Description
designing a service plan for a tourist service provide
Table of Contents
Table of Contents........................................................................................................1 Introduction................................................................................................................ 1 Expected and experienced service from the customer’s perspective.........................3 Current Scenario......................................................................................................... 3 Recommended Gamut of services and processes:.....................................................4 The Use of IT is very essential in improving the service quality of tourist operators.. 9 References :.............................................................................................................. 12 Annextures:.............................................................................................................. 12
Introduction
India’s tourism industry is experiencing a strong period of growth, driven by the burgeoning Indian middle class, growth in high spending foreign tourists, and coordinated government campaigns to promote ‘Incredible India’. The tourism industry of India is based on certain core nationalistic ideals and standards which are: Swaagat or welcome, Sahyog or cooperation, Soochanaa or information, Sanrachanaa or infrastructure, Suvidha or facilitation, Safaai or cleanliness and Surakshaa or security. Thanks in part to its booming IT and outsourcing industry a growing number of business trips are made by foreigners to India, who will often add a weekend break or longer holiday to their trip. Foreign tourists spend more in India than almost
1
any other country worldwide. Tourist arrivals are projected to increase by over 22% per year through till 2010, with a 33% increase in foreign exchange earnings recorded in 2004. The diversity of India’s natural and cultural richness provides the basis of a wide range of tourist products and experiences, which embrace business, leisure, culture, adventure, spirituality, eco-tourism and many other pursuits. However this study would be based on the services provided by a tourist operator to Indian consumers. The focus would be on the tourist services provided in India and abroad with various arrangements right from giving various options to consumers to plan and book their trip. Organize and arrange for travelling and accommodations and also site visit in some cases. One of the most important developments in the tourist industry is the growing attention for service quality from the customer’s perspective. This is the consequence of the increase of the degree of dominance of the customer in the service process. This degree of dominance is high if the customer can dictate his/her demands to the service provider and is low if the service organisation can dictate its demands. The latter often occurs if the service provider has specific knowledge or know-how, or if he has the power to put the customer in a dependent position. Staying in a hospital is an example of this. In the tourist industry, most customers are not so much in a dependent position. On the contrary, the customer’s dominance even increases there. Among other things, his/her dominance depends on the presence of alternatives in the service offers. Finally, the customer’s dominance also depends on his proficiency in the service field. Nowadays, customers are much better informed about travelling and are increasingly experienced travellers, which makes them less dependent on the proficiency of the service provider, e.g. the travel agent. As the customer’s dominance increases, he becomes more and more demanding. Forced by more critical consumers and increased consumer pressure, the attention for quality from the customer’s perspective will increase. An increasing number of travel organisations, especially tour operators, hotels and airliners, have already started with quality management. Very few travel agencies are doing this; we also observe a scarcity of research devoted to travel agency quality. ravel agencies and also other travel organisations, which have an explicit quality management, focus their research on measuring service quality and identifying errors as effective ways to improve quality. Mostly such strategies result in incremental quality improvements. But there is also another way to improve quality by introducing radical changes, meaning that the existing system is replaced with another, better system. It means going beyond the usual service and developing new designs, procedures, methods, service concepts and service delivery systems. In other words, innovation is the name of the game. For example, instead of presenting more choice in package tours, a travel agent
2
shall use a mass customisation strategy (creating modular components that can be configured into a variety of individualised packages. Customers do not want more choice of package tours; they just want exactly what they need.
Expected and experienced customer’s perspective
service
from
the
For many authors quality in services is fulfilling customers’ expectations. Customer-perceived quality is often defined as the relationship between the customer’s expectations of the service and his oPeople r her perception of the service received. argue for a definition of quality that is more than just customer satisfaction. Not only the customer but also other stakeholders (such as: staff, the owners, the local population of a holiday destination) have expectations and needs. These different stakeholders must have influence at different stages of the development process of the actual service. In some cases a conflict may arise between the expectations of different stakeholders. Sustainable tourism is frequently faced with this conflict, conflicting expectations of tourists and the local population. Quality from the perspective of the customer can be defined as fulfilling as much as possible of his expectations and needs. The client will be satisfied when his/her perceptions of the service match his/her expectations and needs. The customer will be highly satisfied when the perceived performance goes beyond his expectations. Dissatisfaction results from perceptions that fall short of expectations
Current Scenario
Each service has to find out the factors that apply to it. Let us take for example the service of the travel agent. Personal needs are pivotal factors that shape expectations. A family who wants to go on holiday needs information to choose and plan their holiday. Since the holiday they want cannot be demonstrated without being sold, access to accurate, reliable, timely and relevant information is essential to help them to make an appropriate choice. This need for information is heightened by certain other characteristics of the tourism product: its complexity and its interdependence. Individual tourism products are diverse, and in many cases it is this heterogeneity that makes them attractive. In addition, tourism products are rarely bought individually. Navigating through the vast number of possible combinations and permutations available make planning and organising travel difficult. The only way that travellers can
3
reduce their “risk” and make a more informed decision is through the use of timely, accurate and relevant information. Travellers at present can acquire information from a wide variety of sources. Traditionally tourists expect this information, among others, from travel agents. But the Internet – the World Wide Web and browser technology – has brought a major change both on the quantity of information to which the tourist has access and in the sophistication with which this information can be manipulated. The information technology also facilitates the integration of tourism information from multiple sources, both local and remote, into personalised packages and itineraries. But the information on the Internet is badly organised and unstructured. There is an information overload. And it is time-consuming for a customer to access and assess the required information and assemble it into a personalised holiday. Nevertheless research has shown that electronic commerce and the Internet are rapidly devaluing the traditional roles of travel agents – information delivery and transaction processing. At the same time, the explosion in available travel information on the Internet has increased the tourist’s need for advice and critical assessment of product and destination information, as well as assistance in making a suitable choice based on a clear understanding of their preferences. As a consequence the service expected from the travel agent of the future will move more into assessing the reliability, quality and appropriateness of the retrieved information, obtained from the Internet and other physical sources and conveying it, together with appropriate advice, to the customer in a clearly understandable form. Other factors that influence expectations are past experiences, the customer’s self-perceived competency, the service of other providers from whom the customer can obtain service, what customers hear from other customers, external communications from the service provider which include a wide variety of direct and indirect messages converged by service firms to customers, the promises with booking, the image and the principle of equity. Managers want to have control over the factors that shape customers’ expectations. Some factors that shape customers’ expectations of the service of a travel agent are uncontrollable. That is, e.g. the case for the factor “perceived service alternatives from competitors”. But other factors are controllable for managers (e.g. external communication: these are explicit service promises).
Recommended Gamut of services and processes:
The necessary changes in this service must go far beyond the usual job of the travel agent. There is a need for a shift in the role of the travel agent as
4
we have mentioned above. This means innovations instead of incremental improvements. In the other example about the needs of business travellers we have seen that the needs of business travellers are changing under influence of societal trends, in this case; computerisation of society, etc. Managers in a tourism organisation are in a position to react to these trends in an appropriate manner, depending on how they are viewed – as a threat or as an opportunity. If a manager objectively examines trends, then, he/she is better prepared as a professional to take a leadership role in the tourism sector, instead of being caught in a reactive or defensive position .For example some large hotel chains, like Hyatt International, Hotels and Hilton, see the computerisation of the business world as a opportunity to improve their service to business travellers by the following innovation: they place one of their technology experts in their hotels at the disposal of business travellers, when they encounter computer problems, e.g. with Internet communications, laptop, etc. during their stay in the hotel. Perceived service may differ from actual service. Perceived service is what a person thinks or feels was the service received and thus does not necessarily reflect the actual characteristics of the service. The actual service is the result of different processes that can cause various problems. Accurate perceptions of customer expectations are necessary, but not sufficient, for delivering correct quality service. Another prerequisite is the development of a service design or concept and performance standards that reflect those accurate perceptions. It is important to distinguish between a strategy to improve design quality and a strategy to improve the quality of service delivery. The latter strategy concerns the question: “Are we doing things right?” The former strategy relates to the question: “Are we doing the right things?” The answer to this final question can force us to redesign, re-engineer or innovate the service concept. In the blueprint, a horizontal “line of visibility” separates the processes in the production of the service that are visible to the customer from those that are invisible to him/her. In the visible section above the line, the client perceives the staff and various types of “physical evidence” that contribute to customer-perceived service. The size of the section of the blueprint above the line of visibility varies according to the service involved. This separation helps focus on the part of the process that is most difficult to control, where the human factor creates a greater risk of variation in service delivery. The situations in which the customer and the service company interact – “the moments of truth” – can be examined at the design stage, using this technique. The blueprint helps to identify points of failure: the processes where failures may easily occur, either below or above the line of visibility
5
Table IIMean values for each service attribute of a travel agency
Importance-performance matrix with attribute ratings for service of a travel agency
6
Source : Informa Quality Reports about Service Quality in tourism research
Tour operators enter into long term contracts with air carriers, hotels and other suppliers for the provision of bulk travel services. Discrete travel services are then assembled into a package tour featuring round trip transportation, seven nights accommodations, ground transportation and tours of local sites. The package tour is marketed to the general public through travel agents. Tour operators are principals and responsible to consumers for the provision of the component travel services of each tour package.
Product management and development (PMD) includes actions related to the choice of the destination as well as the type of services to be included (e.g., the use of train vs. plane). • Internal management (IM) reflects all the operations and activities that take place in the headquarters or country offices (e.g., use of office supplies, production of brochures, direct employment). • Supply chain management (SCM) addresses actions related to the selection and contracting of service providers. • Customer relations (CR) summarises the actions taken to deal with customers, not only with regards to the responsibility to serve them and reply to their comments, but also the opportunity to provide information and raise consumer awareness regarding sustainability. • Co-operation with destination (D) includes all activities and decisions related to destinations that tour operators make beyond the production and delivery of their holiday package. This mainly includes efforts made by tour operators to engage in dialogues with destination operators about the impacts of tour packages, and philanthropic activities. The first four categories cover actions and decisions that tour operators make in preparation of the holiday package. Through these actions and decisions, tour operators have either a direct impact on sustainability (e.g., managing office supplies), or a significant influence on sustainability (e.g., through the supply chain). The fifth area covers efforts to address product impacts at the destination. Within these five categories, the indicators have been further grouped in the three sustainability headings where the MSWG felt relatively clear
7
boundaries between environmental, social, and economic performance exist (e.g., internal management). In some categories, the indicators have not been separated into economic, environmental, and social, since the operators could not make a distinction between these issues within their business operations.
Operators must understand that servicequality is essentially a customer issue . customers determine it and not the service provider. It is about understanding the specific requirements of customers and tailoring the service delivery system to meeting these requirements. Evidence suggests that successful organisations are able to diagnose their customer expectations fully and satisfy them completely, during each and every service encounter. In an attempt to delight their customers, dive tour operators must attempt to get as close to them as possible so that they are better able to anticipate and thereby meet their needs, wants and expectations during each and every service encounter. The idea is to stay ahead of the customer, to anticipate his/her needs . . . so that when he/she articulates the needs operators have already planned for it and are ready (ahead of the competition) to meet it. A detailed understanding of customer requirements is therefore a vital first step in any attempt at satisfying customers. It is important to note that even the most perfect system for delivering quality service is worthless if things do not work at the appropriate moment. More than any other factor it is the quality of our people, both front and back of house, which will determine success as defined at this moment. It is people, aided by techniques, methods and systems, that deliver the right level of customer service. This implies that they must want to do so, be empowered to do so and gain satisfaction from giving and improving good customer service. As a result, many service organisations are now investing heavily in the development of an internal service culture where employees are now viewed as customers in their own right. These organisations clearly understand that the quality of service rendered to external customers is very often a reflection of the quality of service rendered internally to partners, colleagues and/or associates. They further understand that unhappy employees cannot create happy customers. For many this has led to a direct inversion of the traditional organisational hierarchy where the internal customer is now regarded as the most important organizational resource in the pursuit of service excellence. Naturally this requires action on a number of fronts, namely: recruitment,
8
selection, training and development, empowerment, staff motivation and reward, the principal objectives being customer satisfaction and retention through the removal of barriers to improved employee performance.
The Use of IT is very essential in improving the service quality of tourist operators.
IT applications : IT is still predominantly used by approximately 60% of the hotels in standard data processing and in administrative task automation. The only outstanding use of IT lies in the utilisation of the Amadeus Reservation systems by a large majority (about 77%) of travel agents and tour operators. The opportunities which IT can offer to the tourism sector with the development of strategic projects such as marketing information system (MIS), destination information system (DRS), destination reservation system (DRS) and hotel automation systems has not yet been exploited. IT benefits : It is rather unfortunate that no attempt has been made by any of the hotels or travel agents and tour operators to quantify the business value of using IT. This explains the difficulty in assessing the financial benefits derived from uses of IT. However, data gathered from the survey show that in hotels, in general, IT has tremendously facilitated the handling of routine tasks in areas of financial services, room reservation services and billing services. As for the travel agents and tour operators, benefits from IT have been reaped mostly in the handling of ticket reservations. Investment in IT : four factors which altogether comprise the motives for computerisation by most of the surveyed companies : (a) Improving efficiency in general, (b) Improving quality of services offered to customers, (c) Business expansion and (d) Maintaining a good image by modernizing and making use of new technology. IT is not yet perceived as a strategic tool which can reduce overheads, win new markets and increase financial gains. Constraints for computerizing : The following two major constraints were reported by about 55% of the hotels and 72% of the travel agents and tour operators : (a) Lack of information and technical know-how and (b) Lack of skilled personnel. 60% of the medium and small hotels respectively and 53% of the travel agents and tour operators considered the lack of funds as a severe financial constraint.
Technical support :
9
•
•
•
•
According to over 50% of the hotels and 38% of the travel agents and tour operators, some technical help to conduct a feasibility study would have been beneficial in their computerisation process. About 60% of the medium-sized and small hotels respectively and 50% of the travel agents and tour operators forwarded that they would have liked to be advised on their choice of hardware and software before making any purchases. About 60% of the medium-size hotels and 50% of the small ones admitted that they needed help and support during the implementation phase of the computerization process. It was generally agreed by most of the surveyed companies that the above-mentioned types of support would be beneficial in saving time and money.
Communications and Information Technology : The tourism sector still relies to a large extent on existing communication services such as the telephone, fax and telex. Nevertheless, there have been numerous claims on the poor performance of these services, due to unreliable and inadequate telephone lines. Electronic mail (Email) and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) technologies are inexistent in the Tourism sector. The survey further gives evidence of the fact that there is a very low demand for these communication services:
•
•
•
only 6% of the large hotels, 6% of small hotels and 23% of the travel agents and tour operators have shown interest in using Email in the future, and 41% of large hotels, 80% of medium-sized hotels, 23% of small ones and 35% of travel agents and tour operators are interested in EDI systems. However, lack of existing telecommunications infrastructure will be a definite obstacle for exploiting EDI technologies.
IT Human Resource : This survey provides evidence of a very low number of qualified IT personnel employed in the tourism sector. On an average, about 10% of the workforce employed by the hotels and the travel agents and tour operators are currently using computers on a regular basis. About half of them have been provided with in-house training. Only a negligible percentage (about 0.2%) of the recruited workforce were preliminary trained in IT.
•
What was rather concerning was that the extremely low percentage of degree holders and diploma holders recruited in the tourism industry : o Only 0.5% of the total workforce from all the different categories of hotels and 0.3% of the total employed staff from the travel agents and tour operators have a degree in a computer-related field. The percentage of diploma holders is respectively 1.2% for
10
•
the hotels and 1.8% for the latter. The percentage of certificate holders, though, was slightly higher : 13.7% for hotels and 8.6% for the travel agents and tour operators. This very low percentage of qualified and skilled IT personnel partly accounts for the poor and elementary utilisation of IT in the tourism sector.
Worlwide trends & Recommendations for the future : The analysis in the trends of global tourism provides evidence of an estimated rise of 3% to 4% per annum in tourist expenditures in real terms and an estimated rise in capital investment from above US$ 420 billion in 1993 to US$ 1.3 trillion by the year 2005. All this together with the ever-growing fierce competition in the world tourism industry will ultimately compell tourism to modernize and strengthen its marketing and promotional activities.
•
In the light of all these changes, five strategic projects have been proposed : o Development of a Market Information System (MIS) o Development of a Destination Information System (DIS) o Development of a Destination Reservation system (DRS) o Spreading the use of Computerised Reservation System (CRS) in hotels o Development of Hotel Automation System
Once a company has decided to integrate sustainability principles into its business practices, understanding what to change and how to do so can be a challenge. To make this task easier, this manual divides tour operator business activities into five action areas, I Internal management. At the most basic level, sustainability practices can be applied to the operations and activities that take place within a company’s headquarters and at its country offices. Changes might include using sustainably produced paper for brochures, minimizing energy use and waste production, and ensuring acceptable staff working conditions. I Product development and management. A tour operator’s choice of services, routes and activities for its products determines the sustainability of the holidays it offers. The challenge here is to design holiday packages that have lower environmental and social burdens while still yielding acceptable economic returns. I Supply chain management. Most elements of a holiday package are delivered by suppliers who are subcontracted by the tour operator. Thus, the selection and contracting of service providers is an important opportunity to
11
influence the sustainability of products. Actions here might include setting sustainability standards in consultation with suppliers, assessing them on their performance and supporting improvements, and providing incentives for meeting the standards. I Customer relations. Tour operators can help raise consumer awareness of sustainability issues by providing information on appropriate behaviour, such as purchasing local products, respecting local cultural norms, and avoiding environmental impacts such as littering or wildlife disturbance. I Co-operation with destinations. Tour operators, either individually or through joint industry forums, can influence the sustainability of destinations by supporting sustainable decision-making by destination authorities and other local actors and by engaging in philanthropic activities.
References :
• • • • • •http://www.unep.fr/shared/publicationshttp://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/ViewContentServlet? Filename=Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Articleshttp://www.smallbusinessnotes.com/businesses/naics/administrative/561.htmlhttp://www.investorbusinessplan.com/Tour-Operators-Business-Plan.htmlhttp://www.intute.ac.uk/cgi-bin/browse.pl?id=114382 www.toinitiative.org/index.php?id=53&type=98
Annextures:
Service Blueprint of tourist operators is attached with the report .
12
doc_376525750.doc
designing a service plan for a tourist service provide
Table of Contents
Table of Contents........................................................................................................1 Introduction................................................................................................................ 1 Expected and experienced service from the customer’s perspective.........................3 Current Scenario......................................................................................................... 3 Recommended Gamut of services and processes:.....................................................4 The Use of IT is very essential in improving the service quality of tourist operators.. 9 References :.............................................................................................................. 12 Annextures:.............................................................................................................. 12
Introduction
India’s tourism industry is experiencing a strong period of growth, driven by the burgeoning Indian middle class, growth in high spending foreign tourists, and coordinated government campaigns to promote ‘Incredible India’. The tourism industry of India is based on certain core nationalistic ideals and standards which are: Swaagat or welcome, Sahyog or cooperation, Soochanaa or information, Sanrachanaa or infrastructure, Suvidha or facilitation, Safaai or cleanliness and Surakshaa or security. Thanks in part to its booming IT and outsourcing industry a growing number of business trips are made by foreigners to India, who will often add a weekend break or longer holiday to their trip. Foreign tourists spend more in India than almost
1
any other country worldwide. Tourist arrivals are projected to increase by over 22% per year through till 2010, with a 33% increase in foreign exchange earnings recorded in 2004. The diversity of India’s natural and cultural richness provides the basis of a wide range of tourist products and experiences, which embrace business, leisure, culture, adventure, spirituality, eco-tourism and many other pursuits. However this study would be based on the services provided by a tourist operator to Indian consumers. The focus would be on the tourist services provided in India and abroad with various arrangements right from giving various options to consumers to plan and book their trip. Organize and arrange for travelling and accommodations and also site visit in some cases. One of the most important developments in the tourist industry is the growing attention for service quality from the customer’s perspective. This is the consequence of the increase of the degree of dominance of the customer in the service process. This degree of dominance is high if the customer can dictate his/her demands to the service provider and is low if the service organisation can dictate its demands. The latter often occurs if the service provider has specific knowledge or know-how, or if he has the power to put the customer in a dependent position. Staying in a hospital is an example of this. In the tourist industry, most customers are not so much in a dependent position. On the contrary, the customer’s dominance even increases there. Among other things, his/her dominance depends on the presence of alternatives in the service offers. Finally, the customer’s dominance also depends on his proficiency in the service field. Nowadays, customers are much better informed about travelling and are increasingly experienced travellers, which makes them less dependent on the proficiency of the service provider, e.g. the travel agent. As the customer’s dominance increases, he becomes more and more demanding. Forced by more critical consumers and increased consumer pressure, the attention for quality from the customer’s perspective will increase. An increasing number of travel organisations, especially tour operators, hotels and airliners, have already started with quality management. Very few travel agencies are doing this; we also observe a scarcity of research devoted to travel agency quality. ravel agencies and also other travel organisations, which have an explicit quality management, focus their research on measuring service quality and identifying errors as effective ways to improve quality. Mostly such strategies result in incremental quality improvements. But there is also another way to improve quality by introducing radical changes, meaning that the existing system is replaced with another, better system. It means going beyond the usual service and developing new designs, procedures, methods, service concepts and service delivery systems. In other words, innovation is the name of the game. For example, instead of presenting more choice in package tours, a travel agent
2
shall use a mass customisation strategy (creating modular components that can be configured into a variety of individualised packages. Customers do not want more choice of package tours; they just want exactly what they need.
Expected and experienced customer’s perspective
service
from
the
For many authors quality in services is fulfilling customers’ expectations. Customer-perceived quality is often defined as the relationship between the customer’s expectations of the service and his oPeople r her perception of the service received. argue for a definition of quality that is more than just customer satisfaction. Not only the customer but also other stakeholders (such as: staff, the owners, the local population of a holiday destination) have expectations and needs. These different stakeholders must have influence at different stages of the development process of the actual service. In some cases a conflict may arise between the expectations of different stakeholders. Sustainable tourism is frequently faced with this conflict, conflicting expectations of tourists and the local population. Quality from the perspective of the customer can be defined as fulfilling as much as possible of his expectations and needs. The client will be satisfied when his/her perceptions of the service match his/her expectations and needs. The customer will be highly satisfied when the perceived performance goes beyond his expectations. Dissatisfaction results from perceptions that fall short of expectations
Current Scenario
Each service has to find out the factors that apply to it. Let us take for example the service of the travel agent. Personal needs are pivotal factors that shape expectations. A family who wants to go on holiday needs information to choose and plan their holiday. Since the holiday they want cannot be demonstrated without being sold, access to accurate, reliable, timely and relevant information is essential to help them to make an appropriate choice. This need for information is heightened by certain other characteristics of the tourism product: its complexity and its interdependence. Individual tourism products are diverse, and in many cases it is this heterogeneity that makes them attractive. In addition, tourism products are rarely bought individually. Navigating through the vast number of possible combinations and permutations available make planning and organising travel difficult. The only way that travellers can
3
reduce their “risk” and make a more informed decision is through the use of timely, accurate and relevant information. Travellers at present can acquire information from a wide variety of sources. Traditionally tourists expect this information, among others, from travel agents. But the Internet – the World Wide Web and browser technology – has brought a major change both on the quantity of information to which the tourist has access and in the sophistication with which this information can be manipulated. The information technology also facilitates the integration of tourism information from multiple sources, both local and remote, into personalised packages and itineraries. But the information on the Internet is badly organised and unstructured. There is an information overload. And it is time-consuming for a customer to access and assess the required information and assemble it into a personalised holiday. Nevertheless research has shown that electronic commerce and the Internet are rapidly devaluing the traditional roles of travel agents – information delivery and transaction processing. At the same time, the explosion in available travel information on the Internet has increased the tourist’s need for advice and critical assessment of product and destination information, as well as assistance in making a suitable choice based on a clear understanding of their preferences. As a consequence the service expected from the travel agent of the future will move more into assessing the reliability, quality and appropriateness of the retrieved information, obtained from the Internet and other physical sources and conveying it, together with appropriate advice, to the customer in a clearly understandable form. Other factors that influence expectations are past experiences, the customer’s self-perceived competency, the service of other providers from whom the customer can obtain service, what customers hear from other customers, external communications from the service provider which include a wide variety of direct and indirect messages converged by service firms to customers, the promises with booking, the image and the principle of equity. Managers want to have control over the factors that shape customers’ expectations. Some factors that shape customers’ expectations of the service of a travel agent are uncontrollable. That is, e.g. the case for the factor “perceived service alternatives from competitors”. But other factors are controllable for managers (e.g. external communication: these are explicit service promises).
Recommended Gamut of services and processes:
The necessary changes in this service must go far beyond the usual job of the travel agent. There is a need for a shift in the role of the travel agent as
4
we have mentioned above. This means innovations instead of incremental improvements. In the other example about the needs of business travellers we have seen that the needs of business travellers are changing under influence of societal trends, in this case; computerisation of society, etc. Managers in a tourism organisation are in a position to react to these trends in an appropriate manner, depending on how they are viewed – as a threat or as an opportunity. If a manager objectively examines trends, then, he/she is better prepared as a professional to take a leadership role in the tourism sector, instead of being caught in a reactive or defensive position .For example some large hotel chains, like Hyatt International, Hotels and Hilton, see the computerisation of the business world as a opportunity to improve their service to business travellers by the following innovation: they place one of their technology experts in their hotels at the disposal of business travellers, when they encounter computer problems, e.g. with Internet communications, laptop, etc. during their stay in the hotel. Perceived service may differ from actual service. Perceived service is what a person thinks or feels was the service received and thus does not necessarily reflect the actual characteristics of the service. The actual service is the result of different processes that can cause various problems. Accurate perceptions of customer expectations are necessary, but not sufficient, for delivering correct quality service. Another prerequisite is the development of a service design or concept and performance standards that reflect those accurate perceptions. It is important to distinguish between a strategy to improve design quality and a strategy to improve the quality of service delivery. The latter strategy concerns the question: “Are we doing things right?” The former strategy relates to the question: “Are we doing the right things?” The answer to this final question can force us to redesign, re-engineer or innovate the service concept. In the blueprint, a horizontal “line of visibility” separates the processes in the production of the service that are visible to the customer from those that are invisible to him/her. In the visible section above the line, the client perceives the staff and various types of “physical evidence” that contribute to customer-perceived service. The size of the section of the blueprint above the line of visibility varies according to the service involved. This separation helps focus on the part of the process that is most difficult to control, where the human factor creates a greater risk of variation in service delivery. The situations in which the customer and the service company interact – “the moments of truth” – can be examined at the design stage, using this technique. The blueprint helps to identify points of failure: the processes where failures may easily occur, either below or above the line of visibility
5
Table IIMean values for each service attribute of a travel agency
Importance-performance matrix with attribute ratings for service of a travel agency
6
Source : Informa Quality Reports about Service Quality in tourism research
Tour operators enter into long term contracts with air carriers, hotels and other suppliers for the provision of bulk travel services. Discrete travel services are then assembled into a package tour featuring round trip transportation, seven nights accommodations, ground transportation and tours of local sites. The package tour is marketed to the general public through travel agents. Tour operators are principals and responsible to consumers for the provision of the component travel services of each tour package.
Product management and development (PMD) includes actions related to the choice of the destination as well as the type of services to be included (e.g., the use of train vs. plane). • Internal management (IM) reflects all the operations and activities that take place in the headquarters or country offices (e.g., use of office supplies, production of brochures, direct employment). • Supply chain management (SCM) addresses actions related to the selection and contracting of service providers. • Customer relations (CR) summarises the actions taken to deal with customers, not only with regards to the responsibility to serve them and reply to their comments, but also the opportunity to provide information and raise consumer awareness regarding sustainability. • Co-operation with destination (D) includes all activities and decisions related to destinations that tour operators make beyond the production and delivery of their holiday package. This mainly includes efforts made by tour operators to engage in dialogues with destination operators about the impacts of tour packages, and philanthropic activities. The first four categories cover actions and decisions that tour operators make in preparation of the holiday package. Through these actions and decisions, tour operators have either a direct impact on sustainability (e.g., managing office supplies), or a significant influence on sustainability (e.g., through the supply chain). The fifth area covers efforts to address product impacts at the destination. Within these five categories, the indicators have been further grouped in the three sustainability headings where the MSWG felt relatively clear
7
boundaries between environmental, social, and economic performance exist (e.g., internal management). In some categories, the indicators have not been separated into economic, environmental, and social, since the operators could not make a distinction between these issues within their business operations.
Operators must understand that servicequality is essentially a customer issue . customers determine it and not the service provider. It is about understanding the specific requirements of customers and tailoring the service delivery system to meeting these requirements. Evidence suggests that successful organisations are able to diagnose their customer expectations fully and satisfy them completely, during each and every service encounter. In an attempt to delight their customers, dive tour operators must attempt to get as close to them as possible so that they are better able to anticipate and thereby meet their needs, wants and expectations during each and every service encounter. The idea is to stay ahead of the customer, to anticipate his/her needs . . . so that when he/she articulates the needs operators have already planned for it and are ready (ahead of the competition) to meet it. A detailed understanding of customer requirements is therefore a vital first step in any attempt at satisfying customers. It is important to note that even the most perfect system for delivering quality service is worthless if things do not work at the appropriate moment. More than any other factor it is the quality of our people, both front and back of house, which will determine success as defined at this moment. It is people, aided by techniques, methods and systems, that deliver the right level of customer service. This implies that they must want to do so, be empowered to do so and gain satisfaction from giving and improving good customer service. As a result, many service organisations are now investing heavily in the development of an internal service culture where employees are now viewed as customers in their own right. These organisations clearly understand that the quality of service rendered to external customers is very often a reflection of the quality of service rendered internally to partners, colleagues and/or associates. They further understand that unhappy employees cannot create happy customers. For many this has led to a direct inversion of the traditional organisational hierarchy where the internal customer is now regarded as the most important organizational resource in the pursuit of service excellence. Naturally this requires action on a number of fronts, namely: recruitment,
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selection, training and development, empowerment, staff motivation and reward, the principal objectives being customer satisfaction and retention through the removal of barriers to improved employee performance.
The Use of IT is very essential in improving the service quality of tourist operators.
IT applications : IT is still predominantly used by approximately 60% of the hotels in standard data processing and in administrative task automation. The only outstanding use of IT lies in the utilisation of the Amadeus Reservation systems by a large majority (about 77%) of travel agents and tour operators. The opportunities which IT can offer to the tourism sector with the development of strategic projects such as marketing information system (MIS), destination information system (DRS), destination reservation system (DRS) and hotel automation systems has not yet been exploited. IT benefits : It is rather unfortunate that no attempt has been made by any of the hotels or travel agents and tour operators to quantify the business value of using IT. This explains the difficulty in assessing the financial benefits derived from uses of IT. However, data gathered from the survey show that in hotels, in general, IT has tremendously facilitated the handling of routine tasks in areas of financial services, room reservation services and billing services. As for the travel agents and tour operators, benefits from IT have been reaped mostly in the handling of ticket reservations. Investment in IT : four factors which altogether comprise the motives for computerisation by most of the surveyed companies : (a) Improving efficiency in general, (b) Improving quality of services offered to customers, (c) Business expansion and (d) Maintaining a good image by modernizing and making use of new technology. IT is not yet perceived as a strategic tool which can reduce overheads, win new markets and increase financial gains. Constraints for computerizing : The following two major constraints were reported by about 55% of the hotels and 72% of the travel agents and tour operators : (a) Lack of information and technical know-how and (b) Lack of skilled personnel. 60% of the medium and small hotels respectively and 53% of the travel agents and tour operators considered the lack of funds as a severe financial constraint.
Technical support :
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According to over 50% of the hotels and 38% of the travel agents and tour operators, some technical help to conduct a feasibility study would have been beneficial in their computerisation process. About 60% of the medium-sized and small hotels respectively and 50% of the travel agents and tour operators forwarded that they would have liked to be advised on their choice of hardware and software before making any purchases. About 60% of the medium-size hotels and 50% of the small ones admitted that they needed help and support during the implementation phase of the computerization process. It was generally agreed by most of the surveyed companies that the above-mentioned types of support would be beneficial in saving time and money.
Communications and Information Technology : The tourism sector still relies to a large extent on existing communication services such as the telephone, fax and telex. Nevertheless, there have been numerous claims on the poor performance of these services, due to unreliable and inadequate telephone lines. Electronic mail (Email) and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) technologies are inexistent in the Tourism sector. The survey further gives evidence of the fact that there is a very low demand for these communication services:
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only 6% of the large hotels, 6% of small hotels and 23% of the travel agents and tour operators have shown interest in using Email in the future, and 41% of large hotels, 80% of medium-sized hotels, 23% of small ones and 35% of travel agents and tour operators are interested in EDI systems. However, lack of existing telecommunications infrastructure will be a definite obstacle for exploiting EDI technologies.
IT Human Resource : This survey provides evidence of a very low number of qualified IT personnel employed in the tourism sector. On an average, about 10% of the workforce employed by the hotels and the travel agents and tour operators are currently using computers on a regular basis. About half of them have been provided with in-house training. Only a negligible percentage (about 0.2%) of the recruited workforce were preliminary trained in IT.
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What was rather concerning was that the extremely low percentage of degree holders and diploma holders recruited in the tourism industry : o Only 0.5% of the total workforce from all the different categories of hotels and 0.3% of the total employed staff from the travel agents and tour operators have a degree in a computer-related field. The percentage of diploma holders is respectively 1.2% for
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the hotels and 1.8% for the latter. The percentage of certificate holders, though, was slightly higher : 13.7% for hotels and 8.6% for the travel agents and tour operators. This very low percentage of qualified and skilled IT personnel partly accounts for the poor and elementary utilisation of IT in the tourism sector.
Worlwide trends & Recommendations for the future : The analysis in the trends of global tourism provides evidence of an estimated rise of 3% to 4% per annum in tourist expenditures in real terms and an estimated rise in capital investment from above US$ 420 billion in 1993 to US$ 1.3 trillion by the year 2005. All this together with the ever-growing fierce competition in the world tourism industry will ultimately compell tourism to modernize and strengthen its marketing and promotional activities.
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In the light of all these changes, five strategic projects have been proposed : o Development of a Market Information System (MIS) o Development of a Destination Information System (DIS) o Development of a Destination Reservation system (DRS) o Spreading the use of Computerised Reservation System (CRS) in hotels o Development of Hotel Automation System
Once a company has decided to integrate sustainability principles into its business practices, understanding what to change and how to do so can be a challenge. To make this task easier, this manual divides tour operator business activities into five action areas, I Internal management. At the most basic level, sustainability practices can be applied to the operations and activities that take place within a company’s headquarters and at its country offices. Changes might include using sustainably produced paper for brochures, minimizing energy use and waste production, and ensuring acceptable staff working conditions. I Product development and management. A tour operator’s choice of services, routes and activities for its products determines the sustainability of the holidays it offers. The challenge here is to design holiday packages that have lower environmental and social burdens while still yielding acceptable economic returns. I Supply chain management. Most elements of a holiday package are delivered by suppliers who are subcontracted by the tour operator. Thus, the selection and contracting of service providers is an important opportunity to
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influence the sustainability of products. Actions here might include setting sustainability standards in consultation with suppliers, assessing them on their performance and supporting improvements, and providing incentives for meeting the standards. I Customer relations. Tour operators can help raise consumer awareness of sustainability issues by providing information on appropriate behaviour, such as purchasing local products, respecting local cultural norms, and avoiding environmental impacts such as littering or wildlife disturbance. I Co-operation with destinations. Tour operators, either individually or through joint industry forums, can influence the sustainability of destinations by supporting sustainable decision-making by destination authorities and other local actors and by engaging in philanthropic activities.
References :
• • • • • •http://www.unep.fr/shared/publicationshttp://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/ViewContentServlet? Filename=Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Articleshttp://www.smallbusinessnotes.com/businesses/naics/administrative/561.htmlhttp://www.investorbusinessplan.com/Tour-Operators-Business-Plan.htmlhttp://www.intute.ac.uk/cgi-bin/browse.pl?id=114382 www.toinitiative.org/index.php?id=53&type=98
Annextures:
Service Blueprint of tourist operators is attached with the report .
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