Strategy and Change Management in Tourism Sector: A Case Study of Jet2 PLC

This essay analyses the strategy and change management in tourism sector with a case study of Jet2 PLC. It covers Williams and Bridges model, McKinseys 7s model, SWOT, PESTLE and Porters 5 forces analysis. It also discusses emergent and prescriptive approaches of change management and KPI tools used by travel industries.

Strategy and Change
Management

Contents
Contents...........................................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Necessary changes in strategy and management of an organization is needed for its
smooth functioning in the present scenario. Travel and tourism is the biggest industry in the
world and got rapid changes, over the past few years. Travel and tourism refers to a set of
activities performed, away from home, for the purpose of attaining relaxation (Lips, Aas, Pappel
and Draheim, 2019). The purpose of this essay is to analyse strategy and change management in
tourism sector. This essay talks about the company, Jet2 PLC and its strategy and change
management. Jet2 PLC is a travel and tourism company, headquartered in Leeds, England. This
is a leading travel group in UK, famous for its pocket – friendly fares. Strategy planning is
explained with the help of Williams and Bridges model while the change management is
analysed with the help of McKinseys 7s model. Further, SWOT, PESTLE and Porters 5 forces
are used to analyse the business environment of he company. In addition to it, emergent and
prescriptive approaches are also being analysed with the help of Henry Mintzberg's model and
Lewins model respectively.
MAIN BODY
The Jet2 PLC is one of the leading airline company, renowned for its budget friendly
fares. Being a huge company, it has a significant amount of market share in both, national as well
as international marketplace. Also the company occupies a good amount of market size. As the
strategy of the company of pocket-friendly fares to consumers but at the same time reduces profit
margin for the company. Low fares help to attract customers but on the other hand, some
expenses are cut down needed, to manage the other expenses especially maintenance. The aim of
the company is to grow its business with the combination of organic expansion by providing
high quality service. The company aspires to exceed the wishes, needs and expectations of its
customers.
Strategy refers to a plan made by organization for execution to achieve the aspired goals
and objectives. A good and effective strategy plays an important role in achieving the overall aim
and is generally known as the master plan (Hayes, 2022). A well conceived strategy is quite
essential to tackle the challenges and hurdles. Further, strategy helps to develop and sustain the
attractiveness as well as competitiveness of a destination. Strategy helps an organization to
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determine the correct directions in which an entity should move and operate. Strategic
management help an entity to have a more clear vision of the goals.
Strategic management process can be analysed with the help of Williams and Bridges
model. This is a transitional model which differs transition from change. Transition takes place at
the willingness of the organization and is an internal process whereas change happens even if the
organization do not want it to. This model covers three stages namely – Ending, losing & letting
go, Neutral zone and The new beginning. Covid-19 was the change that nobody wanted in the
whole world yet have to be faced. To recover the losses and deal with the situation, Jet2 PLC
changed its strategy. Work from home was never an option for them but now they have to
implement the same due to Covid-19. The strategy management of Jet2 PLC is explained with
the help of Williams and Bridges model. Ending, losing and letting go – This stage is all about
making employees understand their roles and responsibilities post transition. Work from home
was the transition for the employees of Jet2 PLC. It was made to recover from the losses faced
by the organization due to Covid-19 and lockdown. Neutral zone – This stage talks about the
guidance given to the employees by managers in a very patient manner to deal with their queries
regarding their new roles and responsibilities. The higher authority of Jet2 PLC gave guidance of
its employees personally so that they all initiate the new strategic management with enthusiasm.
The new beginning – This stage shows the, generally, positive outcomes of the transition made
in the organization (Desai, 2019). This stage brings joy and happiness in the organization on
knowing that their efforts were fruitful. Work from home got successful and Jet2 PLC got
recovered from the losses to a great extent and so the company continued the same till the
situation got normal.
For the analysis of environment, political factors that affect Jet2 PLC are deregulation on
the supply side and demand regulation which give people more options to choose from.
Fluctuations in the price of oil affects Jet2 PLC, a lot. Retiring of Baby Boomer generation was
the social factor which resulted in loss of income to airlines. Technological tools have to be
updated regularly for customer services in airlines. The regulators only after being fully
convinced that the airlines do not violate any law permit them to implement their strategies.
Changes in weather, is an environmental factor which has a direct impact on the flights.
The changes in an organization can be triggered by various internal and external factors.
Low satisfaction and performance, new leadership, conflict, etc., are some of the internal factors.
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While growth of technology, government laws, market demand, etc., are some of the external
factors considered to trigger change in an organisation (Wei and Zhang, 2020). There were many
changes made in the organization, Jet2 PLC, post Covid-19. Only vaccinated were allowed to
travel in the flights, sanitization and social distancing was mandatory, mask was compulsory,
etc., were some major changes made in the airline industry. McKinsey's model is used to assess
future success of an organization (Svensson, 2020). The model is based on 7S namely –
structure, strategy, systems, skills, style, staff and shared values. This model enables various
parts of an entity to act in a synced manner. Application of the model follow a top-down
approach. The first step is to identify the areas that are not aligned effectively such as values,
structure, strategy, etc. It is the duty of the organization to look that these new implemented rules
are being followed. The next step is to determine the optimal organizational design. Top
management opinions on these new rules are important to design new realistic goals. The next
step is where the top authorities investigates if there is any change to be made and what. The
necessary changes in the action plan, strategy, staff, etc., are to be made for the progress of Jet2
PLC by the management. The organization make the changes in order to determine the
achievable goals by crossing various hurdles. This step by step model of McKinsey help the
organization to deal with all the problems in a systematic and organized manner. This model is
considered as a long stand theory which helps in tracking the consequences of changes made in
key elements.
Change management can be tackled with the help of two approaches namely – emergent
and prescriptive approaches. Usually, organizations use emergent approach to handle the change
management in an organization (Ingason and Jonasson, 2018). Jet2 PLC too tackle the changes
made in the organization with the help of emergent approach. For instance, the employees of Jet2
PLC proposed to initiate the facilities of sanitizers in the flight for the safety of passengers. The
management thought to try the idea and this gave a good response. Consumers were attracted
because they feel safe and secured as sanitizers were very important those days. The good
response pushed the company to continue the facility. This was the emergent approach of change
management adopted by the organization. This was beneficial for both the national as well as
international markets. Further Jet2 PLC added the varieties of food and drinks in their airlines for
attracting consumers. The Lewins model contain 3 stages namely – unfreeze, change and
refreeze. The application of Lewins model deals with the perspective approach of change
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management and is discussed further. As Jet2 PLC faces an intense competition from its
competitors, the top authorities had a discussion on changing the strategy of their airlines. The
organization suggested in the meeting to add some facilities further to low prices of the tickets.
They added on the hotel accommodation by raising their prices to a small level. This approach
gave a good response as hotel accommodation with the tickets is a very nice offer and the
consumers found it quite appealing.
KPI stands for 'Key Performance Indicators', it is a tool used by companies is order to
measure it's performance (Page and Schoder, 2018). It keep records of all the activities which are
being held in business units. In order to make optimum utilisation of resources organisations use
to prefer it, with this to make a proper effective budget travel industries uses certain KPI's to
measure performance of businesses. Some of the most common KPI tools used by travel
industries are Traveler Satisfaction, Negotiated savings and Booking tool adoption. To measure
the rate of satisfaction of customers while availing services of company Traveler satisfaction tool
is used. With this tool companies can easily understand which services provided to customers
enhances their retention rate and which offer is unproductive for the company. Negotiated
savings is the tool used companies to pre check what profit will be retained by them by providing
all the discount offers to customers (Kamel, Rezk and Abdelkareem, 2021). With this they can
also determine how much extra discount can be availed to customers in order to enhance
customer satisfaction. Booking tool adoption is used by companies to determine how many
travellers are using other modes for booking tickets and what is the rate of travellers how book
online tickets. The KPI tool used by Jet2 Plc is Traveler satisfaction tool. With the help of this
tool Jet2 is able to identify that the strategies prepared by companies are beneficial for customers
are not, are customers interested to using those facilities. If company find the new plan
implemented by company is not at all productive and increasing unwanted cost of company then
the companies stops providing that facilities and try to find out the most suitable strategy for
travellers.
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CONCLUSION
From the above essay it can be concluded that, in order to enhance efficiency of
organisation it is curial to have change management. Each and every organisation has to make
change and adopt them, similarly tourism industry had also adopted it. The overall working of
management is impacted by adopting these changes occurred in management. The Jet2 has
adopted certain changes in it's organisation which has initially impacted the performance of
employees negatively but after a certain pace of time these changes has created a positive impact
on organisation. The changes are need to be framed in such a way that it do not increased the
amount of dissatisfaction among employees, by which they leave the company. Lastly, in order
to measure performance of employees certain KPI tools are used by companies. The tool used by
chosen organisation is Traveler satisfaction, through which companies can easily identify the
strategies which are providing benefit to organisation or are useless for organisations. With this
the company avoid using the strategies which are not at all effective and may results in loosing
customers base. This is how companies are able to frame strategies as per identifying needs and
wants of customers.
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REFERENCES:
Books and Journals
Desai, C., 2019. Strategy and strategic management. In Management for Scientists. Emerald
Publishing Limited.
Hayes, J., 2022. The theory and practice of change management. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Ingason, H.T. and Jonasson, H.I., 2018. Project: Strategy. Routledge.
Kamel, A.A., Rezk, H. and Abdelkareem, M.A., 2021. Enhancing the operation of fuel cell-
photovoltaic-battery-supercapacitor renewable system through a hybrid energy
management strategy. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 46(8), pp.6061-6075.
Lips, S., Aas, K., Pappel, I. and Draheim, D., 2019, August. Designing an effective long-term
identity management strategy for a mature e-state. In International Conference on
Electronic Government and the Information Systems Perspective (pp. 221-234).
Springer, Cham.
Page, L. and Schoder, J., 2018. Making change last: leadership is the key. Journal of Business
Strategy.
Svensson, L., 2020. A democratic strategy for organizational change. In THE PSYCHOSOCIAL
WORK ENVIRONMENT: Work Organization, Democratization and Health (pp. 241-
256). Routledge.
Wei, Z. and Zhang, L., 2020. How to perform strategic change? A strategy as practice
perspective. Chinese Management Studies, 14(3), pp.811-832.
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APPENDIX
SWOT Analysis
The environment of Jet2 PLC can be analysed with the help of SWOT and PESTLE
analysis. In order to analyse the environment, strengths of Jet2 PLC are diversified services and
offer packages for holidays. Limited global operations as compared to other leading airlines is its
weakness. Growth in aviation industry serves as an opportunity for Jet2 PLC while increase in
crude oil costs can be a big threat to the company.
Porter's five forces
To analyse company's competitive environment, Porter's five forces model is used. As
stated above, airline industry has quite a competitive market which means that Jet2 PLC has
intense competition with its competitors. The threat of substitutes to the company is low because
the usage of train and bus are at its minimal. Entry in airline industry require huge capital and
thus barriers are high. Buyers are not dependent on airline industry or agents any more while the
sellers have an immense power.
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