Toward a Chinese-Friendly Tourism Supply Chain in Thailand: An Integrative Review and Service Framework

Abstract

Chinese outbound tourists remain an important market for Thailand, yet destination adaptation is often fragmented across individual businesses and reduced to isolated practices such as translated information, familiar payment options, or targeted promotion. This study aims to identify the key dimensions of Chinese-friendly tourism and map them onto the responsibilities of tourism supply chain (TSC) members. It adopts an integrative literature review informed by Service-Dominant Logic. Recurring service conditions were identified inductively through iterative comparison and thematic synthesis and consolidated into five dimensions; the four S-D Logic value co-creation attributes were then applied deductively to interpret the theoretical functions of the final dimensions. These dimensions were retained as conceptually distinct because they address different service conditions across the visitor journey and are associated, respectively, with reduced communication friction, perceived convenience, perceived fairness and trust, reduced perceived risk, and perceived meaningfulness. The dimensions are mapped onto seven TSC members: accommodation, dining, transportation, shopping, sightseeing, tour operators, and government. The framework further conceptualizes coordination and service consistency across TSC members as a distinct enabling TSC capability that supports the effective and consistent delivery of the five dimensions throughout the visitor journey. The study contributes by reconceptualizing Chinese-friendly tourism in Thailand as a destination-wide TSC capability based on coordinated resource integration and service delivery across multiple TSC members.