously unexplored indirect channels of cruise ship operators and supplier's associations.

Despite the significance of tour guiding and interpreting in the tourism system, relevant research is lacking in both depth and breadth. Current scholarly work tends to ignore tour guides’ self-expectations and assumes they are altruistic mediators who carry out their tasks without question. Considering tourism intermediaries are rational individuals who attempt to maximize their own benefits, the purpose of this paper is to situate tour guiding and interpreting practices in a larger political and social context, to explore the external and intrapersonal factors that might influence the content and approaches of interpreting Chinese communist heritage.

Considering tourism intermediaries are rational individuals who attempt to maximize their own benefits, this study situates tour guiding and interpreting practices in a larger political and social context, to explore the external and intrapersonal factors that might influence the content and approaches of interpreting Chinese communist heritage.

The study reveals that institutional arrangements, environmental settings, characteristics of tourists and tourist-intermediary onsite interactions can have salient repercussions on intermediaries’ job skills, career attitudes and orientation, and self-perceived roles, and further shape their way of interpreting the past. Several managerial implications regarding enhancing the effectiveness of tour guiding and interpreting are also discussed.

It is mentioned above. The Chinese government has invested enormously in red tourism to achieve a political end. In reality, however, there are always gaps between official narratives and actual interpretation. To lessen such deviation, efforts are needed to understand the dynamics of tour guiding practices. Anchoring interpretation and guiding practices in a broader political, social, and economic context, this paper attempts to improve the static research by comparing two major types of intermediaries, site interpreter and tour guide, with regard to the content of, and approach to their interpretation of red heritage. It provides an in-depth insight into the meaning-making process of the communist heritage tourism in China.

The Internet has encouraged rural tourism experience providers to develop a new management strategy that opts for disintermediation to access the market. In this context, incoming travel agencies (destination management companies [DMCs]), despite the local component, lose capacity to promote the rural tourism. The main question is what kind of relationship between stakeholders would enhance effective intermediation processes between them. The paper examines such constraints and limitations of existing relationships between small local rural tourism producers and DMCs.

Using the Basque Country region of northern Spain as a case study, the authors used a mixed qualitative and quantitative methodology based on semi-structured in-depth interviews and an online survey. The data analysis strategy used incorporated descriptive and exploratory factor analysis (EFA).

In this research, most of the tourism disintermediation factors identified in previous literature were reinforced when tested in the rural context. The results confirm that power, value, product differentiation, digitisation and stakeholder collaboration are key elements. The value provided in the international segment by DMCs, though, was found to be irrelevant.

This article contributes to filling a gap in the literature on rural tourism destination management from a holistic view of the destination understanding the business-to-business (B2B) relationship among stakeholders in rural tourism. This paper focuses on those elements that create value for local producers to sell the products through intermediaries and provides a framework for understanding the factors involved in value creation in rural tourism intermediation, which is applicable to further empirical studies and provides interesting managerial implications.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in home-stay arrangements in Ghana’s cultural city, Kumasi, and further assess NGO intermediation of home-stay from home-stay operators’ and international volunteer tourists’ perspectives.

A mixture of quantitative and qualitative approaches is used to target three main stakeholders of volunteer tourism including international volunteer tourists, home-stay operators, and local NGOs.

There are seven major roles played by volunteer NGOs in the home-stay arrangement. However, from operators’ perspective, NGOs may hinder the economic viability of home-stay through inadequate/low payment.

The study highlights the unexplored brokerage role of NGOs in volunteer tourism in home-stay intermediation and its implications for sustainable tourism.

This study, a conceptual paper, analyses the growth of curation in tourism and hospitality and the curator role in selecting and framing products and experiences. It considers the growth of expert, algorithmic, social and co-creative curation modes and their effects.

Narrative and integrative reviews of literature on curation and tourism and hospitality are used to develop a typology of curation and identify different curation modes.

Curational techniques are increasingly used to organise experience supply and distribution in mainstream fields, including media, retailing and fashion. In tourism and hospitality, curated tourism, curated hospitality brands and food offerings and place curation by destination marketing organisations are growing. Curation is undertaken by experts, algorithms and social groups and involves many of destination-related actors, producing a trend towards “hybrid curation” of places.

Research is needed on different forms of curation, their differential effects and the power roles of different curational modes.

Curation is a widespread intermediary function in tourism and hospitality, supporting better consumer choice. New curators influence experience supply and the distribution of consumer attention, shaping markets and co-creative activities. Increased curatorial activity should stimulate aesthetic and stylistic innovation and provide the basis for storytelling and narrative in tourism and hospitality.

This is the first study of curational strategies in tourism and hospitality, providing a definition and typology of curation, and linking micro and macro levels of analysis. It suggests the growth of choice-based logic alongside service-dominant logic in tourism and hospitality.

Several tourism destinations are using social media (SM) marketing more than traditional marketing in the developed countries. The increasing use of technology has replaced the role of travel intermediary. Most of the travellers in developed countries are no longer using travel agencies for their services. Many bookings are done online using electronic devices either at office or home. It is, therefore, a fact that SM has come to stay. However, the situation is contrary to some developing countries due to several reasons; for example, unreliable source of energy, communication, poor infrastructure and lack of competition. Most of developing countries depend on tourists from developed nations to consume their tourism destination products. Moreover, the modern travellers are no longer travelling in the dark. They want to have prior knowledge about their destinations. They check online product offerings, certification and destination labels. A modern tourist is becoming a more responsible traveller. SM plays a big role by providing information about many tourism destinations. Nevertheless, there are ongoing debates regarding the usefulness, future and survival of traditional travel agents despite the fact that there are threats from online travel agents and the increasing use of SM. This chapter is a case study of Malawi as a tourist destination. It critically discusses and analyses the impact of SM as a marketing tool. It also analyses the benefits and challenges of the travel agents, and finally confirms that there is a need to embrace technological change in travel and tourism industry in the developing nations.

Information technology (IT) has become a strategic weapon on tourism products’ identification, presentation, dissemination and getting a sustainable competitive advantage. Tourism management is the most important candidate for using IT with the need for gathering information in large quantities and diffusion of tourism management. The heterogeneous nature of these businesses means that information-communication Technologies’ uses change from sector to sector and from management to management in the tourism sector. The development of IT has created new application areas for tourism industry managers especially in efficient cooperation and provided tools for real globalization, IT is unexpectedly part of tourism management because of information creation processing and transmission which are important in daily activities. Therefore, both rapid development of tourism demand and tourism supply have become a compulsory partner of IT; and for this reason, IT plays an important role in the tourism marketing, distribution, promotion, and coordination. Due to this importance; the impact of IT on tourism sector is valued to be investigated. This chapter stresses that IT’s uses play an efficient role in choosing the management on behalf of the consumer. Within this context, this chapter composes of the information society; IT development and tourism; the usage of IT on travel, hospitality, tourism sector, its challenges, and advantages. This chapter mostly emphasizes on these subjects that will be examined deeply.

This study explores the role of international tour operators as the agents assuming the governance and the upgrading of the tourism global value chains (TGVCs), with a special focus on their influence on the development of technological capabilities (TCs) in the hotel industry.

The data used in this article originates from a survey carried out in 2016 on Spanish small and medium-sized hotel companies. An ordinal regression analysis is employed to test the hypotheses proposed in this research.

This study finds that tour operators exert a positive effect on the technological upgrading process in the hotel industry by stimulating small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to invest in TCs. The causal mechanisms through which these effects take place differ across the various stages of the relationship between hotel companies and tour operators.

The results have implications both for hotel management in terms of how hotels take advantage of technological upgrading to become more competitive, and for public administrations in terms of what measures can boost the development of hotel TCs in order to increase their added value.

To date, very few studies have analysed the tourism sector based on the influence on the development of TCs of SME hotels by combining GVC concepts and the resource-based view. It is also the first time that the causal mechanisms are shown to explain such influences.