Digital-Platform-Based Customized Travel: Organizational and Strategic Impacts on the Tourism Supply Chain

The report delivered in the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China stresses the deep integration of culture and tourism, advocating “shaping tourism through culture and highlighting culture via tourism”. This guideline establishes a clear policy direction and development blueprint for the digital transformation and innovative upgrading of China’s cultural and tourism industries. In the post-pandemic era, China’s economy has entered a phase of structural adjustment and recovery. As a sector with a long industrial chain and strong economic spillover effects, cultural and tourism development has become a critical engine for expanding domestic demand, stimulating household consumption, and driving economic recovery. Since 2023, local governments across China have introduced a series of supportive policies to stabilize growth, boost demand, and strengthen market confidence. These policies include fiscal and financial incentives, improved institutional safeguards, and strengthened industry promotion, all of which help foster a facilitating environment for industrial innovation and development.

According to the 2023 China Tourism Development Report by the Wuhan Branch of China Tourism Academy (China Tourism Academy, 2023), China’s tourism market has entered an accelerated recovery phase, characterized by a pattern of “hot destinations growing even hotter and less popular destinations achieving stable growth”. Official data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism further confirmed this momentum: During the 2024 Qingming Festival, domestic tourist trips reached 119 million, representing an 11.5% increase compared with the level in 2019. The total domestic tourism spending reached 53.95 billion yuan, up to 12.7% year on year (Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 2024). These figures illustrate the strong resilience and vitality of tourism as one of the major well‑being industries.

Driven by industrial recovery and continuous advances in digital technology, tourism demand has become largely diversified and personalized. The standardized and one‑size‑fits‑all model adopted by traditional travel agencies could no longer meet modern tourists’ expectations for unique, flexible, and personalized experiences (Z​h​a​n​g​ ​e​t​ ​a​l​.​,​ ​2​0​2​1). Holiday travel volume has incessantly reached record high after the post‑pandemic rebound in tourism, as many travelers are eager to explore niche attractions in search of distinctive and non‑homogeneous experiences. Against this backdrop, online customized tourism has emerged as a dominant trend in the marketplace. As early as 2019, customized tourism entered a period of rapid growth: The annual Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) of customized travel services on Ctrip alone exceeded 4 billion yuan, with international business accounting for 60% of the total (Z​h​a​n​g​ ​&​a​m​p​;​ ​C​h​e​n​,​ ​2​0​1​9). Amid the normalization of pandemic prevention and control, China’s customized tourism market reached approximately 304.434 billion yuan in 2022, representing a year‑on‑year increase of 7.55% (G​l​o​b​a​l​ ​M​a​r​k​e​t​ ​M​o​n​i​t​o​r​,​ ​2​0​2​3).

Online customized tourism combines the personalization of independent travel with the security and convenience of group tours, while mitigating the limitations of both formats. As a digitally enabled emerging business model, it carries substantial growth potential and helps shape new consumption trends. It not only satisfies individual tourist demands but also brings profound opportunities and challenges to the tourism supply chain. On the one hand, it promotes the optimization and innovation of supply chain, accelerates product diversification and upgrading, and injects new dynamism into the tourism market. Through close collaboration with airlines, hotels, catering providers, scenic spots, and other stakeholders, online customized tourism supports high‑quality service delivery and enhanced user experiences. On the other hand, service disruptions or mismatches during the customization process could introduce operational and governance risks to the supply chain. Despite these important implications, existing research has not sufficiently examined how customized tourism reshapes tourism supply chains.

This study aims to explain the mechanism through which customized tourism influences the evolution of tourism supply chain, with a view to providing theoretical insights and practical references for the digital transformation and high‑quality development of tourism supply chains. Based on a systematic review of domestic and international literature, this study first clarified the core concept and connotation of online customized tourism. It then analyzed how the business model of online customized tourism affected the structure, operation, and innovation of the tourism supply chain. Ultimately, it identified key bottlenecks and risks facing the tourism supply chain in the era of customized travel and proposed targeted improvement strategies.

The concept of customization was first introduced by Alvin Toffler in his seminal work Future Shock (T​o​f​f​l​e​r​,​ ​1​9​8​4). Later, V​a​r​ ​&​ ​G​u​n​n​ ​(​2​0​0​3​) became the first to apply customization theory to tourism systems. With the rise of the experience economy and service-oriented development, customization has gradually shifted from product customization to service customization, thus enabling tourists to receive services that match their unique demands. At its core, online customized tourism centers on personalization while reconciling suppliers’ goals for efficiency and cost control with tourists’ demands for tailored experiences, representing a sustained interactive process between supply and demand (K​e​s​k​i​n​ ​&​ ​U​c​a​l​,​ ​2​0​2​1). Initially, customized tourism in China remained a niche market targeting high-end consumers due to high service costs. Since 2016, however, a growing number of online travel agencies (OTAs), including Ctrip and Qunar, have entered the sector to provide accessible customized travel to a much wider consumer base.

Currently, there is no unified definition of online customized tourism in existing research. From the perspective of supply chain and resource integration, L​u​u​ ​e​t​ ​a​l​.​ ​(​2​0​2​5​) defined online customized tourism as a digital platform‑enabled tourism model that integrated resources from the OTAs, online travel service (OTS) providers, and user‑generated content (UGC). Personalized travel solutions were offered by combining the design of itinerary, selection of destinations, and related-service elements to address consumers’ individual needs and experiential expectations. C​a​o​ ​e​t​ ​a​l​.​ ​(​2​0​2​5​) argued that live-streaming and online travel agency (OTA) channels created asymmetric operational impacts on scenic spots and tour operators, with their optimal channel strategies shaped by platform charges, user traffic, and preferences of consumer return. H​o​ ​e​t​ ​a​l​.​ ​(​2​0​2​4​) emphasized elevating the quality of self-guided tours and reducing the time costs associated with arranging them, in accordance with users’ personal preferences and professionals’ travel recommendations in the IoT environment. D​u​ ​e​t​ ​a​l​.​ ​(​2​0​2​5​) pointed out that sustainable hotels cooperating with OTAs would face diverse contractual trade-offs. The scholars established a Stackelberg game framework to verify the revenue-sharing contract, which was the optimal win-win cooperation mode for the sustainable hotel supply chain.

Based on the above reviews, the current study defined online customized tourism as a service model in which online travel platforms integrated fragmented tourism resources to develop personalized products and services, to align with tourists’ unique preferences, interests, budgets, and schedules. These services typically cover itinerary planning, accommodation, catering arrangements, and themed experiences. By transcending the constraints of standardized tourism models, customized tourism provides highly targeted routes and unique travel experiences, ranging from adventurous exploration to quiet leisure vacations, thus satisfying diverse and individualized tourist demands. These customized tourism studies predominantly focus on product and demand attributes rather than the overall operation of supply chain and organizational coordination.

In 1975, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) formally introduced the concept of tourism distribution channels, laying the conceptual groundwork for the tourism supply chain. The chain encompasses the entire lifecycle of tourism offerings from production, distribution, to final consumption and integrates a diverse set of actors including service suppliers, service integrators, and intermediaries. Structurally, it constitutes a multi-layered network system comprising upstream suppliers, integrators (e.g., travel agencies and online travel platforms), and end consumers. Broadly defined, the tourism supply chain is a demand-oriented network structure that coordinates providers of accommodation, transportation, catering, attractions, shopping, and entertainment, alongside distribution partners and tourists.

Research on online platform-based tourism supply chains remains relatively fragmented. For the coordination of supply chain and service quality, Z​h​a​o​ ​&​a​m​p​;​ ​H​o​u​ ​(​2​0​2​1​) emphasized that inter-organizational collaboration represented the core challenge in the management of digital tourism supply chain. They noted that the Theory of Constraints (TOC) could effectively support cross-member coordination. W​a​n​g​ ​e​t​ ​a​l​.​ ​(​2​0​2​2​) demonstrated that decentralized decision making prevented supply chain optimization and proposed a dual-channel structure involving OTAs to align service quality across stakeholders. Incorporating Platform Protection Insurance (PPI), F​a​n​g​ ​e​t​ ​a​l​.​ ​(​2​0​2​5​) analyzed the evolutionary dynamics of service quality in digital tourism supply chains, thus verifying that stronger OTA commitment to PPI incentivized suppliers to upgrade service levels. From the perspective of channel structure and green development, L​i​ ​e​t​ ​a​l​.​ ​(​2​0​2​2​) investigated an omni-channel tourism supply chain involving two tourism service providers and one OTA. They found that OTA-led green investment yielded the lowest system-wide profitability and green performance.

To conclude, literature on online tourism supply chains mainly focused on green development, service quality, performance assessment, and risk management, with particular attention paid to coordination of supply chain and corporate social responsibility. Most literature on tourism supply chain showed limited interest in the trend of personalized customization driven by digital platforms and corresponding organizational evolution.

The nexus between customized travel and the tourism supply chain has become increasingly prominent and has attracted scholarly research from diverse perspectives. In respect of supply chain coordination, W​a​n​g​ ​e​t​ ​a​l​.​ ​(​2​0​2​2​) revealed that service quality stood as the core of coordination in dual-channel customized tourism supply chains. A reasonable revenue-sharing contract could align the interests of online customization platforms with offline suppliers, in order to enhance the sustainability of supply chain. P​i​y​a​ ​e​t​ ​a​l​.​ ​(​2​0​2​3​) argued that tourism supply chains aimed to satisfy heterogeneous tourist preferences. Tourists fall into two groups: those optimizing a single travel criterion and those balancing multiple conflicting objectives. This makes it hard for tourism suppliers to design itineraries matching visitors’ exact personalized demands. K​e​s​k​i​n​ ​&​a​m​p​;​ ​U​c​a​l​ ​(​2​0​2​1​) constructed a dual-channel tourism supply chain dynamic game framework with both online and offline distribution channels. They also discussed the differentiated impacts of multi-agent service quality on demand, pricing, and profit. Comparative analysis showed decentralized decisions reduced total supply chain surplus, and revenue-sharing contracts coordinated profit allocation and system performance. On the downside, X​i​e​ ​e​t​ ​a​l​.​ ​(​2​0​2​4​) cautioned that excessive customization might trigger value co-destruction for both providers and tourists (e.g., high communication costs and unstable experiences), advocating a hybrid “standardization + personalization” mechanism to balance the depth of customization and service stability. Furthermore, K​u​ ​(​2​0​2​5​) emphasized that supplier collaboration with internal organizational systems helped tourism firms improve customized service capabilities and market competitiveness. Collectively, these studies illustrated the interactive relationship between customized travel and tourism supply chains; their areas of interest covered coordination mechanisms, operational costs, potential risks, and inter-firm cooperation.

Although customized services are widely adopted to satisfy diversified tourist demands, S​t​h​a​p​i​t​ ​e​t​ ​a​l​.​ ​(​2​0​2​3​) suggested that over-intense interaction during personalized service delivery triggered value co-destruction and weakened the perceived value of both tourism suppliers and visitors. Tourism operators ought to strike a balance between customized service innovation and risk management to sustain stable service quality and travel experience.

In summary, distinct research orientations exist between customized tourism research and tourism supply chain research. Existing customized tourism literature mainly centered on product design, consumer experience, and individual-level service optimization from the demand side, while studies on tourism supply chain mostly focused on channel coordination, green operation, and quantitative game optimization among upstream and downstream enterprises, rarely combining personalized customization characteristics to analyze holistic industrial organizational changes. Three obvious research gaps remain in extant literature: First, most prior works discussed the performance of customized tourism market and product upgrading but ignored its profound transformation on organizational structure, modes of inter-firm coordination, and multi-stakeholder governance within supply chains. Second, few scholars systematically analyzed the full-path influence mechanism of platform-based customized tourism in the reshaping of supply chain architecture from the perspective of holistic industrial ecosystem. Third, insufficient research distinguished the unique challenges and developmental opportunities brought by digital customized travel, compared with traditional packaged tourism. Against such research deficiencies, this paper methodically explored how platform customized tourism altered supply chain structure, supply-demand matching rules, and organizational operation logic. It further identified industrial bottlenecks and proposed targeted multi-agent optimization strategies, which effectively supplemented the existing studies on customized tourism and tourism supply chain.

Synthesizing findings from the foregoing literature review, shifts toward personalized tourist consumption demand act as the fundamental driving force. While digital OTA platforms function as core intermediate coordinators, systematic restructuring of the tourism supply chain constitutes the ultimate consequence. Specifically, diversified and individualized consumption needs fuel the rapid expansion of platform-based customized tourism. Leveraging big data and digital technologies, online platforms integrate fragmented tourism suppliers, professional custom designers, and end consumers via breaking the rigid framework of conventional linear supply chains. Guided by such platform coordination, this section elaborates how the tourism supply chain underwent comprehensive transformations in organizational architecture, operational mechanisms, and service benchmarks, accompanied by emerging industrial opportunities and practical operational challenges.

Propelled by the growing consumer demand for tailor-made and diversified tourism products, the structure of tourism supply chain has witnessed significant changes. To accommodate customized travel needs, the traditional linear supply chain is evolving into a more complex and dynamic network-based structure.

Before the prevalence of OTAs, tourists mainly participated in group tours and accessed various tourism resource suppliers through travel agencies, thus forming a linear tourism supply chain. With the popularization of OTAs and internet technology, an escalating number of travelers prefer independent travel and online booking services. The integration of OTAs has gradually transformed the tourism supply chain into a network structure, as illustrated in Figure 1.

The proliferation of online customized travel has rendered the tourism supply chain more complex. As an innovative business model, online customized tourism integrates social networks, tourism service providers (hotels, catering venues, scenic spots, airlines, railways, and other stakeholders), and travel customizers. These participants collaborate to jointly promote the development of personalized tourism products and meet the rising demand for distinctive travel experiences. When compared with traditional group tours and independent travel, customized itineraries feature sufficient information, differentiated offerings, lower costs, higher efficiency, and stronger interactivity. The primary differences between traditional and customized tourism supply chains are presented in Table 1.

From the supply chain perspective, the business model of online customized tourism comprises five core participants: customization specialists, tourism service suppliers, interactive communities, consumers, and platform operators (Figure 2). When intending to purchase customized travel services, tourists access functional modules on OTA platforms, which match users with professional customizers according to their preferred destinations. These customizers establish long-term cooperative relationships with platforms to provide one-on-one personalized services of consulting and itinerary arrangement. With reference to tourism resources published by upstream service suppliers, customizers design exclusive travel schemes and supporting services, covering itinerary planning, reservation of accommodation and transportation, catering arrangement, and continuous online assistance throughout the travel process. Interactive communities constitute vital knowledge-sharing modules on OTAs. Such communities integrate user-generated travel narratives and supplier-released promotional content, simultaneously attracting platform traffic and facilitating service publicity. Tourists can efficiently acquire travel-related information and practical guidance by browsing community content. Meanwhile, tourism suppliers optimize service systems and develop innovative tourism products based on user-generated data. In this way, multi-stakeholder value co-creation is realized within the digital tourism supply chain.

As an emerging tourism paradigm, customized tourism prioritizes personalization and satisfaction of consumers’ demand, thereby profoundly reshaping the operational logic of tourism supply chain. This innovative business model imposes higher requirements on the flexibility of supply chain and responsiveness to adapt to dynamic consumer preferences. Characterized by personalization, customized tourism generates diversified and volatile market demand for tourism products and services. Accordingly, upstream suppliers are obligated to provide differentiated and tailor-made tourism offerings, which further raise the standard for precise demand forecasting and systematic supply chain governance. Furthermore, the frequent fluctuations in personalized tourist demands accelerate market dynamics. Customized tourism emphasizes the capacity of rapid demand response, requiring supply chain participants to dynamically adjust service strategies to accommodate real-time consumer needs.

In summary, customized tourism reconstructs the demand side of tourism supply chain from three dimensions: demand diversification, demand uncertainty, and response efficiency. To adapt to the booming customized tourism market, suppliers need to pursue continuous operational innovation and structural optimization, so as to realize the systematic upgrading and sustainable development of digital tourism supply chain.

The proliferation of customized tourism has enriched the tourism marketplace and profoundly transformed the structural architecture of tourism supply chains. Firstly, the composition of supply chain stakeholders has undergone significant evolution. Emerging participants, including travel customizers and community content contributors, have been incorporated into the traditional supply chain system. The inclusion of diverse stakeholders exacerbates inter-organizational management complexity, necessitates tighter collaboration among members in the supply chain, and facilitates the delivery of integrated one-stop travel services. Such cooperative relationships require effective coordination between upstream and downstream suppliers to achieve optimal resource allocation and operational efficiency.

Secondly, customized tourism elevates the evaluation criteria for tourism products and services, hence promoting the overall service upgrading of supply chains. Homogenized and standardized tourism products gradually become inadequate to satisfy heterogeneous consumer demands. Tourism suppliers are compelled to engage in personalized product design, while all supply chain nodes must continuously improve service quality and enhance dynamic response capabilities. These structural improvements strengthen the flexibility of supply chain and agility, to ensure high-quality tourist consumption experiences.

Thirdly, customized tourism accelerates the digital and intelligent transformation of tourism supply chain. To accurately capture personalized preferences, tourism enterprises leverage information technologies to collect and analyze consumer data and construct digital supply chain platforms for precise demand identification and tailored service provision. Digital technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence optimize resource screening and demand matching, thereby empowering intelligent tourism applications represented by immersive travel and intelligent navigation services.

Overall speaking, customized tourism sheds light on the multidimensional upgrading requirements in respect of the composition of supply chain stakeholders, service quality, talent allocation, and digital intelligence development. It also integrates diverse innovative elements into the customized tourism ecosystem, as visualized in Figure 3.

Platform-driven customized tourism substantially reforms the internal organizational setup and cross-organizational governance of all tourism participants.

First, digital OTA platforms break the original hierarchical and vertical decision-making mode of traditional travel agencies and tourism suppliers. Relying on big data and real-time data on consumer demand, enterprise decision making shifts from top-down centralized judgment toward data-oriented decentralized collaborative decision making, thus shortening decision chains and improving response efficiency to personalized market demands.

Second, customized tourism rebuilds patterns of inter-organizational coordination among suppliers, custom designers, and platform operators. The previously loose sporadic cooperation evolves into long-term modular collaborative partnership anchored on digital resource-sharing platforms; real-time information interaction replaces offline inefficient communication and forms rules of standardized cross-organizational coordination.

Third, the initial groups of travel customizers and UGC creators diversify stakeholder composition, prompting the whole supply chain to establish multi-party joint service governance mechanisms. Platforms assume the role of rule setter and supervisor to coordinate the allocation of benefits, formulation of service standards and risk control among all participants, given the institutional governance upgrading of tourism industrial organizations. Such organizational restructuring is the core organizational value brought by platform-based customized tourism beyond the optimization of supply chain and market adjustment.

The booming expansion of customized tourism brings multidimensional operational and managerial challenges to tourism service providers. Without effective governance mechanisms, these inherent drawbacks may negatively disrupt experiences of tourist consumption.

Firstly, price heterogeneity has become a prevalent issue in the industry. Divergent pricing across digital platforms and customized tourism packages easily triggers consumers’ perceived unfairness, thereby reducing tourists’ satisfaction with personalized travel services.

Secondly, highly interactive customization procedures carry potential value risks. Failure to satisfy tourists’ personalized value expectations may result in value co-destruction between suppliers and consumers, thus hindering the long-term sustainable development of customized tourism businesses.

Thirdly, the rapid proliferation of Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC) poses technological disruption to traditionally manual customization modes. The intelligent and automated customization algorithms continuously squeeze the market share of manual customizers, forcing service providers to upgrade service standards and operational efficiency. Moreover, the inadequate professional competence of customization teams impairs service delivery and personalized design capability, restricting the capacity of the industry to steadily meet diversified tourist demands. Meanwhile, service homogenization within the customized tourism sector limits the alternative choices of consumers and weakens the attractiveness of market differentiation. To sustain competitive advantages, tourism practitioners should emphasize service innovation and deliver uniquely personalized travel schemes.

Finally, personalized service procedures inevitably generate higher operational costs. Balancing superior service quality and reasonable cost control turns into a core managerial dilemma. Accordingly, service providers need to optimize resource allocation, streamline operational workflows, and adopt enabling technologies to improve the overall cost-effectiveness of customized tourism supply chain.

Against the current market backdrop, the development of online customized tourism is driven by multiple favorable factors. First, governmental attention and industrial support, including policy incentives and fiscal preferential measures, lay a solid foundation for the standardized and high-quality development of the tourism sector. Second, advances in emerging technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, 5G, virtual reality, and augmented reality facilitate the innovation and upgrading of tourism products and services, enhancing personalized and immersive travel experiences.

Meanwhile, the rapid recovery of the domestic tourism market after the pandemic has stimulated robust consumer demand and revitalized the whole industry. Customized tourism remains underdeveloped in third tier and lower-tier cities, to release the enormously untapped potential in sinking markets. In addition, the rising Generation Z exhibits a strong demand for personalized travel, creating new growth momentum for the tourism industry.

In terms of digital transformation, tourism suppliers have integrated digital strategies into marketing practices. Emerging forms such as live-streaming tourism sales and cloud travel experiences effectively attract consumers and boost the intention of travel consumption. Moreover, tourism operators’ effective management of private domain traffic strengthens user stickiness and loyalty, and improves customers’ acquisition, engagement, retention and repurchase.

Furthermore, with the younger demographic structure and prevalent content consumption habits, online tourism communities have achieved rapid growth. Leveraging user-generated knowledge and content, communities deliver diversified and high-quality tourism information as well as enriched experiences. Collectively, these factors jointly promote sustainable development and prosperity of the online customized tourism industry.

To satisfy diversified personalized demands and upgrade service competitiveness, tourism suppliers could carry out targeted operable optimization from product, operation, and quality supervision dimensions.

First, develop modular combinatorial customized products based on customer segmentation. Split travel resources into five independent modules like accommodation, transportation, feature sightseeing, cultural experience, and outdoor adventure, and combine these modules flexibly according to users’ budget and travel themes. Launch limited seasonal featured itineraries such as intangible cultural heritage in-depth tour and outdoor wilderness camping to enrich differentiated supply.

Second, implement refined intelligent operation management. Deploy one-click intelligent reservation assistant system to automate the confirmation of room, ticket, and vehicle reservation and to reduce manual communication costs. Build a four-stage closed-loop feedback system: collect comments via platform community and after-sales pop-up questionnaires; AI automatic classification of complaint types and demand tags; weekly demand summary report delivered to research and development department; and archiving product iteration record. Adopt dynamic tiered pricing: set off-peak preferential price and peak floating price, according to real-time booking volume and scenic spot flow data to realize flexible price adjustment.

Third, build full-process quality inspection mechanism. Arrange special inspectors to spot-check service performance of cooperative hotels, restaurants, and scenic spots monthly; establish supplier blacklist system for repeatedly non-compliant service providers to guarantee whole-chain quality control.

To enhance market competitiveness and optimize consumers’ experiences, OTAs ought to prioritize the development of differentiated products and value-added services.

First, develop differentiated hierarchical service packages: divide customized products into budget economy, mid-range customized and high-end exclusive three grades, equipped with corresponding after-sales consultation and emergency assistance services; expand drainage channels by cooperating with short-video travel bloggers and local life service platforms to realize multi-scenario customer access.

Second, standardize tiered supplier cooperation mechanism to strengthen partnership management. Classify suppliers into core long-term partners and temporary scattered resource merchants. Sign annual framework cooperation agreements with core suppliers for priority resource reservation and volume discount, while adopting short-term order cooperation for small niche merchants to enrich the resource pool.

Third, build unified cloud shared data platform to lift cross-organizational coordination efficiency. Realize synchronous real-time sharing of supplier inventory; idle resources and price data on the cloud platform; automatically match surplus resources with pending customized orders via system algorithm. Deploy Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for internal financial and resource scheduling and configure Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to tag users’ consumption habits, travel preference, and spending level for accurate portrait.

Fourth, use big data to conduct monthly consumption trend analysis, update customized recommendation algorithm regularly and push matching itineraries for target customer groups to improve conversion rate of customized orders.

As critical intermediaries linking consumers’ demand, OTA platforms, and tourism service resources, travel customizers occupy an irreplaceable position within customized tourism supply chain, wherein professional competencies are regarded as essential competitive assets.

Firstly, customizers need to strengthen data-driven demand analysis capabilities. By utilizing big data and artificial intelligence embedded in OTA ecosystems, customizers could accurately identify consumer preferences, achieve precise resource matching, and ultimately improve service efficiency and tourist satisfaction.

Secondly, sustained professional cultivation is necessary for career development. Regular industrial training enables customizers to keep abreast of emerging tourism trends, updated scenic information, and digital technologies including AI-assisted customization and cloud tourism. Such continuous learning mechanisms help customizers maintain long-term professional competitiveness in the evolving customized tourism market.

Tourism communities function as pivotal platforms for information dissemination and emotional interaction within customized tourism ecosystems, whereby scientific community management effectively improves user stickiness, word-of-mouth diffusion, and capabilities of market perception.

Firstly, interactive and content-diversified community atmosphere should be constructed to motivate users to share travel experiences and practical travel guidelines. OTAs can host incentivized online activities, such as photography competitions, to further enhance users’ participation and community activities.

Secondly, refined community operational management is required. Leveraging data analytics, platforms can identify opinion leaders and high-activity users. Targeted collaboration and incentive mechanisms could mobilize their social influence to sustain overall community vitality.

Furthermore, community feedback loops act as a vital driver for service iteration and product optimization. The collected user-generated content (UGC) could be transmitted to upstream suppliers, enabling consumers’ demands to be integrated into product design and supply chain adjustment. Such demand-driven patterns facilitate the continuous iteration and optimization of digital tourism supply chain. Additionally, rigorous privacy protection and information security governance should be ensured to maintain community credibility and achieve long-term sustainable operation.

In summary, differentiated optimization strategies for heterogeneous supply chain stakeholders collectively improve the service quality and consumer experience of customized tourism. Complete supply chain optimization enhances the operational flexibility and dynamic response capability of the customized tourism ecosystem, thereby further promoting the sustainable and high-quality development of the modern tourism industry.

Theoretically, this study enriched existing theories concerning digital platform governance and industrial organizational adaptation. The findings elaborated how digital platforms broke the vertical boundaries of traditional organizations, facilitated decentralized collaborative decision making among multiple stakeholders, and improved the theoretical framework of supply chain organizational restructuring driven by customized tourism. Valuable references were provided for follow-up studies on platform-based industrial governance and organizational transformation. Nevertheless, several limitations remain. The analysis was predominantly based on theoretical reasoning without verification of empirical data; differentiated comparisons of customized tourism development across cities at various tiers were not included. For future research, scholars may adopt questionnaire surveys and econometric models to quantitatively measure the impacts of customized travel on supply chain organizations. Further research could also explore governance risks induced by the popularization of AIGC within customized tourism and formulate suggestions for the corresponding optimization for industrial supervision.