All inclusive travel has become a popular way to travel abroad. When tourists pay for everything in advance their need for contact with the local people will be reduced. The consequences of this can be dissatisfaction from the local people as they are left out and do not share the financial benefits created by tourism. During the purchasing cycle of an all inclusive travel, it is possible that the tour operator can influence a sustainable development.

The aim of this paper is to compare how a large and a small tour operator in their purchase of all inclusive holidays interacts with local players to create sustainable development, thereby creating a surplus value to the customer. The hypothesis is that the amount of knowledge and application of this knowledge regarding sustainable development differs in the purchase process between large and small tour operators.

This paper was carried out as a case study. We conducted two deep interviews with the chosen tour operators Fritidsresor and PolarQuest. We came to our conclusion by analyzing the answers from the two tour operators and comparing them to the chosen theories. We found that Fritidsresor, as a large tour operator, has knowledge of sustainable development. However they do not use this knowledge in their purchase of all inclusive travels. Nor do they interact with local players to create surplus value to the customer. PolarQuest on the other hand succeed to create sustainable development by interaction with local players. The exchange of knowledge and information between the parties create surplus value for the customer. This conclusion confirms our hypothesis.