Future of Tourism Post COVID-19: A Case Study of Virgin Holidays

This poster presents a case study of Virgin Holidays, a tour operator company in the UK, and their future plans post COVID-19. It covers their short and long term goals, current and past operations, and the impact of COVID-19 on the tourism industry. The company aims to increase their productivity and profitability in the short term by implementing small changes such as adding more hygienic facilities and offering discounts. In the long term, they plan to increase customer experience by providing innovative and hygienic services. The poster also discusses the impact of COVID-19 on the tourism industry and how Virgin Holidays is adapting to the new guidelines and upgrading their plan and strategy to meet the expectations of customers.

Foundation Year Research Project
A brief overview of your chosen
organisation
Identifying goals of the organisation
Short term goals- The short term goals of the company is to increase their productivity
and profitability in order to overcome from the negative impact and loss due to COVID-
19. As well as earn profit in order to restart their business and make effective plans for
future growth. Short term goals of Virgin Holidays are to back their normal routine and
increase their sales, productivity by implementing small changes such as add more
hygienic facilities in their package and offer many discounts to achieve short term goals
like profit, increase sales and maintain their current position in market.
Long term goals- Post COVID 19, thing is change totally the customers are more
conscious about their health, hygiene and they also afraid to get infected to Virus while
travel and go another country. In order to eliminate this fear among them and engage
them towards their services, Virgin Holidays make long term plan in order to achieve
success in long run. The long term goal of company is increase the experience of their
customers by reducing fear through better quality, innovative and hygienic services and
retain them for long run in order to increase their profitability and brand value.
Past operations of the organisation
that help to achieve the vision
- Before COVID-19, the Virgin Holidays operates their business in
most effective and smooth manner as they provide best services to their
potential customers in order to reach at the top of industry. The
company provide their fixed booking services on their stores and
organisation as people have to come and book their holiday package by
giving physical appearance in company. Previously the customers enjoy
their services and many people prefer to fly with the holiday package of
Virgin Holiday. The company achieve huge success in very short time in
UK and set their top position in tour operator industry. Virgin Holiday
conduct their business operations with traditional methods as they use
old method like ads on TV, radio, and newspaper for promoting their
services as well as they conduct their business offline. Before COVID
company operates their business activities by giving more focus on their
productivity, profitability and brand value instead of customer
experiences. They conduct their business operation offline and physical
store in which more than 100 employees are working in many
departments like inquiry, planning department for package and customer
service department to solve the problems.
Current operations of
company
Post COVID -19, the company change their name form Virgin Holidays
to Virgin Atlantic in order to drive the attention of customers and public
towards their services. Professionals of Virgin Holidays conduct deep
research about the market condition, they position and how must they
bear loss form this pandemic. Further they are working on making
effective plan to improve their productivity in order to boost margin by
implementing small changes to start their services again. They
completely change their centralised planning system in order to get better
ideas form employees and share information about the current changes to
employees so they adopt in their working quickly. Such as various
government guidelines related to airlines services, number of customers,
timing and many other so they work according to it. It helps them to
conduct accurate planning as well as forecasting for their travel services
in future by engaging people in it which reduce their cost and wastage of
resources. So all the departments call centre, passengers, marketing and
sales will enhance their understanding about the changes in their working
and organisation in order to increase profitability. They also adopt many
changes such as they updated their pricing and booking system providing
department clear visibility of data and current information. Currently they
provide their services with many discounts and beneficial offers to their
customers in order to increase their sales and generate curiosity among
them to increase their sales and earn profit for development. They also
adopt new COVID guidelines in their services like providing mask,
sanitizers and other facilities with their holidays package in order to
maintain safety of their customers while travelling.
- Post COVID, Virgin Holidays change name
and also their services as they announced a
strategy plan to resize and reshape their
business in order to ensure that they gain
success and use it as solution in response to the
bad impact of COVID 19 on entire tourism
sector. As they also expand their business on
online by developing their website and personal
app to reduce the physical contract among
customers and employees. Also they add online
payment method and booking system so clients
can book their package and pay for it at their
home and their current place. They also
increase their online presence by opening their
account on many social media platforms in
order to promote their services across the world
and provide information about their offers to
large number of customers. The research team
of Virgin Holidays also make effective plan to
develop and add more features in their services
like increase the hygiene factor in their
package, COVID test and temperature check
machine in order to maintain safety for all
people who are the user of their services. They
will also make changes in them polices about
services as people can change their package
and mode of services on web site as per their
choice. They modified their fixed booking
services to flexible booking services on online
website in future to add value for increasing
customer experience
Introduction
COVID 19 as great impact on the operations, profitably and growth of tourism
industry. As many organisation suffers from huge loss due to negative impact and
restrictions of government during COVID. Virgin Holidays is chosen for this poster
which is tour operator company in UK. This poster covers the future of tourism post
covid 19 pandemic as well as past, present and future incorporating a sustainability
plan of chosen organisation.
As per presented information in assessment 1, the selected organisation is Virgin Holidays
which is tour operator company. It was established in 1985 by Richard Branson which
provides holiday and booking services to the people across the world. This company is
operated by the Virgin group in order to offer holidays in many destinations worldwide.
Moreover, the company achieve huge success as it reaches at top in tour operator industry in
UK as well as expand their business in many more country. It includes many destinations to
provide their package holiday service such as India, US, Canada, Africa and many more in
order to attract large number of customers as well as their experience.
Future operations
Conclusion
As per above presented information, it has been
concluded that company form tourism sector
has to change their business policies, process
and current methods in order to overcome form
the impact of COVID 19. Also they adopt all
necessary changes as per new guidelines for
government in their future operations by
upgrading their plan and strategy in order to
provide innovative services to meet
expectations of customers.
References
Yeh, S.S., 2021. Tourism recovery strategy
against COVID-19 pandemic. Tourism
Recreation Research. 46(2). pp.188-194.
Nazneen, S., Hong, X. and Ud Din, N., 2020.
COVID-19 crises and tourist travel risk
perceptions. Available at SSRN 3592321.
Brouder, P., 2020. Reset redux: Possible
evolutionary pathways towards the
transformation of tourism in a COVID-19
world. Tourism Geographies. 22(3). pp.484-
490.
WYMAN, O., 2020. To recovery & beyond:
The future of travel & tourism in the wake of
COVID-19.