Supplier selection as ex ante governance in Vietnam–South Korea outbound tourism

Aim/purpose – This study develops and prioritizes a context-sensitive framework for selecting destination-based tourism suppliers in Vietnamese outbound operations to South Korea. It conceptualizes supplier selection as an ex ante governance mechanism for interpreting how tour operators screen partners and address information asymmetry, service-quality risk, and operational risk before interorganizational exchange occurs.

Design/methodology/approach – We used a sequential Delphi-AHP design. Twenty-five experts (10 outbound tour managers, eight senior outbound tour guides, and seven supplier representatives) participated in three Delphi rounds and the subsequent analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The Delphi stage elicited and refined context-relevant criteria; AHP established their relative priorities. Microsoft Excel for Microsoft 365 was used for data management, Delphi statistics, AHP weighting, and consistency assessment.

Findings – The expert-validated framework comprises 21 criteria across seven dimensions. Food and beverage received the greatest weight, followed by safety and legitimacy and accommodation and hospitality. Food safety and hygiene, compatibility with Vietnamese taste, and risk management and incident response were the highest-priority sub-criteria. The priority structure indicates that experts assigned greater relative priority to food and beverage, safety and legitimacy, and accommodation and hospitality than to cost efficiency.

Research implications/limitations – The findings support interpreting supplier selection as an ex ante governance mechanism in cross-border tourism supply chains. However, the framework reflects expert judgments in one source-destination corridor and has not yet been tested against supplier performance, tourist satisfaction, service incidents, or other operational outcomes.

Originality/value/contribution – The study connects context-specific supplier prioritization with interorganizational governance and service-dominant logic. It distinguishes the transferability of the decision architecture from the context dependence of the estimated weights and provides a transparent decision-support framework for outbound tour operators.