Enhancing successful inter-organization relationships : a study of Vietnamese travel companies with Thai partners

Abstract

This study examines the overall IOR success of Vietnamese international travel companies with Thai travel partners in order to increase the awareness and understanding of current cooperation relationships for tour operators, managers of international travel companies, and management boards of the tourism industry. As a result, the empirical information found in this dissertation provides foundation for competent individuals and organizations to make appropriate adjustments and effective development decisions for enhancing the tourism cooperation relationship between the two countries. Based on the results of the path analysis exploring the direct and indirect effects of exogenous and intervening variables on overall IOR success, this study argues that in order to achieve overall IOR success, Vietnamese international travel companies should have a high frequency of interaction and a high level of commitment to their current relationships with their Thai partners. In addition, this study also found that when each member sets up a relationship with its partner outside the country, the factors of marketing support, financial benefits, and business success are main purposes and motivations for joining the IOR and directly influenced their overall IOR success. On the other hand, the factors of trust in the IOR and communication in the IOR did not appear to directly affect overall IOR success but indirectly caused small negative effects in overall IOR success through the intervening variables of marketing support of the IOR and the business success of the IOR, respectively. These results indicate that involved travel companies have trust in the relationship with their travel partners but they do not receive enough marketing support from them; thus, they are currently not satisfied with the marketing support in the relationship. In terms of communication in the IOR, the findings indicate that the involved travel companies provide and receive sufficient information within the relationship, which increases the relationship performance satisfaction with the IOR but negatively affects business success. This explains the reality that Thai travel partners provide Vietnamese travel companies with much information about cheap package tours in order to attract high flows of tourists to many tourist destinations in Thailand, thus creating great competition between international travel companies within the Vietnamese tourist market, where these companies have to sell tours to Thailand at lower prices and simultaneously have had to suffer a higher rate of inflation of the economy annually (8.8 percent) compared with Thailand (2.7 percent) during the last ten years (World Bank, 2010). Only large travel companies with a longer period of relationships have enough resources to compete, survive, and develop well, while other small travel companies get hurt in terms of business achievements with their Thai travel partners. In conclusion, this study provides contributions to both the theoretical perspective and the empirical findings as scientific bases for practical suggestions for enhancing tourism cooperation between the international travel companies of Vietnam and Thailand. In addition, this study also finds empirical evidence for the factors affecting overall IOR success directly and indirectly, as well as provides reliable scales with which to measure theoretical dimensions. Measuring overall IOR success through intervening variables, marketing support in the IOR, the financial benefits of the IOR, the business success of the IOR, and relationship performance satisfaction with the IOR was carried out for the first time by this study. Thus, a more comprehensive conceptual framework for measuring the success of dyadic IOR that included all of the important factors suggested by previous researchers was built and tested in this study.