Towards a New Political Economy of Global Tourism Revisited - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 313

continues to be controlled by a small number of EU-based companies (Endo,
2006: 604). The UK outbound market alone is currently dominated by just
two giant corporate entities, with a combined turnover of around

26 billion
in 2011, the Thomas Cook Group, which absorbed My Travel (formerly
Airtours) in 2007, and TUI Travel (part of the German TUI AG group), which
absorbed both Thomson Holidays (in 2000) and First Choice (in 2007).
The net effect is to deny this seat capacity to independent tour compa-
nies, who only have access to those remaining seats which have not been
sold to the customers of the parent company through their integrated sup-
ply-chain. Moreover, whereas until recently Club Méditerranée was one of
the few European tourism companies to operate outside of its own domestic
market, increasingly leading tour operators have begun to establish a com-
mercial presence in non-domestic markets and organise their marketing/sales
activities at a trans-continental level. Hence, the declining significance of the
nationality of shareholders, particularly within the EU, is also reflected in an
increasingly transnational orientation to the development of tourism prod-
ucts and services. For the most part, this has been achieved via the direct
acquisition of strategically placed assets (travel agencies, tour operators,
hotels and cruise companies) based outside the country of origin of particular
TTCs. In addition, the penetration of transnational capital into new markets
has been driven by TTCs based in what were previously predominantly des-
tination regions, such as Spain. Since 1985, Balearic hotel chains in particular
began to expand the scope of their investment and operations throughout
Latin America (Bywater, 1998). By the middle of the first decade of the 21st
century, there were around 800 hotels being operated by Balearic hotel chains
worldwide, of which approximately 25% are located in Latin America and
the Caribbean (Jacob & Groizard, 2007: 977).
Many large integrated tour operators have also sought to consolidate
their market share via the acquisition of leading specialist tour operators. 9 In
this way they have been able to capitalise on the specialist knowledge of par-
ticular destinations as well as the loyal client base built up over the years by
the smaller companies who may not be aware of the change in ownership at
the top (O'Connor, 2000). However, it also leaves independent hoteliers in
the destination at the mercy of even fewer companies. Although it is esti-
mated that 2.5 million SMEs are involved in the European tourism industry
(ILO, 2010: 8) and as much as 96% of the European accommodation sector
remains in the hands of independent proprietors (Smeral, 1998), leading tour
operators have invested directly in the purchase of holdings in luxury hotels,
in order to guarantee access to high quality accommodation capacity in a
highly competitive market. 10 Paradoxically, it has been suggested that this
reversal of stance towards the direct acquisition of assets in the Mediterranean
may well also have been precipitated by an increasingly strict regulatory
environment in many regions (e.g. Mallorca) thus heightening competition
over scarce capacity (Walters, 2000).

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