Value Chain of the Industry of Tourist Accomodation Case Golfo of Morrosquillo, Colombia

Introduction

Organizations focus their capabilities and resources on satisfying their customers’ needs and through this approach it is possible to identify the activities and actions that generate added value to goods and services. However, in order to identify the set of activities that generate value it is necessary to execute an internal analysis that allows to recognize the activities susceptible of destroying and generating value.

The value chain represents a perfect tool for implementing an integral and internal analysis, taking into consideration the customers’ interactions with the organization. The same industry establishments have a particular feature, their value chain. Usually, companies’ value chain is similar due to the fact that they share the same market, the same providers and they use the same management tools.

In relation to tourism organizations, especially in the case of accommodation establishments, the value chain is a system framed in a provision of a service wherein the inputs are represented by tourists who demand the service. Accommodation and other related services are recognized as activities that generate value to the customer’s experience.

This paper aims to characterize and analyse the tourist-accommodation-industry’s value chain located in Gulf of Morrosquillo in the Departmentof Sucre, Colombia. This Gulf is located in the south of the Caribbean Sea, on the north coast of Colombia and it has 102 km of beaches, coral reefs and tropical vegetation. It should also be noted that the oil pipeline Caño Limón-Coveñas that created great difficulties due to the oil spill in 2014 ends in Morrosquillo. Both this particularity and the bad management of resources destined to mitigate the coastal erosion and the recovery of beaches can be accounting factors to explain why the tourism sector in the area does not excel.

In this context, the main objective of the paper is twofold: firstly, to determine if the characteristics of the tourism sector in the area have something to do with the fact that this does not take off, or on the contrary, it is due to exogenous factors; secondly, to provide information that clarifies strong and weak points so that the study contributes to the improvement of the productivity of the sector. To carry out the characterization and analysis of the establishments’ value chain, Michael Porter’s contribution on this topic has been taken into account. The methodology to carry out the objectives is through a case study based on a survey. Given the scarce literature about this topic and this region, it is considered that this is the main originality and contribution of the study.

The article is organized as follows: in the next section we contemplate the theoretical framework, through which we delve into the definition and characteristics of the value chain, emphasized in Porter's contribution; the third section explains the methodology and the design of the research; the population and the sample are described, the variables are identified, as well as the instruments and techniques for the information gathering on these variables. Next, the results obtained are shown. In the fifth section, the discussion based on the variables is analyzed; and finally, the main conclusions of the research are presented.