Value creation and the development of knowledge-intensive service activities in Romania’s travel agencies

This paper aims at analyzing key information regarding the value creation resulted from providing tourism services by Romanian traditional and online travel agencies in relation to the development of knowledge-intensive service activities as part of their internal operations and the usage of outsourced services. Knowledge-intensive service activities and the field of knowledge-intensive business services have gained great importance in the economy of emerging countries such as Romania. Moreover, the impact of these specialised services and activities in tourism have not been subject to many thorough domestic or worldwide researches. As a result, the study will bring a new perspective regarding the implications of innovation and investments in technology, human resources and specialized knowledge in order to develop a new form of value creation, increased customer’s confidence and high profitability for the company. In order to achieve the indicated objectives, both the theoretical and empirical studies are used. The empirical study consists in collecting secondary data such as professional reviews and dedicated studies and reports from conferences and demonstrations on the subject. Also, the conducted analysis gathers mainly quantitative but also qualitative data, by applying a particularized survey and a brief interview. The results illustrate an integrative framework of the importance gained by knowledge intensive services in the process of value-creation in a tourism agency and also the key aspects regarding the new adapted form of tourism products through dynamic packaging. This study does not only capture and details the main aspects regarding the importance of knowledge-intensive service activities in the development of tourism companies, but also highlights the main features regarding customer’s satisfaction through the concept of perceived value-in-use (PVI) and the new successful products created and provided to a complete new generation of clientele.