Supply trends in human resources and the applications of travel agencies in the province of İzmir

ABSTRACTMaster?s ThesisSupply Trends in Human Resources and the Applications of Travel Agencies inthe Province of IzmirŞemsettin ÜNALDokuz Eylül UniversityInstitute of Social SciencesDepartment of Tourism ManagementWith the worldwide development of tourism, travel agencies havecommenced serving in a number of business activities like organizing the tours,making reservations for accommodation enterprises, renting cars, makingcongress organizations, informing the consumers about tourism and assistingthem in vacation formalities, and advertising and marketing. Travel agenciesare enterprises categorized under the services sector which is based on labor-intensity and healthy relations of the employees with each other and with theconsumers. For this reason, there is need for a human resources management tosupply, select, train, recruit and authorize the employees and to evaluate thepresent employees in an effective and efficient way.The field research has been performed in order to detect the humanresources trends of the travel agencies in the city centre of Izmir, tendencies ofsuccess-failure of the supplied employee, and the reasons for failure, if any. Theuniverse for the field research is composed of 175 travel agencies in the centre ofIzmir with Group A management certificate. The companies carrying outactivities oriented towards tourism industry and consumers of tourism, themain business of which is travel agency, and which have business volume andpotential, and bear characteristics of a tourism company have been included inthe sample set. For this reason the sample set is composed of 64 travel agencies.In accordance with the topic of research, from all companies placed in thesample set, one subject responsible from human resources supplies is includedin the research. Because behaviors, attitudes, experiences and their reasons aretaken into account, qualitative research methods have been used and standardstructured interview techniques have been applied. Travel agencies have notdisplayed a homogeneous tendency in human resources supplies. However, forthe successful performance of employee supply in travel agencies throughbenefiting from methods and sources of human resources outsourcing, thenumber of successful employees among the recruited ones is important. Thesource and method, from and by which the successful employees who haveworked for a long time in the company and is still working, were supplied, willbe the most useful for the travel agency.Key Words: 1) Travel Agencies, 2) Management and Organization,3) Human Resources Management, 4) Human Resources Supplies,5) Qualified Manpower