Sales executive competency identification : A Thailand's incentive travel business case

Abstract

Thailand has been well recognized as one of the top tourism destination and is so famous for its natural tourism resources especially sea shores and islands and was ranked 43st among 139 rated destinations by World Economic Forum (Blanke and Chiesa, 2011). Despite a high recognition of the country as a MICE destination of choice, the figures from Barnes’ report on convention and tradeshow organizer in 2010 showed that sales per organization and sales per employee of the country is well below those of Singapore, Japan, Australia, and Japan alarming that the country and the sector has a problem with productivity. Competency-based human resource management has been recognized for its superiority to a task-based approach due to its ability to facilitate employees’ versatility and adaptability to external changes and growth plans. To improve the productivity of Incentive Travel, a component of the MICE industry, threshold and differing competencies must be identified. Through structured in-depth interviews with different groups of stakeholders of Incentive Travel’s sales executive about threshold, differing, and ideal performance and competencies in regard to knowledge, skills, and attributes, competencies of such a position were identified. The researchers found that threshold competencies mismatched the key success factors of the Incentive Travel Industry. The finding of this thesis will be the guidelines for concerns persons to make the most informed and calculated decisions about human resource in the field of Incentive travel industry