One solution fitting many problems: Improving the productivity of service designs

Many travel and tourism enterprises are confronted with low margins and low profitability. Value is insufficiently 'captured' and often lost to intermediaries. In the recent past, many tourism and hospitality processes only could create value at all because they had access to favorable production factors. However, in the aftermath of the pandemic and due to demographic changes, key production factors (land, capital, labor) have become scarce and thus expensive. Processes must therefore be increasingly aligned with the available and often scarce human and financial resources: 'design to resources'. Improving effectivity and efficiency of systems and processes is key to improving service (and customer) productivity in tourism and hospitality. Insights from literature and practice show, that digitization and technology are key drivers.