According
to our workings in previous assignments, I learnt that the rapid development of
technology, especially the cloud computing, makes the operating of business in different
industries be more convenience, lower cost and higher efficiency.
1) Cloud computing
Cloud
computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a
shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g. networks, servers,
storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and
released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. The cloud model promotes availability and is
composed of five essential characteristics (On-demand self-service; Broad
network access; Resource pooling; Rapid elasticity; Measured service), three
service models (Cloud software as a Service, SaaS; Cloud Platform as a Service,
PaaS; Cloud Infrastructure as a Service, IaaS), and four deployment models
(Private cloud; Community cloud; Public cloud; Hybrid cloud). (Babcock, 2010,
p224-225).
Google,
Yahoo, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Oracle and Dell have built up their
several data centers as public cloud to serve the end-users all over the
world. Cloud computing is widely used
for personal and business purposes.
2) Travel and tourism industry.
The
travel and tourism industry is one of the world’s largest industries with a
global economic contribution (direct, indirect and induced) of almost seven
trillion U.S. dollars in 2013. In 2013, global international tourism
revenue reached approximately 1.16 trillion U.S. dollars, having almost doubled
since 2005 (Source : The Statistics
Portal : http://www.statista.com/topics/962/global-tourism/).
Travel
agencies are the retailers selling services or products on behalf of the suppliers,
such as hotels, food and beverage, airlines/cruises, etc. to the domestic, or
international customers at their destinations.
Sometimes, the travel agencies join many different national official
tourism authorities to promote the events or attractions to their
consumers.
The figure 1 shown the
systematic lines between demand and supply flow in the marketing of travel
agency industry.
3) The Travel Agency
The
travel agency is a services provider but linkage with many suppliers in different
areas. Therefore, in traditional, it is
a labour intensive industry, marketing
people design and create some new products (routes) with its branches or
partners in overseas, tour operators in the offices to handle the customers'
enquiries or bookings, same as the structure of companies in other industries, there
are some staffs in administrative, accounting and customer relationship departments
respectively. Man power in many travel
agency is high normally.
3.1)
Elasticity of Cloud Computing
However,
the business of travel agency is very seasonal. The demand is always high in
the seasons of Christmas and Summer holidays.
Whenever, there would be thousands of enquiries or bookings from many
customers during the peak seasons. On
the other hand, the change of economic situation would influence the demand of
the domestic people in the travel business, for example, the American people
had been reducing their demand on travelling during the financial crisis since
2008. Under the assistance of Cloud computing,
it rapid elasticity helps the travel agency to be more stable for staffing in
different seasons (i.e. no need to recruit more staffs during the peak
seasons). The flexibility of cloud computing should be matched the unstable
business environment of travel agency in order to save lots of unnecessary
expenses. Therefore, the travel agencies can save lots of their cost under the
rule of cloud computing : pay for what you use and cloud computing also makes
their operation more reliable with highly efficiency.
3.2) Pool of Resources
Meantime,
with help of cloud computing as the platform of exchange, the travel agency can
link with more airlines, hotels in the resourcing pools to widen the choices
for their customers in order to catch more business chances. For example, CX-Holidays, customers are able
to choose their freight schedule and hotels, even bus or train tickets,
entertainment at destination, and paid for all from its web-site, just like Do
It Yourself (DIY) tours.
Collaborate
marketing (with airlines, hotels, etc.) as the usual strategy of travel agency
should be adopted more effective and efficiency. I learnt from our lecture that the collaboration
particularly can enable firms to achieve more, at a faster rate, and at less
cost and less risk, those advantages would relieve the travel agency's pressure
in high operating cost.
Moreover,
many small business in the same industry are unable to join together with the
growth of e-business, AITO is a typical example for an succeed collaborated organization
in travel agency business (Middleton and Fyall and Morgan (2009) p253-255). This is another example of collaborate
marketing.
4) Challenge Under Globalization
With
advanced technological supported and collaborate marketing adopted, business of
travel agency have been developed widely and diversity. Many Apps, such as TripAdvisor, trivago, Ctrip.com
international, Hong Kong Wing On Travel Service Limited, etc, offer the package
trips (freight and hotels, entertainments) with very attractive rates to the
worldwide consumers for business or personal holidays purposes without any
barrier.
Easy to use, convenience,
detailed information provided, all these factors, that the young people are
prefer to use for their own booking. At
the same time, they are very concerning the feedback and review from
customers. This is because,
"People
believe reviews from other people more than they trust commercial
advertising."
Therefore,
most of these Apps become well known and were succeed in their business. According
to what we learnt, market development and product development under the
globalization bring higher competitions among the industry. Moreover, many aging people who have strong
purchasing power still prefer the traditional services, i.e. they would like to
visit the travel agency offices to talk with the tour operators by face to
face. How to encourage this group of
people to use the services through internet is the major mandate of travel
agencies. There are many promotions,
such as offer discount or coupons for entertainments to the customers using their
services through internet, a Hong Kong travel agency,
Miramar travel is always
encouraging consumers to book their products through internet by offering
special discount. Rapid knowledge transfer
& technology adoption to stay competitive, with cloud adoption strategy,
the enterprises are able to get more competitive advantages in its financial,
human resources, and other different areas (Isom and Holley (2012) p.186-188).
5) Conclusion In the world of technology, business enterprises, even the small guys, can be running more easily. Building own brand name and getting trust from customers are also not difficult to do at very initial stage. However, technology is a tool only.
How to supply our products or services as better as we can is the most important factor for sustainable development. According to what we learnt, the basic stages
of product lifecycle, at "Nail it" stage, we have to keep our review
on the consumers' demand or requirement always. Therefore, more interesting products (good products: new, interesting, safety, route tours) are created, with
helping of cloud computing, the travel agency industry will offer more good products to consumers for improving their quality of life.
Reference
:
1. Charles Babcock (2010) Management Strategies
for The Cloud Revolution, Mc Graw Hill
2. Middleton and Fyall and Morgan (2009)
Marketing in travel and tourism, 4th edition, Butterworth-Heinemann
3. Isom and Holley (2012) Is Your Company Ready
for Cloud? Choosing the Best Cloud
Adoption Strategy for Your Business, Pearson
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