A survey of 374 firms in the travel-agency industry was conducted to determine how they can be encouraged to bring more tourists into Singapore. Export theories were used as a framework to differentiate the firms into four progressive stages and compare them with respect to management perception, problems encountered in inbound operations, export- supporting factors, and firm characteristics. The results indicated that different factors, particularly managerial ones, appeared to be important at each stage, thus enabling the development of profiles of firms in each corresponding stage. This finding has public policy implications.
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