Uwarunkowania zarządzania przedsiębiorstwem turystycznym

Abstract

A tourism business is one of the basic elements of the functioning of the tourism market in economy. It is defined as a unit whose aim is to satisfy the needs of tourists or other businesses involved in the tourism industry oriented towards profit-making. The functioning of a tourism business is characterized by a number of features, the most relevant of which are presented below: 1) a tourism business is a tourism product maker and service provider, 2) the products made by a tourism business cannot be stored, 3) capital is the economic basis of a tourism business, whereas the operation of such a business is subject to tourism legislation. As any company, a tourism business has precisely defined goals of its operation. These goals make up a coherent hierarchy, where the major aim entails secondary goals. The most important aspect, which serves as a reference point in the structure of goals, determines the mission and vision of the business. This results in specific measures and affects the strategy of the functioning of a business. The basis is made up by instrumental goals which constitute the core activity of a tourism business. Another factor which influences managing a business is its environment. Traditionally, two types of environment are distinguished: the close one, being in direct relation to the business, and the remote one (macro-environment), which is in indirect relation to the business. For tourism businesses, a different sort of classification of environment types is relevant, namely one focusing on the elements forming the environment. The literature distinguishes: 1) the natural environment: it significantly influences the development of tourism in a particular area; this concept embraces broadly understood environ-ment conservation, which results from the ecological awareness in a given country as well as from the regulations established by international organizations, 2) the economic environment: an important factor is the competitiveness of tourism industry; this affects the economics of businesses and verifies the market realities of the sector, 3) the socio-cultural environment: it generates demand for tourism products and services; furthermore, this environment determines the segmentation of the market and the target group of consumers of tourism products and services, 4) the technological environment: it determines the dynamics of the development of tourism services; tourism businesses significantly changed their management policies due to technological development (online reservation systems, the development of communications, the speed of information transfer). A tourism business operates within a global economic model. One of the consequences of this fact is increasing internationalisation and focus on structuring international marketing strategies. Moreover, the global functioning of a business is complemented by the development in information technology. New technologies narrow the gap between the suppliers and the consumers of tourism products and services. The business management policy should be flexible enough to enable adjustment to global conditions. The dynamics of change requires more and more responses to phenomena occurring in the environment of the business. This results in working out the mechanisms that facilitate analysing and identifying the areas of functioning, including a global perspective. Another factor influencing the way a tourism business is managed is the natural environment, more precisely disasters and cataclysms around the world. This is concerned with news in the media, which may strongly affect the intensity of tourism traffic. This implies that media play an important role in consumers’ decisions concerning their holiday destinations. They also have an effect on tourism supply and demand by conveying, sometimes misleading, information about the events around the world. Thus, tourism businesses operate on a coherent global tourism market. The way they operate depends on a number of factors. Most of the factors affect these businesses in an indirect way. The task of tourism businesses is to develop a model of action that is flexible with respect to their environment. In other cases, management of such businesses is influenced by tourism organisations (WTO, national and regional organisations) which facilitate the functioning of businesses on the market.