Identifying positions and roles of travel agencies based on relationship redundancy in a package tour network

The travel agencies have a cooperative-competitive relationship with each other. In line with the background, the agencies need to know clearly their positions and roles in the industrial network. First, an affiliate network matrix is established based on the relationship between travel agents that participate in the package tour (PAK). Then, the two-mode network analysis and relationship redundancy are adopted to construct two new indicators, namely, the active relationship and complementary relationship, to assess the agencies’ positions and roles in the tourism network. The active relationship (AR) is constructed to identify the activeness of an agency in the travel industry while the complementary relationship (CR) is constructed to identify the need of a travel agency for complementary resources. A two-dimensional coordinate chart is formed to analyze the positions and roles of the travel agencies. The travel providers in this study are classified into followers, speculators, dependents and leaders.