Analysis of supplier relations of hospitality sector: Case of Alanya

The relationship between tourism and economic development has been discussed in the context of development literature for a long time. The outcome of these discussions is resulted with the adoption of the common view that tourism contributes to the development of employment creation, increases household income, provides new business lines and attracts capital investments to the region. Qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the hospitality sector that is the face of the foreground of tourism are directly related to the success and development of the tourism sector. It is stated that the hospitality sector has more influence in the sectors that it is in communication with, companies, employees and generally on the residents of the region. The hospitality sector demands products and services in order to maintain its core activities, thus creating economic opportunities for local suppliers. Tourism is one of the driving forces of development, through their supply linkages, creating advantages in terms of linking with other sectors, creating new business lines and providing economic benefits and allowing supply chains to form between local suppliers. Within this context, issues such as the supplier geography of the product/service needs of hospitality sector, the meeting capacity of local / regional supply sources and the changes in supply relations with respect to hotel scales and different product / service types, have created the basic motivation of this work in relation to development literature. In hospitality enterprises, the highest procurement costs are often seen in the food and beverage sector, where production is most intense. That is why; there is a growing literature on tourism and local development in terms of the backward linkage of the hospitality sector and its impact on the agricultural sector in relation to suppliers. The economic contribution of the tourism industry can only be referred to when the majority of the needs of tourism activities are provided by local entrepreneurs and local products. This study examines the supply relations of the hospitality sector, the factors affecting this relationship in the case study area and tries to determine the secondary economic effects of tourism and to explore its reflection from the spatial perspective at local, regional and national levels. For this purpose, the main theme of the thesis is the demand created by the accommodation units, the potential to be met from the local supply sources, the determinants of the relationship between the suppliers and the accommodation units and how the supply relations reveal the geography, and the agricultural sector in particular. Alanya that is selected as the case study area, is a global tourism destination, an attractive coastal tourism center, and an agricultural production region in Turkey. In this context, the thesis consists of five parts. After the introductory chapter, the second section deals with the economic effects of tourism in relation to the local/regional development literature, the literature related to other sectors, tourism clusters and supply relations in the context of secondary economic effects. In the third chapter, the economic relations of tourism are explained in the context of supply relations of the hospitality sector. In addition, the supply relations of tourism sector with the agricultural sector are examined and examples from related studies are presented. In the fourth section where the originality of the research is presented, the methodology of the study is explained, and the results of hypothesis tests are introduced. In the fifth section, the conclusions and recommendations are shown. The hypotheses were tested by using a mixture of qualitative and quantitative data in the framework of the mixed method, which is the original research method. In this framework, the research method is dealt with in two stages based on the scope of the subject. According to this, firstly, the results of field research related to the supply process of the accommodation enterprises have been obtained. After the first step, the second phase of the fieldwork was conducted within the scope of suppliers of agricultural products and examined the impact of the hospitality sector on suppliers of agricultural products. Within the scope of this thesis, it is seen that the Alanya tourism sector needs the supply of local supply resources to provide its own sustainability and to offer competitive tourism product in terms of quality and price to the global tourism market. Local suppliers are firms that have preferred to connect with the hotels as reliable firms that can supply products and services with the expected quality and price, provide business cooperation in the procurement process and offer different product range. While large-scale hotels hold quality ahead, costs and traditional socio-economic relations are considered in terms of small-scale hotels. Hotel scale is an important variable in supply process and it has been found that large-scale hotels contribute to the Alanya economy in terms of purchasing quantity while small-scale hotels have a more comprehensive influence on the local economy by having linkage with more local suppliers. It is also found that hotels prefer to buy certain products from specialized regions of Turkey, causes the expansion of the geography of the suppliers. The result was that the Alanya hospitality sector provided supply linkages, not only to the locals but also, on the regional and national scale in the supply of agricultural products. Although Alanya is a very productive region in terms of agricultural production, the hotels have linkage with the producers in different regions, especially due to the seasonal effects and preferences of the hotels on the product category. In this context, although the demand of the hospitality sector in Alanya largely met from the local/regional suppliers, it is observed that second-tier suppliers are from various regions of Turkey in terms of agricultural products. Furthermore, definition of a cluster, which is expected to to exhibit a structure based on self-developed, firm agglomeration and supply relations, has been made as a result of evaluation of the existing structure of the study area and the findings. Accordingly, it is determined that the firms that are in the cluster, called "Tourism-Agricultural Production Supply Cluster", constitute a potential case study area in terms of monitoring the economic results of the interaction between the tourism and agriculture. From the perspective of the firms that supply agricultural products in Alanya, the hotel creates a customer potential, and these firms meet most of the requirements of the hospitality sector. The tourism sector, in terms of these firms, creates an important opportunity to deal with the supply of fresh fruits and vegetables in Alanya and the two sectors have potential for the agglomeration of related institutions and firms. Alanya hospitality sector provides important contributions to the local economy through its relations with supplier firms in different sectors. It is observed that the supply process between tourism and agriculture, which has been examined in detail within this thesis, constitutes the linkages that require a collaboration of two sectors. Empowering these linkages and supporting that proposed cluster by institutions would create new opportunities for the tourism product to be more competitive in the global market.