Future Changes and Barriers in the Tourism Industry: A Sustainability Agenda for Virgin Holidays

This poster focuses on informing stakeholders of Virgin Holidays about the future changes and barriers in the tourism industry, and how the company is addressing sustainability challenges. It covers the goals, vision, and past and present operations of the company in relation to sustainability, as well as the impact of COVID-19 on the tourism industry. The poster also discusses the importance of improving sustainability and participating in responsible tourism, and the challenges that need to be addressed to create a sustainable travel and tourism supply chain on a global scale.

The focus of this poster is on informing the
stakeholders of virgin holidays about the future
changes and barriers in the tourism industry. The
poster incorporates sustainability agenda of the
company along with goals and vision of Virgin
holiday. The past and present operations of the
tourism company are also described in this poster in
relation to sustainability.
Overview
Virgin Holidays is a globally prominent
tourism company which as established in the year
1985. The company offers package holiday services
in popular tourist destinations such as United
States, Canada, Middle East, Africa and Far east
(We are Virgin Holidays, 2022.). From the research
conducting in foundation research project which
focuses on sustainability and impact of COVID-19
on the tourism industry it can be determined that the
UK based tourism company Virgin holiday is
impacted by the stoppage of tourism industry and is
facing sustainability challenges.
One of the most effective ways which help improve
sustainability is to focus on employee health and adopt
sustainability as a part of long-term strategy.
Goals
The primary goal of Virgin Holiday as a
multinational tourism company is to promote and
participate in responsible tourism. The focus of this
goal of Virgin Holidays is to facilitate preservation of
the world and make positive contribution to locals and
tourism destinations (Le and Phi, 2021). This helps
Virgin Holiday attain the goal of ensuring that business
operations support responsible tourism across the
globe.
The tourism industry has been dramatically impacted
because of the COVID-19 crisis because major
tourist destinations as well as enterprise which
support daily functioning of tourist organizations
were closed because of COVID-19 working
restrictions. The emergence of new COVID-19
variants and implementation of restrictions in
various countries has reduced the possibility of
tourism industry quickly recovering from the
pandemic.
In this type of situation is important that
tourism companies such as Virgin Holidays take
steps towards improving sustainability. Virgin
Holidays is facing sustainability challenges which
include maintaining profitability while also reducing
climate change impact of the company. The
company can gain success and increase the
possibility of better recovery from the pandemic by
improving organizational sustainability.
Foundation Year Research Project
INTRODUCTION

It is the goal of the company to offer
consumers a sensory tourism experience. This goal
of the company is related to gaining competitive
advantage in the tourism industry by ensuring that
the tourism package provided by the company
enhance consumer satisfaction to the highest level.
This goal helps the company achieve profit and
complete responsibility to investors of the firm.
Another goal of virgin holidays is to do
business for good and develop innovators so that
consumers are able to not only gain unique
experiences but also this eve high system ability
from their travel experiences. The company
focuses on riding inclusive an adventurous tourism
experience which are created so that local
communities of tourism destination are able to
provide with the help of tourism activities of the
company. This goal of virgin holidays supports
sustainable as well as responsible tourism.
Vision
The vision statement of the company is “to
embrace the human spirit and let it fly.” This
vision statement showcases that virgin holidays is
a consumer centric company and focuses on
providing emotional value to the consumer through
their tourism packages. The focus of the company
on writing consumers humanistic experiences and
enabling emotional fulfilment through tourism is
beneficial for the company in long term.
Consumers nowadays are preferring emotional
connexion from their tourism experience instead of
limiting the travel to material consumption. This
change in consumer preference across the globe is
reflected in the vision statement of virgin holidays
as the company aims to satisfy human spirit of the
consumer.
Past operations
The success of Virgin Atlantic in 1984 prompted
the establishment of virgin holidays a year after
introduction of Virgin Atlantic in 1985. Virgin holidays,
Virgin Atlantic Airways virgin voyages and Virgin hotels
focuses on providing consumers personalised and
satisfactory travelling experience. Virgin holidays have
achieved some level of vertical integration in the travel
and tourism industry. Vertical integration occurs in the
tourism and travel industry when two companies at
different levels of the supply chain are merged or
acquired. In phone text of virgin holidays the company is
connected with virgin voyages and Virgin Atlantic
airways which support air and water travel of the travel
and tourism industry. Apart from this virgin hotels is
another company in the travel and tourism industry which
is connected to virgin holidays and supports vertical
integration of the company.

Division profits to an external entity can be eliminated
with the help of vertical integration.
Present operation
Virgin holidays has been significantly affected by over
19. The pandemic has not only affected smooth
functioning of the tourism and travel industry because
of the pandemic safety restrictions but also reduced
consumer interest in travel and tourism as it comes with
a safety threat of becoming infected with COVID-19 or
any of its variants (Ali, and Anwar, 2021). Apart from
the pandemic affecting consumer preferences the
increasing climate change awareness is also affecting
consumers choices and decision making in context of
travel and tourism. Presently the company has taken
various steps to not only address recovery from
COVID-19 pandemic but also focus on improving
sustainability of the company so that move consumers
can be attracted towards purchasing the services of
virgin holidays.
In harder to deal with the pandemic virgin holidays
has recently utilised artificial intelligence to
increase profitability and make quick recovery
from the loss suffered during the pandemic
restrictions. The artificial intelligence tool adopted
by virgin holidays automatically writes email
subject lines which are similar to human
conversation and have better performance than
lines written by human employees. The usage of
this tool has been highly beneficial for virgin
holidays as the open rates of the company
increased by 2% (Virgin Holidays Made Millions
With AI and Email, 2020). This please in open
Leeds provided additional revenue to the company
in millions.

All the travel tourism enterprises which are
connected with virgin Holidays helps the company
achieve vertical integration and create personalised
travel packages for consumers which benefit all
other travelling tourism enterprises connected to
the company. This helps the company keep the
maximum amount of profit to the parent group
Virgin Atlantic holdings ask and you must travel
and use accommodation Virgin Atlantic holdings.
This particular indication is one of the reasons for
global success of virgin holidays as the company is
able to offer best deals and packages to the
consumers for each part of their travelling
experiences including transportation and
accommodation to specific destinations (Hole and
Snehal, 2019). Personalised package deals offering
consumers discounts on travel and accommodation
can be created without partnering with external
organisation and dividing.
Apart from this the usage of artificial intelligence for email marketing also
reduces costs and is less time consuming in compassion to using human
employees. The Usage of this tool in early 2020 helped the company
recover from the pandemic and will also support future growth of the
company.
The present action taken by virgin holidays in order to improve its
sustainability is to offer consumers safe travelling experience so they do
not have to worry about catching the COVID-19 virus. This type of safe
travelling experience is dependant on usage of digital and virtual
technology to create a contact clicks travel and tourism experience for the
consumers. This supports compliance with government guidelines on
restricted travel while also providing consumers best experience.
This support sustainable tourism as contactless travel reduces the possibility of
spreading virus in a tourism destination and negatively affecting the
community. In addition to this local community gains economic progress
through contactless tourism in their destination.
Future operations
The future success of virgin holidays is dependant on improving sustainability
of the company so that consumers are able to being affordable as well as
environment friendly. It Is important at virgin holidays addresses challenges
related to sustainability and achieves improvement in environment friendly
aspect of double travel and tourism supply chain so that consumers can be
offered green travel and tourism packages.

There are various challenges which affect the ability of an
organisation to improve sustainability such as globalisation challenges will
lessen security along with barrier of cross border and trade regulations. In
addition to this the company in future will also face the challenge of
maintaining high profitability while also using capital on improving
sustainability of the company. Digital technology and sustainable innovation
can be used by the organisation for providing consumers affordable and
environment friendly tourism packages while also maintaining profitability
(Butkouskaya, Llonch-Andreu and Alarcón-Del-Amo, 2021).
CONCLUSION
From the above poster it is concluded that but tourism and travel industry is
affected by the pandemic and the rising demand of sustainability weakens
emerging governments. It is important that businesses in the tourism and
travel industry change their goals and vision towards improving sustainability
and participating in responsible tourism. There are various challenges related
to sustainability such as maintaining financial profit and cross border
challenges. These challenges need to be addressed in order to successfully
create a sustainable travel and tourism supply chain on global scale.
REFRENCES
Ali, B. J. and Anwar, G., 2021. Business strategy: The influence of Strategic
Competitiveness on competitive advantage. International Journal of Electrical,
Electronics and Computers, 6(2).
Butkouskaya, V., Llonch-Andreu, J. and Alarcón-Del-Amo, M. D. C., 2021.
Strategic antecedents and organisational consequences of IMC in different
economy types. Journal of Marketing Communications, 27(2). pp.115-136.
Hole, Y. and Snehal, P., 2019. Challenges and solutions to the development of
the tourism and hospitality industry in India. African Journal of Hospitality,
Tourism and Leisure, 8(3). pp.1-11.
Le, D. and Phi, G., 2021. Strategic responses of the hotel sector to COVID-19:
Toward a refined pandemic crisis management framework. International
Journal of Hospitality Management, 94. p.102808.
We are Virgin Holidays, 2022. [Online] Available through
<https://www.virginholidays.co.uk/who-are-we/overview>
Virgin Holidays Made Millions With AI and Email, 2020. [Online] Available
through <https://www.marketingaiinstitute.com/blog/virgin-holidays-banked-
millions-using-an-ai-tool-that-writes-email-subject-lines-marketing-ai-case-
study#:~:text=Virgin%20Holidays%20adopted%20an%20AI,worth
%20millions%20in%20new%20revenue.>