The Business Offer and its Implication for the Business Interaction Complexity: The Distribution of Tourism Packages.

The aim of the paper is to discuss the design of the business offer and its implication for the business interaction complexity when distributing tourism packages. The distribution process implies that several actors must co-operate and interact. In our case-studies we have found that there is a strong connection between the design of the business offer and the complexity of the business interaction in the distribution process. The case-studies show that there are three important factors that affect the complexity of the business interaction in the distribution process: (I) Accessibility to information and booking control of the components; (2) The number of components to book; (3) The number of potential suppliers. Furthermore it is important to analyse these three factors in the context of two important and conflicting goals that have to be balanced: (a) The goal of offering comprehensive packages with a high freedom of choice for the customer; (b) The goal of managing the interaction complexity, which is a presupposition for an effective and high-qualitative distribution process. A way of handle this conflict is to analyse and develop the relationships between the actors that have to interact in the distribution process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]