Analysis of Tourism Business Process Automation and its Benefits from an Educational Perspective
Published Online: Mar 17, 2025
Received: Nov 02, 2024
Accepted: Feb 09, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/amns-2025-0172
Keywords
© 2025 Ying Yu, published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
As a “sunrise industry” in the 21st century, tourism involves a variety of fields such as food, housing, transportation, leisure and entertainment, which can promote regional economic development and provide the inexhaustible impetus for the modernization of China. As tourists carry out multi-faceted consumption and experiential activities in tourist destinations, which can drive the development of large-scale related industries, the essence of the tourism business is the economic behavior generated by tourists through regional consumption in different areas [1-3]. With the dynamic evolution of tourism in social development, tourism is constantly renewed through the integration with culture, especially with the help of education, showing rapid growth [4-7]. The concept of tourism education has begun to lead the development of the tourism education function, and cultural experience has jumped into the emerging concept under the explicit characterization of the tourism education function, which promotes the upgrading of the tourism industry and the sublimation of cultural connotation [8-10].
In this context, the coupling relationship between tourism benefits, market size and professional education has become increasingly close [11]. The driving force for the improvement of tourism business benefits comes from the expansion of market scale, and tourism benefits can also provide a basis for the optimization of education structure. In turn, the optimization of the education structure delivers human resources for market scale expansion and tourism benefit improvement [12-13]. The introduction of education into tourism is an inevitable choice for the upgrading and sustainable development of tourism business through the process of cultural experience, which can change the attitude and behavior of tourists [14-15]. The education introduced into tourism is not similar to the admonition of school education but is a kind of cultural experience education, which is different from school education and family education, and the tourists can realize the transformation of the spiritual level and get the spiritual pleasure in the cultural experience education [16-18].
In the face of the current industry’s increasingly competitive tourism market, this paper starts from the perspective of business process automation, puts forward the integration of process automation technology, real-time processing of business process automation and standardization of business process optimization strategy of tourism business process automation. On the basis of the optimization strategy, the tourism business process automation platform is constructed. The functional modules of the platform mainly include a monitoring screen module, task management module, job management module, process management module, data asset module and user rights management module, and the platform is designed with B/S architecture. Taking Company V as the research object, analyzing the benefits of tourism business process automation for Company V in relation to its tourism business process automation performance. Finally, from the educational perspective, strategies for educational assurance in the automation of tourism business processes are proposed to promote the positive integration of education and the tourism industry.
The efficiency of travel agencies is directly affected by their business processes. Currently, there are about 200,000 travel agencies in China. The increasing number of travel agencies leads to increasingly fierce competition in the industry, and the competition between travel agencies began to shift from the traditional price and service competition to the internal and external comprehensive strength of the competition, coupled with the impact of the Internet environment, a large number of travel agencies have been based on the current market demand, analysis of the competitive environment as well as the Internet development of the background for the optimization of the travel agency’s internal business processes. Based on the rapid growth of big data and cloud computing and many other cutting-edge technology concepts, this study will realize the automation of business processes in tourism and improve the quality and effectiveness of tourism services.
For optimization of the data submission process, first of all, we must clearly understand what the tourism business process is. The tourism business process involves obtaining specific tourism resources to conduct a series of value-added activities. The activities need to have a clear division of labor duties, and the process is divided into very detailed, specific implementation of each point corresponding to the business and customers and the corresponding time and order of work. It also needs to be supported by specialized business and technical staff to accomplish it with the most efficient division of labor.
Process automation refers to the use of a variety of technologies and tools to automate the process of business processes in the organization or repetitive tasks in the workflow that would otherwise require manual involvement. This process is designed to replace or assist human labor in a wide range of daily tasks by means of computer software, hardware, and artificial intelligence to increase efficiency, reduce error rates, save costs, and improve business responsiveness.
In this section, the corresponding optimization strategy for tourism business processes will be proposed from the optimization perspective of business process automation.
Integration of process automation technologies.
Combined with process automation technology, the automation of tourism business processes can be achieved at the technical level. Process automation technology is used in the planning and design of tourism routes, tourism talent management and other modules, from the automatic flow of affairs to the automated processing of the approval process are included in the scope of process management.
Realize process automation for real-time processing of business.
Based on the rapid development of modern Internet technology, the need to realize real-time processing in the tourism business process, regardless of geographical and time constraints, is also on the agenda. Real-time processing, regardless of geographical and time constraints, as long as the area covered by the Internet can be accessed
Standardize the process of automated business processing.
Tourism companies, in order to promote automation of tourism business processes, need to ensure the standardization of tourism business flow. At the same time, we aim to ensure that the collection of business information in the tourism industry is perfect and transparent.
In the previous section, this paper proposes an automation optimization strategy for implementing tourism business processes. In this section, we will combine the above methods and build up a tourism business process automation platform based on big data as well as cloud computing-related technologies, describing the structure and design of the platform and the module ideas to ensure the correctness and completeness of the platform implementation.
Platform Structure
The tourism business process automation platform contains a control center and robot (RPA) module [19]. The control center module is the control platform for automation resources, designed with B/S architecture, providing management functions such as tasks, processes, and robots. The RPA module is the running terminal of the grid process, which is designed with C/S architecture to provide the functions of process receiving, running and result reporting [20-21].
Platform Design
For the front-end system, the platform is developed using the popular framework Node.js, a JavaScript runtime environment based on the ChromeV8 engine, which is high-performance, lightweight, event-driven, etc. It is conducive to more efficient development, debugging, and maintenance of front-end developers, as well as to improve the user experience.
For the back-end system, the platform adopts the Golang framework for development [22]. Golang is an efficient, static, compiled programming language with features such as high performance, concurrency, and ease of maintenance, which is conducive to the back-end developers to build high-performance, highly available services more conveniently while reducing the development cost.
In terms of databases, the platform adopts the MySQL database. MySQL is an open-source relational database management system with good stability, high performance and high scalability, which is conducive to ensuring the security, integrity and efficient storage of data, as well as reducing the cost of data management.
Platform Modules
Monitoring screen module
Multi-dimensional digital monitoring screens can monitor the automation business in real time, so that managers can understand the business operation in real time. The multi-dimensional monitoring screen includes data monitoring and operation monitoring. The data monitoring screen includes various statistical data and trend graphs, such as the total number of tasks and the trend graph of running hours.
Task management module
The task management module is responsible for managing the tasks involved in the execution process of business automation. The task management module offers a variety of triggering strategies, including timed automatic triggering, to meet the task triggering requirements of various scenarios.
Job Management Module
Assignments are process execution records generated by business process automation task triggers. The assignment management module is responsible for the unified display and management of all task assignments. Process operations support the refinement of the display of the progress of the operation nodes, support for online viewing of the process running screen recording and abnormal screenshots so that users can more intuitively understand the business process, timely detection and resolution of problems, and improve work efficiency.
Process Management Module
Automated processes are scripts that simulate the completion of repetitive business process steps by employees of tourism enterprises. They are designed and released by a specialized automated process development platform. The process management module is responsible for the unified version management of all tourism business automation processes on the platform, and supports the control and backtracking of process versions.
Data Asset Module
Data assets are dynamically modifiable variables used in business automation processes. They are generally applied to scenarios with high security requirements and easily changeable data. Data assets are maintained by users in the daily operation of travel automation processes. For example, account password data assets need to be updated regularly to ensure the security of business automation operations.
User rights management module
The user rights management module provides multi-layer rights management. The rights management module provides fine-grained rights control based on the user role rights model. Multi-layer department management is used to synchronize the organizational structure and personnel distribution to achieve efficient management of departments and employees.
V Company was founded in 1998 and is one of the early travel agencies for city tours in Jinhua, Zhejiang, China. With a registered capital of 500,000 RMB, the company mainly engages in the domestic tourism business and has established a series of process systems such as tour guide operation process, transfer operation process, service quality monitoring and management process.
V company has been committed to the development of offline tourism business, resulting in the missed opportunity to carry out network tourism. In the context of the rapid development of network tourism, the company only has a company profile in some of the tourism yellow pages, lacks network marketing, sales, and information management capabilities, and gradually loses competitiveness.
In August 2023, with the approval of higher management, Company V started to implement a business process automation platform to promote the automation of our tourism business processes. This chapter will analyze the tourism business process benefits of Company V around the relevant tourism business data of Company V as of September 2024, etc.
This section will test the running time of the traditional tourism business process platform, the manual operation process and the tourism business process automation platform of this paper applied by Company V, respectively, and verify the effective enhancement of the tourism business process automation platform for the work efficiency through the data of the indicator of running time. Based on the business data of Company V, a total of 10 tests were executed, and the running time data of each business process processing method is shown in Figure 1. As can be seen from the figure, compared with manual operation, the platform in this paper, the time required for each execution of the process is greatly reduced, 9.72s reduces the average time of each execution, and the time reduction rate has reached a sizable 60.74%. Compared with the traditional platform, this platform also has a great advantage: the time reduction rate is 40.08%, 4.16s reduces the average time of each execution, and the efficiency of business process execution has been greatly improved.
Running time
After 1 month of using this paper’s tourism business process automation platform in Company V, the task data of the tourism business is organized and analyzed according to the tracking of the task data of the tourism business, as shown in Table 1. The amount of demand optimization for business process nodes is 7, the optimization ratio is 35%, the amount of defect optimization for business process nodes is 6, and the optimization ratio is 37.5%. The total node optimization volume is 13, and the optimization ratio is 36.11%. The average task processing volume before demand business optimization is 27, the average task processing volume after optimization is 34, and the efficiency ratio before and after reaches 125.93%. The average monthly task processing volume before overall optimization was 72, but the average monthly task processing volume after optimization was 88, and the efficiency ratio between before and after reached 122.22%. In addition, in terms of business scoring, before applying this paper’s tourism business process automation platform, the scores of demand business and defect business were 6 and 7, which grew to 8 and 9, respectively, after optimization. Overall, Company V’s travel business process optimization results meet expectations.
Number of nodes in business flow
| Business flow | Demand processing process | Defect processing process | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| The amount of nodes before optimization | 20 | 16 | 36 |
| The amount of nodes after optimization | 13 | 10 | 23 |
| Optimized node quantity | 7 | 6 | 13 |
| Optimization ratio | 35% | 37.5% | 36.11% |
| The average task processing quantity before optimization | 27 | 45 | 72 |
| The average task processing quantityafter optimization | 34 | 54 | 88 |
| Efficiency ratio | 125.93% | 120% | 122.22% |
| Pre-optimize business scores | 6/10 | 7/10 | - |
| Optimized business scores | 8/10 | 9/10 | - |
The daily number of business transactions and business scores of Company V’s consulting business at a certain window before and after applying this paper’s tourism business process automation platform are shown specifically in 2. As can be seen from the figure, after the application of this paper’s tourism business process automation platform, company V’s daily number of business transactions in the window consulting business has increased significantly, from 42 to 76, an increase of 80.95%. In terms of business scoring, the scoring of the consulting business at the window after the application of this paper’s tourism business process automation platform has also been improved, with the average scoring increasing from 5.2 before the application of the automation platform to 7.3. It can be seen that the actual application of the tourism business process automation platform in Company V has a significant effect after using the platform.
Business adjustment
This section evaluates the overall functionality of this paper’s tourism business process automation platform adopted by Company V in terms of completeness, integration, reliability, operability, scalability, security, and integrity. Due to the excessive content of measurement and evaluation, this paper only selects the applicability rate (applicability rate=applicable items/(applicable items+inapplicable items)) and the pass rate (pass rate=passed items/applicable items) as the evaluation indexes of the tourism business process automation platform in this section, which are shown in Figure 1. A1-A7 in the figure represent 7 indicators of completeness, integration, reliability, operability, scalability, security, and integrity in turn. It can be seen that, in terms of applicability rate, the applicability rate of this paper’s business process automation platform in terms of ease of operation and completeness reached 100%, while the applicability rates of integration, reliability, scalability and security were 97.10%, 91.11%, 95.24% and 98.88%, respectively, and the applicability rate of functional completeness was relatively low but also reached the level of 85.98%. As for the pass rate, scalability is the only indicator with a pass rate lower than 90%, with a pass rate of 87.5%. The pass rate of integration and ease of operation is as high as 100%, while the pass rates of functional completeness, reliability, security, and integrity are 97.83%, 92.68%, 90.91%, and 90.00%, respectively. It is clear that the travel business process automation platform used by Company V in this paper performs well in the overall functional evaluation and has good business process automation performance.
Functional evaluation
In this paper, the evaluation level of the implementation effect of tourism business process automation is divided into five criteria: excellent, good, medium, qualified, and unqualified. Table 2 specifically displays the evaluation grade and its associated value interval.
Evaluation grade
| Evaluation grade | Interval |
|---|---|
| Excellence | (0.875,1] |
| Good | (0.675,0.875] |
| Medium | (0.55,0.675] |
| Qualify | (0.4,0.55] |
| Unqualify | [0,0.4] |
The implementation effect of Company V in promoting the automation of our tourism business processes after the implementation of the business process automation platform construction is specifically shown in Table 3. From the table, it can be seen that the final score of the tourism business process optimization effect evaluation of Company V is 0.804, and the grade evaluation is good. From the indicators, it can also be learned that after promoting the business process automation of Company V, the management of customer service and internal business processes has achieved good results, with the corresponding scores of 0.845 and 0.854 for the secondary indicators and the improvement of the financial indicators has also achieved certain results, with the score of 0.847 for the secondary indicators, all of which are in the good grade evaluation. Learning and growth is the only level 2 indicator that scores only moderately at 0.671, and the level 3 indicator, employee satisfaction, scores the lowest at 0.46, which is at a passable level. Company V should pay attention to the needs of employees and improve employee satisfaction in its subsequent business adjustments.
Implementation effect
| Primary indicator | Score | Secondary indicator | Score | Tertiary index | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall implementation effect score | 0.804 | Financial index | 0.847 | Operational capacity | 0.919 |
| profitability | 0.767 | ||||
| solvency | 0.791 | ||||
| Development ability | 0.911 | ||||
| Customer index | 0.845 | Customer satisfaction | 0.984 | ||
| Brand market share | 0.864 | ||||
| Customer assurance | 0.556 | ||||
| Customer gain | 0.976 | ||||
| Internal business process indicators | 0.854 | Product quality | 0.858 | ||
| Supplier and purchasing pipe | 0.938 | ||||
| After-sales service | 0.937 | ||||
| New product development | 0.683 | ||||
| Learning and growth indicators | 0.671 | Employee satisfaction | 0.46 | ||
| Staff training rate ratio | 0.882 |
In the face of the current increasingly competitive tourism industry, this study takes the enhancement of the internal comprehensive instance of the tourism company as the entry point and proposes the tourism business process automation model to optimize the internal processes of the travel agency and construct the tourism business process automation platform. In the follow-up, how to maintain the reform effect of tourism business process automation and guarantee the implementation process of business process automation has become the top priority.
Higher education, higher vocational colleges, and university education source the tourism industry to provide tourism talent. The tourism industry and tourism companies develop with strong support and protection. Promote the deep integration of education and the tourism industry, and promote tourism business process automation from the perspective of education, with a high degree of strategic significance.
Clarify the cultivation of talents in the direction of tourism business process automation.
The key to talent cultivation lies in the setting of goals, and the clearer the goals are set, the easier the implementation will be. At present, the tourism industry companies in the training of business process automation personnel goal setting is not clear in this regard setting the goal, first of all, to make clear for whom to train talents, but also to make clear the training out of the talents can be engaged in specific positions and responsibilities.
The teaching content of colleges and universities should follow the development of the industry closely and join the teaching content related to business process automation.
The quality of talent training depends on the quality of the curriculum, and the quality of the curriculum is dependent on the quality of the teaching content. Only by closely integrating tourism education and industry development and timely adjusting the teaching content according to industry development can students have strong employment competitiveness. Tourism industry in the tourism business process automation, there are still more talent gaps, the an urgent need for colleges and universities to add new corresponding teaching content and update the direction of personnel training.
This research sub-proposes an optimization strategy for tourism business process automation and builds a tourism business process automation platform to achieve efficient automation of tourism business processes. The benefits of the tourism business process of Company V are analyzed based on tourism business data related to Company V as of September 2024, among others. Compared with manual operation and traditional platforms, the average time of each execution of the tourism business process automation platform adopted by Company V in this paper is reduced by 9.72s and 4.16s, with a time reduction rate of 60.74% and 40.08%, respectively. The combined optimization ratio and efficiency ratio of the demand processing process and defect processing process reached 36.11% and 122.22%, and the scores of the demand business and defect business grew to 8 and 9, respectively. The number of transactions per day for a particular window in Company V increased from 42 to 76, an increase of 80.95%, and the average rating increased from 5.2 to 7.3. In the overall evaluation of the tourism business process automation platform, the applicability rate and pass rate of all indicators were greater than 90%, except for the applicability rate of functionality completeness and the pass rate of scalability. The optimization effect of Company V’s tourism business processes was evaluated with a final score of 0.804. The evaluation ended up with a score of 0.804, which is a satisfactory level of rating. Customer service, internal business process management and financial indicators correspond to the second level of indicators corresponding to the score of 0.845, 0.854, 0.847. Learning and growth indicators scored a lower score of 0.671, and the indicators under the third level of employee satisfaction scored the lowest, 0.46. There is still a large space for subsequent improvement.