Information sharing and bullwhip effect in smart destination network system

Information communication technologies (ICTs) have been extensively applied in smart destinations in recent years so as to improve the information transfer and information sharing amongst individual actors involving in the destination network ecosystem. This paper attempts to explore the influence of information sharing on the bullwhip effect throughout the tourism supply chain (SC) network, which has been considered as a major problem faces the destination management and all individual actors. Specifically, two mathematic models have been built to analyse the following different situations respectively; first, ICTs have not been well applied in destinations and there is no information sharing amongst individual actors, second, ICTs have been well applied in destinations and there exists information sharing amongst individual actors. Further, this paper makes a comparison of the bullwhip effects under these two situations. What's more, the data collected from JIUZHAI valley has been used to verify the correction of the mathematic analysis. Overall, this paper proves that the application of ICTs will contribute to the reduction of bullwhip effect throughout the tourism SC network by promoting the information sharing amongst individual actors, and some parameters (e.g., autocorrelation coefficient, the number of demand forecasting, and the lead time) will play a crucial role on the acting process. The results have both theoretical significance to the development of tourism SC management theory and managerial implication to tourism practices of individual actors and management departments. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.