EasySell
EasySell is used by TUI and Thomas Cook, this is another GDS system. This system dramatically reduces searching and booking times for holidays.
TravelPower and TravelCat
This system allows reconciliation of banking as transactions are entered on to the system. The system then tells you what the taking should be at the end of the day.
Comtec
Comtec produces TravelCat and also gives travel agents their own website. Also this allows customers to interact and manage their own bookings. Comtec also allows customers to pay online and check their booking details.
The Advantages of Comtec are:
- There is No Charge to the Customer
- Gives the travel agent a means of interaction with the internet, which would help the travel agent, be more competitive.
- Save on administration costs.
Effect of New technology
- If the travel agent invested in the new technology then this would increase their sales
- Their bookings would be done quicker
- They get up to date information
- They would be more aware of new products in the market, such as new trains.
- The Administration system would be less susceptible to human error
Product Development
In the 1950’s air travel was becoming cheaper by comparison with other forms of transport. In 1958 the Boeing 707 was introduced.
There was around 1,010 Boeings 707 made which dominated passenger air transport in the 1960s and remained common through the 1970s. Boeing also offered a smaller, faster version of the aircraft that was marketed as the Boeing 720. it was not the first commercial in service, the 707 was the first to be commercially successful. Its first flight was 20th December 1957.
Dynamic Packaging has been around for a few years now, and what it means is that separate parts of a holiday are put together from different operators. This is not a traditional package. So with these types of packaging there are a few disadvantages, these are:
- The customer is not guaranteed to get home if some goes wrong with the airline
- They are not covered by ATOL
- There would be no rep at the resort to help the customer
- They are not insured
- They also would have to find out everything for themselves
The advantages of dynamic packaging are:
- They don’t have to be somewhere at a certain time. E.g. different airport
- Another method of selling for the travel agent.
20 years later and the Boeing 747 was introduced which carried over 400 passengers .It was the first commercial ever produced. It held the passenger capacity record for 37 years, until it was surpassed by the . As of October 2008 there was 1,409 aircrafts built. And its first flight was 9th February 1969.
By the end of the 60’s there was 2.5 million Britons taking holidays abroad, later in the 80’s rising to 11 million. This meant that over 70% of the British population having been abroad on holiday at least once in their lives.
Activity and long haul holidays have become increasingly important and popular. This may be due to a lot of people wanting to try something new, or go and see events around the world such as the world cup. By airlines doing this it has opened up tourism in countries such as Brazil, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand and now even space. Virgin Atlantic has produced a plane to take passengers up to space if they would like it is called the Virgin galactic.
The Virgin Galactic is a company owned and established by Richard Branson’ s virgin group to undertake the challenge of making private space travel available to everyone and by creating the worlds first commercial space line.
Legislation
Bank Holidays Act
In 1871 there was the Bank Holidays Act introduced, this act was passed to reduce mill hours to ten a day, though not all mill owners took any notice of it. The 1871 Bank Holiday Act introduced the concept of holidays with pay and created holidays on Boxing Day, Easter Monday, and Whit Monday and on the first Monday in August.
Holiday with pay act
An Act to enable wage regulating authorities to make provision for holidays and holiday remuneration for workers whose wages they regulate, and to enable the Minister of Labour to assist voluntary schemes for securing holidays with pay for workers in any industry. This act enabled people to have time off work to go on holidays and get paid for it. So this means that more people would take advantage of this and take holidays throughout the year.
EU Package regulations
The EU package regulations or (EU Directive) affects the following areas:
- Brochures and advertising
- Supplying information to customers
- Finalising contracts
- Transferring bookings
- Changing prices
- Altering terms
- Withdrawals, cancellations and alternatives
- Liabilities to customers
- Financial Security
- Insurance
The EU Directive indentifies what a package is, which is:
- Be sold or offered for sale
- Be sold at an inclusive price
- Be pre-arranged
- Include a minimum of two of the following three elements
- Transportation
- Accommodation
- Another major tourist service accounting for a ‘significant’ part of the package.
The development of tourism act 1969
An Act to provide for the establishment of a British Tourist Authority and Tourist Boards for England, Scotland and Wales with responsibility for promoting the development of tourism to and within Great Britain; to provide for the giving of financial assistance out of public funds for the provision of new hotels and the extension, alteration and improvement of existing hotels; to enable provision to be made for the registration of hotels and other establishments at which sleeping accommodation is provided by way of trade or business and for securing that the prices charged there for such accommodation are brought to the notice of persons seeking to avail themselves of it; and for connected purposes.
This act helps towards employing more and more people in to the travel and tourism industry the most recent numbers for people being employed within the UK are 2.2 million people. Also this helps towards the contribution to countries Gross Domestic Product (GDP). As from what I found was 4.5%.
(Travel and tourism book 1)
Task 2 (P5)
In this assignment I need to describe three key trends and factors which affect the development of the travel and tourism industry.
Trends
The three trends that I will be discussing are:
- New destinations
- Greater flexibility
- Growth and expansion of regional airports
New destinations
Recently there has been a development in the eastern part of Europe. Many people have started taking holidays here due to low cost flights this means that people will find it cheaper to travel there. Part of their reason for visiting is the weather as it is warm and sunny; also the prices over in Eastern Europe are cheaper than the UK. The countries that are included in Eastern Europe are:
- Latvia
- Estonia
- Lithuania
- Belarus
- The former Yugoslav republic of Macedonian
- Slovakia
By people taking cheaper flights and paying less money for accommodation then the UK is losing money. So instead of people coming to England and paying for expensive food, travel and accommodation they would rather go to a place such as Lithuania as this would be cheaper.
Greater Flexibility
Many tour operators now have started using different methods of booking to help attract more by offering a more flexible way to book their holiday. The methods they use are:
- Travel agent – they use these so people who like to deal with things through a person and have someone else do it for them. This also opens up to everyone who walks past their travel agent, they keep travel agents open to give people more of a chance to book a holiday as not everyone knows how to book on the internet or TV and just need that little bit of help.
- Internet – they have set up a website to meet the demands of customers, now days most things are done using the internet and computers. So for the people who would prefer to book their holiday themselves then this is ideal. They also offer discounts if people book online.
- TV- they now have set up their own TV channel which has a specific time for a set type of holiday or destination.
This can affect the industry by less travel agents would be needed which would mean less jobs within the industry. But then they could get more customer as a lot more people might prefer to book their holidays online and may even pay a little extra for online help or to get someone else to do book it for them.
For the product side of this many tour operators are selling the same holidays and less of them, instead of having more of a variety and lots of them. This would save them selling the holidays for cheap. So by doing this the industry is making money and not wasting the money that they have.
Also Heathrow has begun to build a new runway which would make this their third runway. This will have a big impact later on environmental issues as a lot more things has to be destroyed so that they can have an extra runway. Also a sixth terminal. This will require the destruction of an entire village. Reporters have said that over 50 communities and towns will suffer. However on the other hand by them doing this means that more flights are available and more money to go in to the industry.
Growth and expansion of regional airports
By the growth and expansions of the regional airports mean less money for the tourism industry. This is due to the regional airports being favourite to many people as they are close to their home and won’t have far to travel, also the regional airports use the budget airlines so this would mean cheaper flights. Another up point about the regional airports is that not only are they cheap to fly from they are also cheap to use their car park. In 2005 a newspaper article said the following:
“The number of passengers using the UK's regional airports has more than doubled since 1990, according to a Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) report.”
“International scheduled passenger numbers at Bristol, Nottingham and Liverpool airports rose by over 1,000%”
Again this is good for the industry but bad for the environment
For my key factors I am going to describe:
- Natural disasters
- Terrorism
- Health warnings and epidemics
Natural disasters
There are many different natural disasters around the world that affect the travel industry, these can include:
- Floods
- Hurricanes
-
Earthquakes
- Tsunamis
- Forest fire
- Storms
- Drought
The main one I will be describing is Tsunamis. The main one I can remember was the one that occurred in 2004 in Thailand. This had a big effect of the travel industry as people will be unsure whether to take holidays here as they may get caught in a tsunami as of this one. Not only does it have an impact on those who travel to the country also to the jobs, a lot of the Thai’s were dependent of the tourist but as tourism lowered then this meant that jobs was no longer needed. This occurred 26th December 2004 some of the affected resorts in the south had re-opened, and the Thai government had begun an advertising campaign to bring visitors back to the area as quickly as possible, though everyone knew it would be quite a while before Thailand was in a state of normalcy, professionals guessed around ten years.
So this is just one example of a natural disaster which had a massive impact on the travel industry. So many of these disasters do have a big impact overall to the tourism around the world.
Terrorism
On September 11th 2001 one of the biggest terrorist scares happened in America. The press in 2001 reported a 30% decrease in travel due to this incident worldwide. This also resulted in the loss of 26.4 million jobs across the globe in the entire travel and tourism industry - including airlines, hotels, tour operators, car rental and credit card companies.
The long-term outlook for travel and tourism demand is expected to slowly brighten as consumer confidence about safety and security recover. Even though this happened in America it had a massive effect on the rest of the world as you can see from below:
United Kingdom: Decrease of 1.9% of total GDP for the UK economy and the loss of 190,000 jobs.
European Union: Decrease of 1.9% of total GDP for the EU economy and the loss of 1.2 million jobs.
United States: Decrease of 1.8% of total GDP for the US economy and the loss of 1.1 million jobs.
World: Decrease of 1.7% of total GDP for the world economy and the loss of 8.8 million jobs
In the aftermath of the September 11 incident, airline, tour operator, car rental and hotel bookings have dropped substantially putting the future of many companies at stake. The impact on the travel and tourism industry has caused a knock-on effect in other sectors within the service industry and manufacturing industry
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Health warnings and Epidemics
One of the main health warnings is the foot and mouth outbreak. The foot and mouth disease affected the tourism of Britain with a health scare in 2001. This caused a loss £5 billion in Britain. The reason for this was due to vast areas being closed off from the public (footpaths). The Lake District was one of the most affected areas as it had a loss of 20 million within the first month.
To conclude with this I have going to evaluate the previous topics.
New destinations
If new destinations carry on getting more and more popular, then the top destinations at the minute such as Spain will have to spend more money on new developments to attract the tourists back to Spain. They will have to keep up with what people want and try their best to attract them. Or if not this could lead into Spain not get much tourism. This would mean that travel companies would put more of an investment in to countries such as Latvia
The 2009 holiday hotspots are:
- Mexico
- Egypt
- Turkey
- Israel
- Dubai
- Dominican Republic
- St Lucia
- Cuba
- Aruba
- Galapagos Islands
- Iceland
- Poland
- Croatia
- Australia
(http://www.abta.com/resources/news/view/80)
Greater Flexibility
By having plenty of options means that more people will be able to get the right holiday for them and the way they want it. If they want to go on a certain date then with Heathrow building a new runway then more dates and times may be added so they can get a flight when they want it or around the time they want it. Also people will feel happier that they can book their holiday the way they want to. So this would mean that more people will be going on holiday whether they book it themselves or not as it’s what they are happy with, and also go when they want.
Dynamic packaging also helps when it comes to flexibility as people can go where they want when they want, even if it does cost a bit more. To influence people to take more dynamic packaging holidays maybe the industry could bring out a new legislation where the passengers will be protected when they go on a holiday they have put together.
Growth and Expansion of regional airports
By this happening then more people will be booking to go on holiday as they don’t have to travel as far to get to their flight, they can have one on the door step. So they want be tired and have to get up early to get to the airport for 2 hours before their flight. Also this joins with flexibility as people now can choose the times that’s right for them and then they can leave not long before check in. so this would have an impact on the travel industry as more people would prefer to get up later and travel the shorter distance and get a cheap flight then getting up early, travelling miles to get to the airport in time for check in, pay a lot of money out then waste most of their first day of their holiday sleeping or being tired. By the regional airports expanding this is another good thing for the industry as more roads and accommodation would be needed to build to accommodate the travellers. This would also mean more jobs will be available and also more money in to the industry.
Natural disasters
These are always going to occur wherever you are. All that the tourism industry can do is try to watch their carbon footprint. This would mean that the air is cleaner and this could have a little effect on the natural disasters. ABTA have set up a programme “Reduce my Footprint” they have set up a website for giving out information and advice as well as opportunities to take action to reduce the rate of climate change - specifically to help care for the environment and people at tourism destinations. They say:
“Reduce My Footprint is here to help us all protect those destinations, both now and for the future.”
Terrorism
This is another thing which is going to keep occurring. All the travel industry can do to help lower the risk of this happening is to use secure security and to keep up with this. Also by limiting the risks as low as possible. By the travel industry doing this, means that more people would feel safer to fly and would take more holidays. An example of one of the latest terrorist scares is the “liquid bomb.” This had an effect on everyone. However the travel industry overcame this event and increased security that no bottles are allowed on planes.
Health warnings and epidemics
The travel industry can help with lowering risks when it comes to this by giving all the up to date information which is needed to the passengers.
Task4 (D2)
Social Changes
Many things have changed over the years, such as it is getting more and more common to find single parent families. A lot of the travel organisations have started doing kids go free on selected holidays which most often are children related. So single parent families can afford to take the children on holiday. Most of these deals are made while the child are on holiday which means that the parents would have to pay quite a bit for them to go, so this is one thing that they can try and overcome.
Also a lot of couples now are having children later on in life so the travel organisations can put some offers on for these groups such as “pay for 1 adult the 2nd goes ½ price” this way people without children are feeling the benefit as well and I believe that the organisers would be able to adapt to this as more people will be booking holidays with a friend rather then going alone, so this means more money.
Also people when they hear about a new destination they want to go and explore it, so they could again do a quiz and whoever comes out on top get a cheaper holiday to a “up and coming destination”
Now days the weather is rubbish over here in England so it has become popular for people to go abroad in the sun and get married their. The travel organisers can do a deal with these by offering to set up to place they would like to get married and then have a choice whether to stay their or go off some where else for their honey moon. The organisers could adapt to this as this could bring in more money as they will be paying to go away to get married then maybe again to have a honey moon.
Tour operators would need to be looking everyday at what markets are going on holiday more at that time and try to accommodate good holidays and deals for this market.
Ethical issues
With ethical issues a place such as Turkey would benefit form hiring local people to work as a tour guide as this means when the organiser pays these people then their money is going back in to their country, instead of hiring someone from England and paying them as that money would contribute to England.
Also when the country decides to build developments on the land then by them using the local people this would cut down on the carbon footprint as they are not flying the people over to work when they have people in their own country that can build and doe the job themselves.
Economic Changes
When it comes to the interest rate then travelling is effected. At the minute the interest rate is low so this is good if someone has a mortgage, but if a person just saved their money then this would mean they wouldn’t be getting as much back. So this means that the person with the mortgage will have a bit of money spear in which they might decide to spend on a holiday.
If the pound is low then people from other countries will travel here more within that time, but we would stay in our own country as it would be cheaper for us. By doing this we get more money. So the organisers in the UK need to try and keep the tourists here when they arrive. They can do this by offering more activities to which the tourist may find different
To benefit the tour operators they could sell less holidays, if they offer more of the same holiday instead of bringing in new one and then having to sell them off cheap to get their money for them then they would get more money and not lose any by selling holidays for cheap.
To benefit the customer then maybe the tour operators could think of selling holidays with low deposits. This would give the customer time to get the money together and buy a holiday without paying out a big sum all at once.
The industry can get more people to travel if they advertise as much as they can. If they advertise on:
- Internet
- TV
- Shop windows
- Billboards
- Papers etc
By them trying to offer as much as they can and showing the customers what they have to offer and that they are protected all the way through the holiday.
So the tour operators could start by making a deal with a well read newspaper and every week place a pull out booklet in so that they can display their deals and offers. They could also put in vouchers for low deposits or so much money off.
To get them well known they could sponsor sports teams or support a certain drink or food maker.
For independent travel agents they could try getting more customers by placing leaflet through the doors of the town such as Newark and Grantham with Roma Travel. The leaflets could include deals and vouchers.