Contemporary Issues Impacting the Tourist Experience in the Travel Industry

This document analyzes the contemporary issues impacting the tourist experience in the travel industry and explores the practices used by managers to evaluate tourists' experiences. It discusses the challenges faced by the industry, such as overtourism and increased competition, and highlights the measures taken by destination management organizations and tour operators to ensure a positive customer experience. The document also emphasizes the importance of technology in shaping the tourist experience.

The Tourist Experience
Name of Student
Student ID
Subject Code & Title
Name of Tutor
No. of Words 1500
Date of Submission
1

Executive Summary
The travel industry is comprised of various divisions including the travel, accommodation
and guest services segment. Inside every one of these areas, there are various individual
undertakings that have endeavored to quantify consumer experiences as a feature of their
quality affirmation programs. This has turned out to be progressively basic as the business
perceives the significance of value issues in an undeniably focused condition. It has
additionally been animated by the move towards an industry-driven accreditation framework.
This task is explicitly for breaking down contemporary issues impacting the involvement
with the tourism product and researching the practices administrators attempt in assessing the
vacationers’ experiences.
Keywords – DMOs, tour operator, CONTIKI, Tourism Australia, tourism
2

Table of Contents
1. INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................... 4
2. DISCUSSION......................................................................................................................................... 5
3. CONCLUSION....................................................................................................................................... 9
4. REFERENCES...................................................................................................................................... 10
3

1. Introduction
As of late, a portion of Europe's most-visited urban communities has turned out to be
shockingly aloof to voyagers. Barcelona inhabitants have been transparently threatening to
the city guests and the national authorities are presently also cracking down a lot of Airbnb
rentals (ATC, 2019). Venice has been invaded with day-trippers and as of late, established
tourists-only-diversion courses. These locations are experiencing what individuals in the
tourism business call "overtourism." The numbers represent themselves. Europe was the most
frequented location on the planet in 2016, representing near portion of the 1.24 billion global
traveller landings. Spain, a country of 46.5 million individuals, was welcoming to an amazing
75.3 million guests in 2016. Croatia, whose populace is 4.2 million, saw more than triple the
quantity of vacationer landings. Australia has not yet experienced guest numbers this huge –
there were simply 8.24 million traveller landings in 2016 – however; overtourism is turning
into a worry, rapidly (Australia, 2019).
The major reason of this being, it affects the product ‘tourist-experiences’ itself.
4

2. Discussion
The Australian Tourism Summit of 2018 (ATC, 2019), presented the challenges to tourism as
increasing oil prices, heightened competition, political environment engaged in uncertainty,
increased labour costs and reduction in debts. The positives of these adversities were that,
demands of Australian tourism were still increasing, their economy was improving, there was
considerable investments happening in aviation sector in different product offerings,
customer was getting an increased focus and that the flight routes were supportive to
efficiency.
All of these led to a significant impact on customers’ experience of the tourism as a product.
With rise in fuel prices, travel will get costlier which would mean the tourist would be paying
more to travel and have less for actual stay in the country to experience the tourism.
Increased competition would also mean that that the destination management organizations
(DMOs) and tour operators would lose out a potential customer because of minor alterations
or customisations that their rivals could provide before them. Increased labour costs would
imply that the hotels could be charging more and the tourists would more likely be left with
an impression of a ‘costly’ vacation, probably to never return or spread a favourable word of
mouth. Reduction in debts could affect the economy at a large scale. It is actually a vicious
circle (Ruhanen & Mclennan, 2013).
On the other hand, that the demand of Australian tourism was still surging, meant that the
DMOs, like Tourism Australia, JCM Destination, and tour operators, like Trafalgar and
Contiki, still had more opportunities to make the best use of available resources and build a
favourable impression on the tourists, smarter air routes means, efficient fuel usage for the
airlines countering the need for larger volume of fuels, affecting the cost of tickets to stay
reasonable with more runs and inflow of tourists. The customer had taken the centre stage of
5

it all only meant that, every scheduling, building of a travel experience would be for the
customer, they would be the priority, leading to lasting positive impressions for their
experience (REZDY, 2019). Modern days issues affecting the tourism experiences are not
only the above but also the heavy usage of technology.
Smartphones, internet, superior mobile network coverage, all of it makes information
available to the tourists at a click. This is useful, nevertheless, it also corrupts the expectation
levels of the tourists, stealing away the surprise factor in the offers made by DMOs like JCM
Destinations or Tourism Australia. They know exactly, where they will go, what they will see
and the only thing left to be done by the DMOs and the tourists themselves is just ‘visiting’ or
going as per the plans, they had mutually agreed to. The tour operators functioning as part of
the tourism sector suffer the greatest. They just remain to be the vehicle of the experience, the
tourists mostly would had experienced by seeing on the internet, what the tour offers, even
though it may be the majestic sail ride, as is largely offered by Contiki (Benckendorff, 2004).
It is hence imperative that these DMOs and tour operators take unique steps to save the
experiential factor which makes the Australian tourism largely popular (Wang, 2016). One of
the best steps as is understood by the strategy of DMO such as Tourism Australia is that they
offer wide choices to the tourists (Australia, 2019). Every tourist is different, and keeping the
customer at the centre of it all, they offer a huge variety of experiences to the customers. If
the customer likes an adrenaline filled vacation, Tourism Australia has a unique package, if it
is a honeymoon, a separate experience, a wildlife enthusiast would definitely get a separate
package from the traveller who is interested in cultural tourism instead. Similarly, even
Contiki has taken up many number of steps. Contiki, is essentially a U.S company. It has
made multiple tie ups with several other tour operators making best use of their varied
resources and presence to gather bookings internationally. This makes them an easy choice or
a partner for the customer who is looking for options in different regions of Australia, they
6

plan to travel and Contiki, need not have its own services, yet make a deal with the customer
so that they can gain business while keeping the customers’ preferences the focus (CONTIKI,
2019).
Various measures are being taken to evaluate the customer experience. Tourism Australia,
being one of the largest DMOs functioning in Australia, they have many measures in place to
ensure that the customers’ experiences are the best when their travel ends with them. As per
the website of Queensland Government, they have a 9 step customer service toolkit to attend
to the satisfaction factor of the tourists (QG, 2019). They also have in place an Inclusive
tourism guide which highlights the legal obligations when it came to inclusivity and
accessibility to the customers which further assists the tourism operators to strategize in best
possible manner for good experiential tourism. In the toolkit, Step 6 clearly speaks of
measuring and managing service quality, a clear indicator or tool to evaluate experiences of
the tourists. On the other hand, tour operators like Contiki, mostly rely on feedback
questionnaires, single response questions which help diagnose the same for them. They have
invested heavily in increasing their span of services to different parts of Australia to get
positive feedback. They have current rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars on popular international
travel websites such as TripAdvisor. They take extra efforts to connect with each of their
customers on their preferred social media platforms, mostly Instagram, as is evident on their
website. They, hence ; also make use of data analytics as part of technology usage to analyse
and evaluate their customers’ experiences. On the other hand, DMO like JCM Destinations
are collaborating with likes of Parks Victoria in building their planning and policy context to
stay involved to measure tourists’ experiences (REZDY, 2019). Not only that, they are also
collaborating with airline service providers to present good packages to their potential clients.
A rise in bookings in combination with social media metrics utilised by their organization is a
7

clear indicator that they are equally vested towards measuring consumer’s experiences, in
real time to maximise their opportunities to leave them with a lasting positive experience.
As is understood, from the current trends of customer experiences in tourism sector of
Australia and worldwide, customer loyalty as well as retention is mostly dependent on which
carrier provides them with customizable and value-driven offers. Not only that, new payment
forms being adopted, just like by JCM Destinations, adopting the NPP or the New Payments
Platform for ease of business along with the card payments and other usual forms. These
present them with opportunity to connect with their customers without allowing any hassles
for forex (Benckendorff, 2004; REZDY, 2019). They do specific target marketing for these
offers to gain ground and popularity and in turn, it allows them for a larger customer base
with positive experience enrolments measured by their online social media metrics and other
methods.
8

3. Conclusion
Gauging customer experience is no easy feat. In a largely flexible sector as travel and tourism
is, would mostly mean that the vendors are either dependent on customer service surveys,
checking online activities and using high end digital measurement techniques to gauge
consumer experience and likeability of their services or also depending on benchmarking
services to understand the nerve of their customers. Australia is poised for greater growth in
tourism sector and it presents itself with a huge opportunity to engage the visitors with almost
all forms of tourism, be it cultural, adventure, family vacations, small group tours and it only
makes sense that the DMOs and tour operators catch the pulse of their customers and offer
them with the best to keep them coming back and spread good word.
9

4. References
ATC. (2019). Tourism. Retrieved from Australian Trade and Investment Commission
website: https://www.austrade.gov.au/Australian/tourism
Australia, T. (2019, May 17). Tourism Statistics - Corporate - Tourism Australia. Retrieved
May 28, 2019, from http://www.tourism.australia.com/en/markets-and-stats/tourism-
statistics.html
Benckendorff, P. (2004). Forces Shaping the Future of Australian Tourist Attractions
TRENDS AND CHALLENGES LEADING UP TO 2020. Retrieved from
https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/data/UQ_240538/forces.pdf?
Expires=1559143440&Signature=EF7OZU3tYjr1PPqKB-Zw5s3ccIQmz-
LpUUZPvK63p7GfKU85M7WwVoK2TM8CnY~YPwRTPXePx0iNgvogJa5yeuYNCr
45LgQoB4MFiCcLgmKRgyeHk90G-
c6uRWDzhLZJFn73vrHq8hClgTxcPEqzojpQX9FFLlo2lFOl~as
CONTIKI. (2019). Trips to Australia | Australia Tours with Contiki. Retrieved May 28, 2019,
from https://www.contiki.com/ap/en/destinations/australia
QG. (2019). Customer service and experience | Business Queensland. Retrieved May 28,
2019, from https://www.business.qld.gov.au/industries/hospitality-tourism-sport/
tourism/running/customer-service/customer-experience
REZDY. (2019). Tour Operator Trends for Booking Channels. Retrieved from
https://www.rezdy.com/resources/
Ruhanen, L., & Mclennan, C.-L. (2013). STRATEGIC ISSUES IN THE AUSTRALIAN
TOURISM INDUSTRY: AN ANALYSIS OF NATIONAL TOURISM STRATEGIES AND
PLANS. Retrieved from https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/143899933.pdf
Wang, Y. (2016). More important than ever: Measuring tourist satisfaction. Retrieved from
10

https://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0029/18884/Measuring-Tourist-
Satisfaction.pdf
11