Analysis of Tour Operations Management Strategies at Trailfinders Ltd

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments for students. This report analyzes tour operations management at Trailfinders Ltd.

TRAVEL AND TOURISM TOUR OPERATIONS
MANAGEMENT
1

Table of Contents
Introduction...............................................................................................................................3
Task 1.........................................................................................................................................4
LO1............................................................................................................................................4
Task 2.........................................................................................................................................7
LO2............................................................................................................................................7
Task 3.......................................................................................................................................11
LO3..........................................................................................................................................11
Task 4.......................................................................................................................................14
LO4..........................................................................................................................................14
Conclusion...............................................................................................................................16
Reference list..........................................................................................................................17
2

Introduction
Tour operations are regarded as a complex and dynamic business environment.
Organisations are required to operate business activities with various tours and travel
component industries, follow relevant norms and legislations as well as manage a wide
range of challenges and external influences. The study is going to shed light on the
impact of recent developments and trends over tour operations sector. Trailfinders Ltd is
going to be considered for the preparation of the study. It will highlight different stages
included in the development of holidays, methods to contract various holiday’s
components, tour operators of different types and calculation of selling price for tour
package. In addition, it is going to analyse the planning decisions for the chosen
brochure design, various kinds of techniques for sale of holiday package to different
travel operators, evaluation of the strategic decisions, which the tour operators develop,
and comparison of the tactical decision to be formed by Trailfinders Ltd in various
circumstances.
3

Task 1
LO1. Understand the tour operators industry within the travel and tourism sector:
P1.1 Analyse the effects of current and recent trends and developments on the tour
operators industry.
The tour operator covers both tour and travel for executing the holidays. In the present
scenario, the market of tour operator is increasing rapidly due to the high demand for the
products and services related to tourism. All the products and services of this tour
operator industry are service related and basically tour packages. Additionally, travel
agents play crucial role in enhancing the sales revenue of the tourism products and
services. There are several trends that have come of late that have effectively contributed
towards the organizational growth. Current tourism trends and all developments are
listed below:
Technological advances
Indiscriminate technological development has triggered boom in the tour operator
industry. Tourism has become a trend and people are using internet and other valuable
features of technology to book a hotel or buy a tour package (Giaoutzi, 2017).
Availability of resources on internet and shared information from other travellers has
made it easier than old days. Additionally, Tailor-made holidays are another important
consideration. This Tailor-made travel is like a personal planning service. In this type of
travelling, customer says his wishes and all the services and products are arranged as per
the customer’s wish. This allows providing the customers more satisfaction and
reliability.
Globalization and FDI
Due to globalization and continuous acceleration of technical development, the growth
as well as expansions of the tour operator industry has influenced. Through expanding
the reach of the travel industry globally, the benefits have enhanced manifold (Yang et
al., 2017). FDI or foreign direct investment is another important consideration as direct
investment from the foreign offered countries’ better access across the overseas market
place. This is enhancing the capital growth of the country as well as offering the tour
operators, several opportunities for growth and development through offering them a
constant support.
Dynamic packaging
4

Dynamic packaging is another important consideration that is regarded as new trend in
tourism industry. This dynamic packaging is while travellers utilise the internet for
conducting research their holiday packages as well as making their own travel
arrangements direct with hotels, airlines and others. However, this dynamic packaging is
more effective in providing the customers more satisfaction, reliability and flexibility
instead of buying standard holiday packages from different travel agencies (Nicula and
Elena, 2014). Sometimes, this additionally reduces the overall cost of the entire process.
Marketing techniques
Marketing is one of the most important business operations that assist the customers in
making aware of the exhaustive industry as well as the products and services.
Introducing new packages to customers through collaborating with other industries and
several new trends including providing eye catching discounts and points over the
holidays packages as well as products and services are being by the travel industry as the
marketing strategies (Mariani et al., 2014). Tour operating industry uses this as tool for
promoting the growth and extending the reach as well as escalating the demand of the
industry’s products. Government of many countries assists the tour industries through
appointing ambassadors for advertising the travel industries so that they can better attract
more numbers of tourists to them and aid in the growth and development of tourism.
Influence of ICT in tour industry
This indicates to the capability of turning ideas into marketable innovation for an
extended range of consumers, with reduced costs of access to market places and reduced
buyer search costs. Internet facility has provided the customers an excellent opportunity
of increasing speed to market as well as accessing to new product offerings. This ICT has
allowed the customers of accessing the tourism products information from any corner of
the world anytime (Velázquez et al., 2015). As per the consideration of the market
researchers, ICT’s integration in the tour industry is extremely important for the success
and prosperity of tourism enterprise.
Competition
Due to the easy access and exit, a high level of serious competition can be observed in
travel and tourism industry. This enhanced high competition offers an excellent option of
comparison as well as a chance for choosing the appropriate one. A surge has been
promoted in employment though this rise in competition (Gretzel et al., 2015).
Additionally, due to the high demand in this industry, the numbers of competitors are
increasing day by day that is making the competition more advance than before.
5

Level of consumer satisfaction
Customer satisfaction level is measured by how satisfied the consumers are with all their
services. This shows the seeds for the organizational growth through enhancing the
products’ demand as well as keeping a hold upon their old and loyal consumers towards
this tourism industry. This is possible to achieve a good customer satisfaction level
through developing its products’ verity and offering high quality services.
So this is possible to state that new trends have a positive impact over the tourism
industry. All these new trends are paving the way for making this a leading industry
across the globe. This industry is playing its role in the steady accent to the top through
making positive relations between nations and understanding, exchanging as well as
embracing foreign cultures. Especially, the indiscriminate usage of internet as well as in
tourism industry has such bring brought a revolutionary change in the industry and this is
crucial for leading this industry to the peak position in the market place.
[Refer to Appendix 1 for leaflet]
6

Task 2
Introduction
The task is going to shed light on the various stages of planning for holidays. It will
highlight various stages of holiday development, different types of contracting
techniques as well as the tour operators.
LO2 Understand stages involved in creating holidays
2.1 Assess the stages and timescales involved in developing holidays
The organisation is going to pan a tour of five nights at Brugge. There are different
timescales and stages, included in development of holidays. They are assessed as
follows:
Market research- The initial step towards development of holidays is conducting the
market research. Trailfinders determine the tastes and preferences of educational tourists
in order to develop holidays that can satisfy the demands of the students
(Trailfinders.com, 2019).
Scheduling and planning- On the basis of the market research, Trailfinders make plans
for the tour venue, the appropriate time for travelling, forecast the number of educational
tourists to be targeted, consider three A aspects (attractions, accessibility, amenities) and
the standard of accommodations for fulfilling the needs and requirements of the students.
Pricing and financial evaluation- Pricing is one of the most important stages for
increasing demands of customers towards the services. Trailfinders adopts effecting
budgeting process of for determining the costs to be incurred in the holiday development.
On the basis of the budgets prepared, the organisation fixes price to be charged from the
educations tourists. There are different types of pricing strategies such as the price
skimming, mark up profit margins and others. The organisation uses mark-up profit
margins pricing strategy for affixing price. It helps the organisation to enhance and
satisfy student demand and earn maximum revenue.
Contracting- The organisation enters in to contract with certain travel agents, hotels,
airlines industries and other intermediaries for distribution of the holidays packages, so
that it can easily attract the customers towards its services.
Advertising - Trailfinders applies various promotional techniques for advertisements
and promotion of the holiday’s packages for the tourists. The organisation designs
different brochures and posters of holidays and with the help of social media, televisions
7

and other mass communication platforms, it posts the brochures to attract customers
globally (Mowforth and Munt, 2015). The organisation enhances awareness of the
holidays amongst the holidays. These sources enhance the demands of the education
tourists for the holidays easily.
Operations and execution
This stage helps the organisation to improve its business performance successfully.
Trailfinders uses a tour manual to help the tour guide, tour manager and tour escort gain
better understanding, regarding the ways of operating and handling the tour activities by
the organisation (Giaoutzi, 2017).
Post tour management
After providing the holiday services, the organisation critically analyses the satisfaction
of educational visitors, by obtaining feedback of the customers over social media
regarding the services and addresses their issues for enhancing customers’ loyalty and
base.
2.2 Evaluate the suitability of different methods of contracting for different
components of the holiday and different types of tour operator
The different types of tour operators are analysed as follows:
Inbound- These types of tour operators satisfy the requirements of foreign tourists to
UK. “British Tours Ltd” is considered as one of the biggest inbound tour company in
UK. These types of operators provides wide range of products and services such as rail
holidays, coach tours holiday tours and others (Yen et al., 2018). This enhances the
customers’ demands and increases annual revenue. For providing such tour services,
operators have to incur large amount of cost which can affect negatively their financial
performance.
Domestic- These types of tour operators arrange holiday packages within the
geographical boundaries of UK and only to residents of that country ( Holland and Leslie,
2017). There are certain coach organisations, who promote their services over local
newspapers. They sell various commodities and services farm holidays, boating holidays
and others.
Outbound- These operators send tourists from the nation they operate to another nation.
They offer various products and services such as city breaks, long and short haul trips,
cruises and others.
Specialist- The specialist tour operators serve small quantum of visitors; therefore, use
cheap and smaller accommodation. They specialise at certain nations or age group. These
8

kinds of tour operators provide flexible services. They have a specialised knowledge of
tour products and services, which enhances customers’ demands satisfaction. As these
operators provide cheap accommodation services, it can affect the quality of service and
decrease customers’ demand.
The different types of contracts are explained as follows:
Fixed contracts- In these types of contracts all the rooms and seats are pre booked and
charges are paid in advance. In case of fixed contracts the tour operators do not have to
face any kinds of losses as they are paid in advance. In addition, the tour operators can
alter their services as the preferences of the customers. This increases the demands of
tourists and improves the revenue of the operators.
Ad-hoc contracts- In case of ad-hoc contracts, the travel operators, enter into contracts
when they require accommodation. This contracting method is very beneficial at the time
of overbooking (Davis et al., 2018). It provides efficient services to the specialist tour
operators. However, this contracting method incurs significant costs, which might affect
the financial performance of the tour operator.
2.3 Calculate the selling price of a holiday from given information above.
The selling price of a holiday is calculated as under:
Number of
students
Rent of Room Transportation
Cost
Guide Visitor
attraction
charges (per
person)
50 €89 £6,949 €896 €45.60
In Euros In Pound (per
person)
Sub total
All Students 50
Rent of room €89 £78.61 £3930.5
Cost of
Transportation
£6,949 £6,949
9

Guide €896 £791.42 £791.42
Charges of
tourists
attractions
(each person)
€45.60 £40.28 £ 2014
Exchange Rate €1.14 per £1
Total expense 13684.92
Add :Mark Up 28 % 3831.77
Therefore the selling price will be £ 17516.69.
Conclusion
The task concludes that in order to develop holidays, there is a series of stages, to be
followed by tour operators. There are different contracting methods and different types
of tour operators having certain advantages and disadvantages, which create a significant
impact on the customers demand and profitability of the companies.
10

Task 3
LO3. Be able to review brochures and methods of distribution used to sell holidays
3.1 Evaluate the planning decisions taken for the design of a selected brochure
There are various ways of creating good tour brochure. Different planning decisions that
are taken for designing a good brochure are as follows:
Use proper colour scheme for enhancing the brochure
This is important to highlight a picture across the brochure. In this process, marketing
department plays a vital role in using proper colour scheme making sure image colour as
well as its background colour are complement to each other (Mowforth and Munt, 2015).
In order to drag the attention of the customers, this colour combination plays a vital role.
Include attractive pictures related to tourist destination and its beauty
For attracting consumers to visit different tourist attractions, trail finder plays the role of
a mediator. The main purpose is selling the luxury holiday packages. Marketing
department has the responsibility of including photos of different attractive tourist spots
for creating an enthusiasm among the consumers.
Add important details and information related to tourism
Adding some mandatory and useful details will assist the user for becoming familiar with
the destination before visiting. This creates more enthusiasm in the customer’s mind and
led them to visit the tourist destination. Marketing department has the responsibility of
incorporating list of hotels and resorts that are nearer to the destination including price
rate (Joseph-Williams et al., 2014). Different fights’ fare rates can be incorporated in the
brochure as well. Through this, customers will be able to estimate their total spending
during the tour. Therefore, price rate is required to be set in such way that this can appeal
consumers. Other important information is availability of different foods nearer to the
destination is required to be included in the brochure.
3.2 Assess the suitability of alternatives to a traditional brochure for different types
of tour operators and recommend the most appropriate for your tour package.
Holiday brochure is regarded as a useful as well as important element of a tour operator
that is generally used for persuading an individual in availing a package. Tour operators
have to spend significant amount over printing as well as distribution of the old and
traditional brochures. Paperless brochure can be used for dealing with the costs
associated with the traditional brochure.
11

Social media
In the social media pages, holiday brochures can be displayed in easy manner. Tour
operators send this through mail by using internet. Therefore, this is cost as well as time
effective compared to other alternatives (Zeng and Gerritsen, 2014). In this alternative
mode, there is no printing cost. As this appears automatically across the social media
cannel’s home page, this is easily accessible and users cannot ignore the brochure as
well.
E-brochure
Compared to traditional brochure, this e-brochure is more flexible. For selling luxury
holidays, marketers can such use different templates for designing a good brochure that
is useful and essential in this process. Through sending brochure to customers in online
mode, marketers can approach a wide range of potential consumers. Therefore, this is
time and cost effective system and requires fewer efforts (Ruiz-Molina et al., 2014). This
allows stopping the usage of paper for making brochure and therefore this
environmentally safe. Alternatively, the cost has been reduced and tour operator can
generate more amounts of profits in their tourism business. Additionally, this is also
possible to make changes in the e-brochure within a minute. Therefore, tour operators
can such update their e-brochure as per their requirements without wasting time. This
allows better attracting customers to them. However, this is regarded as user friendly
format as well as this can be easily downloaded from the website of the tour operator.
Television
This is possible to appeal the consumers through using this alternative. Alternatively, it
cuts down the efforts of an individual to down load and print the E-brochure. In order to
display brochure in the television, there no printing cost is required. Additionally, this is
also possible to minimise the wastage of paper through this alternative method. However,
users cannot save this brochure as this disappears after few times. This is regarded as one
of the major disadvantages of this alternative.
From the above discussion, this is clear that social media can be regarded as the most
suitable and appropriate to ell luxury holiday packages. This is cost effective and saves
time as well. Additionally, tour operator will be able to attract more numbers of
customers to them through using the social media in appropriate manner.
3.3 Evaluate the suitability of different methods of distribution used to sell a holiday
for different types of tour operator and recommend the most appropriate for a
luxury tour package.
12