Title

INVESTIGATION OF THE APPLICABILITY OF BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT IN SWISS SMALL AND MEDIUM SIZED TOURIST ENTERPRISES

Abstract

Tourism is considered as an important economic sector in all OECD countries, especially Switzerland, for making significant contributions to their national economies in terms of employment, gross domestic product and services export (OECD 2008c). Lately, Switzerland’s tourism industry is witnessing increased competition because of reduced demand, increase in new tourism destinations, globalisation and revision in tourism policies worldwide (OECD 2006a). In order to make sense of the situation and provide a solution, this research aims to carry out multiple case studies to scope process improvement in the Swiss Small and Medium-Sized Tourist Enterprises (SMTEs). Previous research suggested the use of IT-enabled innovations by SMTEs for gaining competitive advantage, however, it is not clear to what extent SMTEs can support expensive IT-enabled innovations. In this paper, we report a work-in-progress project, the aim of which is to analyse the value chains of Swiss SMTEs and assess the feasibility of business process management in order to improve the performance of these firms. The use of value chain in identifying SMTEs core business processes will enable us to model the processes and propose effective improvements such as low cost long reach Web 2.0 technologies to sustain competitive advantage.