Disintermediation in the tourism industry: an investigation of Thai tourism SMEs

Disintermediation has become increasingly intense, particularly in the tourism industry where many suppliers have successfully utilised the internet and website as a direct channel to sell to their customers. This paper investigates disintermediation situations and argues that in practice disintermediation, despite becoming increasingly intense, will just require travel agents to acclimatise rather than to be removed from the tourism supply chain. Four in-depth case studies of Thai tourism SMEs are presented to show how or whether the hotels have attempted to disintermediate travel agents and how the travel agents responded to the disintermediation.