Business Model innovation in Travel Industry. Implications for Integrated Bus Transportation Services

Innovations in Internet Technologies have radically changed the business in Travel industry. A variety of internet technologies, mobile and non (websites, portal, apps), enabled customers to plan and book complete travel solutions at the best available rates. Among the Internet Distribution Systems (IDS), that are web tools to support users from information collection to booking travel products, Dynamic Packaging (DP) is emerging as a key approach. DP, besides providing automated online travel packages, has a conceptual model of a great importance to reflect on the strategic issue of Travel industry: integration. How it emerges from our conceptual analysis of DP models (DPMs), effectiveness of DP depends from travel inter-system and intra-system integration. The first, affects DPM’s capacity of create coherent travel packages, while the latter affects the capacity of providing efficiency in travel. This latter dimension of integration is deepened in this paper presenting a case study. Namely the case study demonstrate how DP conceptual model is effective to integrate independent, private Bus transportation services/providers, operating at the national scale. The relative technology platform is able to provide integrated, multicarrier travel tickets. By leveraging on DPM, then, improvements on the bus transportation services can be achieved, and impacts on the travellers marketing behaviours are expected, such as increasing the bus transport against the private car