Industrial Organization of the Package Tour Industry: Implications for Researchers

This paper argues that better understanding and improved research on the tourism industry will be achieved by a clearer methodological basis. This requires an examination of the logic of inference that underlies competing claims about tourism issues. In order to understand competing opinions and to evaluate respective claims some methodological discussion is required. It is suggested that there is a need for an alternative logic of inference than that implied by the ‘positivism’ in statistical methods and that an appropriate alternative would be a combination of generalized statistical analyses and case-specific ‘qualitative’ investigations. This is discussed in the context of the body of theory known in economics as ‘industrial organization’ as applied to the UK package tour industry. For example, rather than imposing generalized theoretical explanations, like the Industrial Organisation paradigm per se , it is important that the intrinsic context of the subject matter in the tourism environment is drawn on. Researchers should work closely with the industry to understand fully the processes at work to develop case-specific knowledge and to generate new theoretical insights.