New management tools for the successful tourism manager

The purpose of this paper is to outline some new managerial tools for the tourism industry. The thesis pursued here is that the managers of service operations face a number of challenges distinctly different from those encountered by managers of goods-producing activities; and therefore that tourism managers require management technologies designed for their special needs. Services and service delivery, i.e. service production, differ in their essential nature from goods and manufacturing processes. These differences are outlined and then the management implications and new insights for tourism are drawn out. These insights relate mainly to tourism operations management and the marketing of tourism.