Activity Plan and Initial Recommendations for Tourism Company - Essay Example

3. Your targeting and data strategy Gap 360 is a global travel and tourism agency with plans and packages for every person in any corner of the world. With this scenario in mind, Gap 360 should target consumers from all the places across the world. Though not everyone will have the capacity of affordability to go for holiday trip, they should focus more on the middle class, upper middle class and higher class consumers (Ateljevic and Pritchard et al., 2007). The reason for choosing these segments is mainly due to the fact that the people living below these classes do not have the interest of travelling abroad mainly due to lack of financial backup. They cannot afford a flight ticket for the sake of fun and adventure. The data strategy for will be collection of qualitative and quantitative data. We will be looking into past results and report with the help of secondary data collections methods which will be gathered from books, journal, internet and previous report with respect to tourism (Chaudhary, 2010). Since the idea is to increase the rate travelling in our target consumers, we will be focusing on questionnaire which will focus on questions like frequency of travel, favourite destinations, etc. with these kinds of data we will be able to understand the trend of our consumers, their preferable destinations so that design and modify our packages accordingly. 4. A detailed activity plan for 2014 and initial recommendations for 2015 and 2016; including your test programme and details of the measurements you will put in place in order to support the claim for being UK market leader. (30 marks)  Before we start our activity planning and showcase our company, we need to build our audience in to present it to them. So audience building is an essential part of the tourism industry. So our first focus will be building a new and existing group of audience (Kneafsey and Cronin et al., 2003, pp. 21--41). Audience development is about putting them in the centre of stage and trying to comprehend what individuals need; exhibiting our facility, gathering or activity in a manner which is receptive, and welcoming; and empowering interest and engagement. As of late there has been an expanding accentuation on audience improvement, especially from Government, open segment offices and stipend giving forms, for example, the Lottery funders. The inclination is that creating a more extensive cross-area of help is critical to building future backing for the legacy and that openly subsidized organisations have an obligation to captivate with all segments of the neighbourhood. Whilst audience improvement is concerned with creating new audiences and looking to arrive at under-represented gatherings it is likewise about reinforcing and developing associations with existing audiences (Ivo.org, n.d.). This is not practically connecting with guests and school aggregates yet can additionally be about building stronger associations with volunteers, trustees, representatives and the nearby group (Thetourismcompany.com, n.d.). We will start with activity on the month of March and it will go on till the end of 2015. In the year 2016 we will have to change our approach and go for aggressive promotion of various tours and packages. The year 2016 will be year of promotions. First we need to understand what the various segments of the tourism are. There are various segments for tourism such as medical tourism, adventure tourism, and ecotourism. We will be creating individual and unique packages for each and every segment. Recently medical tourism is real good business. People can go to any extent to get them cured. India and ayurveda has become very popular these days. We can design exclusive packages for patients which will include comfortable journey and effective treatment for the patients seeking cure. For photography enthusiasts, adventure tourism is a great idea. We can design packages including exotic as well as adventurous places like Africa, Australia etc. We will also the promoting each of the segments and the destination by publishing various articles of travelling and tourism in all the travel magazines such as Go World, Nat Geo Traveller, etc. In doing so, we will be able to attract our target market in the most effective way. We also need concentrate on building and increasing our capacity and infrastructure. Which would imply that we need to improve on our service quality in order attract more tourists who are interested to travel. In order to reach the mass and the target client, we will build more of our outlets and try to make our presence felt in every corner of the world. Once we have our outlets ready we will jump into the competition. This has to be done by competing with our contenders in the tourism industry and surpassing them in terms of quality and service. In doing so, we will be able to create a special position for us in the mind of the customer (Tsiotsou and Goldsmith, 2012). A person who wants to travel has the idea of relaxations and an enchanting experience to rejuvenate him or her. This can only be done by providing state of art quality in service. We also need to concentrate on our brand building which will be done with the help of online promotions. We will also be promoting ourselves through travel and photography magazines. Most of the people who travel or go out for shoots are thorough readers of such type of magazines. So when they read about us and also read our travel plans and destination they will get interested in travelling with us we will be able to get the opportunity to make them our potential customers. We will have our contact details given everywhere to make it easy for our clients to get in touch with us. Another way of attracting the consumers would be the publishing of testimonial by our existing customers on our website. This can be done by taking feedback from our customers about how they felt during their travel with us. When the people read and realise that there people who have been immensely satisfied by travelling with us, it will attract new consumers to our firm. We will also be citing their tour packages and sharing their whole experience. We will also be tying up with all the major airlines and transport where in the travellers can use us to book their hotels and decide upon their travel plan. We will also be sharing our tourism photographs over online communities like ‘flickr’, ‘Picasa’, etc. Creation of exclusive travel communities in various social networking websites need to be done (Wang and Yu et al., 2002, pp. 407--417). This will create an impact on the travellers mind and force them to get in touch with us for further information regarding the travel plans and costs. This will be the plan for 2014, 2015 and till the end of 2016. The main issue during this period will be planning of new destinations and dividing them into various segments. The next things would be to attract our existing as well as new customers. Promotion will play a major role and as discussed we will be using technology and internet as the major modes of promotion. References Ateljevic, I., Pritchard, A. and Morgan, N. 2007. The critical turn in tourism studies. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Chaudhary, M. 2010. Tourism marketing. New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press. Ivo.org. n.d. Gap 360 Ltd. [online] Available at: http://ivo.org/gap360ltd [Accessed: 19 Feb 2014]. Kerin, R. A., Hartley, S. W. and Rudelius, W. 2009. Marketing. Boston: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. Kneafsey, M., Cronin, M., O'connor, B. and Others. 2003. 'If it wasn't for the tourists we wouldn't have an audience': the case of tourism and traditional music in North Mayo. Irish tourism: image, culture and identity, pp. 21--41. Thetourismcompany.com. n.d. The Tourism Company - Audience Development Plans - useful preparation for producing an HLF Activity Plan. [online] Available at: http://thetourismcompany.com/topic.asp?topicid=18 [Accessed: 19 Feb 2014]. Tsiotsou, R. H. and Goldsmith, R. E. 2012. Strategic marketing in tourism services. Bingley: Emerald. Wang, Y., Yu, Q. and Fesenmaier, D. R. 2002. Defining the virtual tourist community: implications for tourism marketing. Tourism management, 23 (4), pp. 407--417. Read More