Maldives View: Mobile App Business Plan for Accessible Tourism

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BUSINESS PLAN
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The business plan for the Maldives View has been developed in this report, a mobile application
which makes tour and travel experience of blind people in Maldives resorts more independent
and memorable. This business plan has covered all the essential aspects of an ideal business
plan and has used standard methods, models and theories to achieve the desired framework of
strategy. The business plan has included a well-versed description of the service covering its
technical aspects and functionality required along with the mission, goals and objective of the
"Maldives View", a growing Hospitality and Tourism Company. The marketing plan of the plan
has used a standard 7 Ps of the service marketing mix and for the competitor analysis, it has
used the best of all model called Porter's five forces model. The business plan has conducted a
successful SWOT analysis to identify its internal strengths and opportunities which comes with
the idea.
Along with the marketing and relevant analysis, the business plan also covers operational
capabilities of the company with its new plans of launching the app in its name using standard
user design, interface and high-level technical design concepts. Discussion the financial and HR
planning requirement, the plan has discussed monetisation strategy, start-up and operational
cost and a risk management plan for more practical insights. At the end of the business plan, an
action plan has been proposed with the involvement of critical performance measurement
factors and a growth achievement plan which could guide the company in developing its future
growth strategy.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY...................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................. 4
COMPANY OVERVIEW....................................................................................................................5
MISSION STATEMENT.................................................................................................................... 5
GOALS AND OBJECTIVES................................................................................................................6
PRODUCT/ SERVICE DESCRIPTION.................................................................................................6
MARKETING PLAN..........................................................................................................................7
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS............................................................................................................... 10
SWOT ANALYSIS...........................................................................................................................11
OPERATIONS................................................................................................................................ 13
FINANCIAL PLANNING.............................................................................................................. 15
RISK MANAGEMENT PLAN...........................................................................................................16
ACTION PLAN............................................................................................................................. 16
CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................... 18
REFERENCES.................................................................................................................................19
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INTRODUCTION
A business plan is a document written formally describing all the aspect of a business like goals
and objective, mission and vision, marketing and financial planning, HR planning, operations
strategy, product/ service planning, research and development needs and a formal summary to
represent the plan to suppose an investor or any third party for their perusal. In this report, a
business plan has been developed within the hospitality and tourism sector based on some
common issues, observed to be faced by blind people.
Maldives’ is a beautiful island country located in the Indian Ocean, southwest of Sri Lanka and
India. Being the world's most geographically dispersed country and the smallest one in Asia, it
comprises of 26 atolls about 1000 kilometres from the Asian continent. Every year around
hundreds of thousands of tourist visit this country making it some of the world’s most visited
country in Small Island countries. Pertaining to such immense tourism and hospitality business
already established in the region, this business plan tries to touch a more unexplored area of
service facilitation. In the process, the business plan created here has covered all the aspects of
a travel and tourism business with a successful marketing plan and financial analysis. The
business plan has also covered all the operational complexities, service description,
promotional tactics etc. along with a summary to present it to potential investors in the area
(McKeever, 2016).
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COMPANY OVERVIEW
"Maldives View" is a tourism company based in the Maldives which has grown in its customer
base significantly in last year with the abrupt increase in tourists visiting the country. It provides
facilities such as tour guides, hotels and restaurant deals and packages and helps with special
needs of tourists. The company was established in 2017 and has managed to cover the
significant market in the sector since the economy of this small country is totally run by
hospitality and tourism activities and the official authorities are very supportive in developing
new business opportunities in the region. The company has tie-ups with some of the top resorts
and hotels in the region and also with best restaurants and other facilities, making it well verse
in expanding and regulating its businesses smoothly.
Maldives Views has become a popular name in the region and because it provides most of its
service booking and other facilities like spa, shopping etc online, it is also catching the eyes of
regular tourists. There are many small and unique service which are provided by Maldives View,
which is limited to itself and there are no other competitors and the company wants to make its
image in the same concept. It wants to monetize its image of uniqueness and launch more
unique products and services which could get it more market share in the region.
MISSION STATEMENT
The mission of the company is to provide the best and seamless facilities of tourist who visit the
Maldives and provide them with more intimate experience by covering their small needs.
Company seek to represent itself as the best service quality ambassador of the country and
attract more and more tourist so that it could contribute to the economy of the country with
more dedication.
The mission statement of the company is to set a services quality standard in the Maldives with
elements of uniqueness in the service provided and a customer-centric approach while
addressing every small and big issue of tourist during their visit to the country making their visit
to the Maldives a memorable experience.
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GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
Goals: The major goal of the company is to cover all the major indirect services in hospitality
and tourism sector in the Maldives and cover the major market share in the sector with
becoming a leading name in quality services.
Objectives: Objectives of the company include gaining and forming more tie-ups with the
hotels, resorts and restaurants in the region and coming up with new sets of services using blue
ocean technique, exploring the untouched market in the sector.
PRODUCT/ SERVICE DESCRIPTION
The service for which this business plan has been created is an idea of a mobile application for
blind or visual impaired people who visit the Maldives and its resorts. During its operations,
people involved as employees and service facilitators at Maldives view noticed how blind
people were suffering many difficulties and how hard it was for them to enjoy their visit or stay
in those situations. So the company decided to come up with a mobile application which will be
available in Android as well as IOS platforms, with integrated use of pre-downloaded maps,
locations of Maldives and number of sensors to detect obstacles in their ways. The name of the
application will be “Maldives View”.
The app will be designed in such a way that it will provide significant independence to blind
people in roaming throughout the resorts and local areas of Maldives with the use of extensive
vocal guidance. The basic features it will have are as follows,
 The app will have integrated GPS based detailed map for every location, corner and
gallery of the resorts in the Maldives with a vocal guidance system which will facilitate
real-time location-based instructions and guidance to the person so that the person
could locate a place or area by himself (Ouzzani et al., 2016).
 The app will have an obstacle warning system using a concerted use of proximity and
gyroscopic sensors of the mobile phone, detecting the obstacles such as wall, a water
pool, a dead end, a void in the way etc. and then it will create a warning alert by
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calculating the real-time location of the person. The alert will be communicated through
a vibration pattern and a vocal warning.
 The application will also have the details of commonly visited places in the region like a
famous restaurant with complete information of its specialities, menus and other
specifics communicated to the person via vocal aid. The system will work as a personal
guide of the user telling him about every place, speciality of every restaurant and hotel,
obstacles in the way and directions to a certain location.
MARKETING PLAN
The application will need a unique marketing plan and since it already has a highly targeted
customer base. For an analysed and well-focused marketing plan the best available method is
to discuss on 7 Ps of service marketing. The service will be available on a digital platform so the
marketing method will use digital marketing platforms extensively (Burns and Dewhurst, 2016).
Also, since the people visit from all over the world especially from Asian countries like India, Sri
Lanka, China, Singapore etc., there will be need of database from these resorts and hotel
regarding the area wise segmentation of customers for better application of marketing tactics.
A detailed and more focused version of a marketing plan is,
PLACE
The place of the marketing mix refers to the location and area which will be covered by the
service offered. In the case of the Maldives Views application, the place will not be a physical
location, but a digital platform. The application will be available for users to download from the
Google Play Store for Android users and Apple Store for IOS users. Since the reach of these
platforms is throughout the world, the availability will not be an issue for the application
(Ouzzani et al., 2016).
PRICE
The application will be free of cost for users and there will be options of in-app purchases in the
application. So for example, a user want's to explore some specific resort or location, complete
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guidance facilities of which are available in the app, he will have to pay to get the facility
downloaded from the centralised server of the application. Likewise, there will be a vocal
guidance system available in all major languages which can be availed on a marginal price via
in-app purchases. The pricing strategy will be highly tactical and comparatively low since the
aim with the price is not to make a profit but only to recover the development cost of the
application.
PRODUCT/ SERVICE
The service has already been discussed in service description part and in a short note; it will be
a mobile-based application which will facilitate complete guidance in the form of vocal
assistance for blind people who are significantly challenged during their visit to some resort in
the Maldives. The app provides everything for them to be easy to access it, for example, tactical
vibration to fall when they choose something from the app, also they will find any info about
the facilities of the resort.
PROMOTION
Since the service is completely based on a digital platform like smartphones and tablets the
best platform for its promotion will also be digital (Burns and Dewhurst, 2016). Maldives Views
has a significant online presence in the travel and tourism business of Maldives and it can
leverage this presence to promote the application. The company plans to use its full potential in
digital marketing technologies for service promotion. Techniques such as social media
marketing and search engine optimization are available at its disposal. But the best method for
this case will be to directly send emails from the record of the people who have visited the
Maldives earlier or have booked for their future journey so that they could get informed about
the service which they have never thought will be available.
PEOPLE
People part of the service marketing mix refers to the customers who will be benefitted from
the service and employees who are involved in the facilitation of the service. An efficient
marketing plan covers both sides to acknowledge their contributio0n in business growth and
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development. So, the marketing plan of Maldives View will include contributions of both, the
customers or users and the people who are involved in marketing and development.
PROCESS/ POSITIONING
This part of the marketing mix focuses on design, features, support and regulation of the
service offered. In this particular case, the app design will be highly based on the feedbacks and
recommendations from the kind of people who will be its actual users. No one can provide the
exact and clear needs and wants for blind people except the blind people, the challenges they
face, a dependency which cause their moral loss can only be understood by them.
PHYSICAL EVIDENCE
This part covers the review of the functionality of application provided by users and to measure
the projected goals have been achieved to what extent. Since the visual and graphical aspects
are not necessary for the application the major focus will be kept on the voice control and
clarity which will have to be achieved up to a certain level (Ouzzani et al., 2016). There will be a
feedback recording system inbuilt in the app and once the user will reach its destinatio0n, it will
ask on how was the experience with the application. The review of which, can be recorded by
the user with an automatic system in place.
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COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
Mobile application market, in general, has a very tough competitive market yet is also one of
the flourishing sectors in software industries. Every day there are hundreds of apps are added
and removed from the app stores and they undergo continuous development and maintenance
to keep their services seamless. However, the competition in this market is usually won by
uniqueness and better user support and functionality. Same will be applicable for Maldives
View and to conduct the competitive analysis of the application in the current market, the best
available method is Porter’s 5 forces (Porter, 2008).
BUYER’S POWER
This force directly implies on customer's needs and wants. Not only in this sector but every
commercial product or service in the market is highly influenced by this force. In this case,
however, the buyer's power will come in the form of the expectation of blind people from the
challenges they face in their daily life and while on some tour and similar event. They will
ultimately decide on how can an application help them in gaining their independence and
privacy and help them locate the right thing at the right place all by themselves (Cheng, 2013).
SUPPLIER’S POWER
Supplier's power, in this case, will be fairly insignificant since the only need which can be
addressed in this scenario is full time in house developer which can make as well as maintain
the functionality of the application by launching regular updates based on feedback received
from users.
COMPETITOR RIVALRY
There are many apps available to help blind people in the market targeting their specific needs
and actions. However, targeting their tour and travel activities and providing help and support
in that is considered a new concept and segment to explore through the mobile application.
Although the competition will be there once the application will be launched and the concept is
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generalised, the business which is leading the industry in mobile app development will also
consider exploring this field. In the beginning, however, there is not a considerable competition
in the market in this particular segment.
THREAT OF SUBSTITUTION
This threat is not significant in the beginning however there are still chances that some other
business in the Maldives could identify these issues and decides to come up with its own
solution. In this competitive market of the 21st century, the threat of substitution is always
there, no matter how unique a company's idea is, once it enters the market people will come
up with their own version of addressing the problem. The Maldives has a strong tourist
attraction which is growing with every year and since technology has made visually impaired
people come out of their homes and live like normal people, there will always be a better
solution present in the market.
THREAT OF NEW ENTRANTS
A new entrant is another significant force but like other forces, not much effective at the
beginning of the service launch (Porter, 2008). Since this application will give the blind people a
chance to explore and enjoy great tourist places like the Maldives, there will be a potential
increase in the market after the app will launch and starts to get popularised among the target
users. In this scenario, there will be possibilities of the new entrant with improvements in
recognized problems in the current version of Maldives views.
SWOT ANALYSIS
A SWOT analysis will focus on the company's internal factors and how can it address them with
proper strategy and tactics. It is an essential tool for businesses which are planning to launch
their new product and service since it reveals not only the strength and weaknesses that the
company needs to be resolved built also the opportunities which can be leveraged with proper
planning and strategy. The SWOT analysis, in this case, will analyse what could be the
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weaknesses and strengths the company can have upon launching its new app called Maldives
View.
STRENGTH
The strength of this new app is that it is the first of its kind application targeting blind people
and specific to the location of Maldives and its resorts. This concept will not only give the
company a unique image in the market but also draw the attention of blind people worldwide
that they can enjoy the best tourist places of the world like the Maldives with much more
independence which they have in their regular life. It will open up a new market and will
provide Maldives tourism with a different image with an emotional caring touch (Stutely, 2012).
WEAKNESS
The most striking weakness that the application will face is the significantly low customer base.
On a common notion, how many blind people will visit the Maldives as a tourist destination
every year? The answer to this question can only be identified by the analysis of data recorded
by resorts and hotels from the last 3 to 5 years. In this situation, it will take a long time to
recover the development cost alone of the application.
OPPORTUNITY
With this new application in the market for blind people, there will be a new trend established
in the travel and tourism sector not only in the Maldives but in many other similar tourist
places. This trend will follow the same principle of helping physically withheld people and
people with disability of some sort with the use of technology, like mobile application and other
option. Since Maldives View will be the initiator of this trend there first invitation to these
opportunities will come of Maldives View.
THREAT
The only threat which can be considered here in this scenario is the entry of big multinational
app development companies which may see this as a potential opportunity to build their image
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