Marketing in the Tourism Industry

Questions: 1. Does business need IT? 2. Why IT is important for business survival? 3. What is required to apply IT into business? (Cost, planning, designing, equipment, installation, training, etc. 4. How does business use IT? (internally such as staff, employees, and externally such as customers, suppliers.? 5. What benefits and advantages does IT bring to business? (Revenue, flexibility, reduces cost, etc.? 6. What type of risk does IT bring to business? (security, privacy, confidentiality.? 7. How can business maintain and monitor IT? Answers: Introduction The migration of people outside the daily community is defined as tourism. The reasons behind the travelling could be of various issues like spending leisure times, attending conference. The industry of tourism is an integration of the industries like accommodation, recreation, transport and entertainment (Goodall and Ashworth 2013). The beginning of each of the activity to the completion of the activities falls under Tourism. Therefore, tourism is a vast sector comprising of main region, which leads to the satisfaction of the customer. The communication between the travel agents and the customers should be appropriate. Sometimes it is seen that the travel agents does not communicate properly. This inappropriate communication could be avoided by using of Information Technology. The report has been structured taking an Australian company in the field of Tourism industry. The name of the company is Ziccasso. This company is famous in Australia and one of the renowned organizations in t he world. Reason for needing IT in Tourism Industry The significance of information technology in the sector of tourism has tremendously increased in the recent years. It has enabled the transaction of business in the tourism industry by implementing networking with the other trade partners. This helps in distributing the services and providing the related information to all the clients related with that service in a fraction of time. Information Technology is not only required for the travelling business under tourism sector to bloom but it has also helped other services of tourism for the growth and the development. Tools like Geospatial Information Technologies are used for the development of the tourism site. Information Technology is integrated with the marketing organization, which is an important aspect for gaining the success (Gretzel et al. 2015). The different tools that could be used for the tourism industries are GIS for knowing the site of tourist and the development of the site. The marketing could be improved by digital advertisement as well as promotion. The management of services helps in improving the operations. Better management of relationship with the clients could increase the services to the clients by giving them perfect booking of travel, hotel and site at a time. This is only possible by introducing Information Technology in the tourism Industry. Need of IT to Survive the Tourism Industry Information Technology played significant role in the development of tourism industry specially for Ziccasso. The tourism industry was based on manual transactions, which at times might become wrong leading to the dissatisfaction of the customer. The global tourism in the year of 1980 became computer oriented and the growth as well as the development of the industry was well noted. The company started using computer systems for supporting the internal functions of transportation, food servicing and hotel sector. The implementation of Central Reserve System and Global Distribution System incorporated a revolutionary change in Ziccasso. These changes and the fast movement of the tourism industry would not be possible without the Information Technology (Bartlett, Johnson and Schneider 2016). The dissemination of Information Technology in the industry of tourism helps the clients to interact and involve directly to the providers of the tourism. Therefore, without the integration of Infor mation Technology to the industry of tourism the industry still would not have seen such a growth and the development of the industry would still be lacking. The communications and the information that the tourism required could be classified into three groups. The pre-consumption stage, consumption stage and the post-consumption stage are the three stages it could be classified. The first stage consists of planning, decision making and application. The second stage consists of navigation and on-site transactions. The third stage consists of sharing and attachment (Jones 2014). Factors on which Information Technology depends Cost The cost of implementing it IT is formed based on Total Cost of Ownership. It includes the integrated cost of using as well as maintenance. The calculation incorporated the combination of direct costs like operation, hardware, administration and software. The indirect cost includes downtime and operations of end-users. The desktop PC with the factors like network costs, storage, servers, routers, printers the estimated cost is around $8500. The initial purchase is the fraction cost of TCO. The cost would be more than around $15000 over a life span of three years. The direct cost like hardware and software could be calculated with the help of invoices, records relating to the expense of hardware and software and the purchase order (Shapiro and Varian 2013). The operational cost includes the estimation of the number of hours the employee is spending in the office multiplying by the wages. If the working is done associated with IT service providers the payment is done on the hourly basi s. Ziccasso maintained a effective cost structure in the organization. Planning The planning should be done before implementing the information technology in the tourism industry. The planning should be done on the basis of effectiveness of the IT on the industry. The implementation of the technology is not at all cost effective (Cassidy 2016). Therefore, the planning of the future as well s how much time it will require to obtain the pay back from the technology is important. The business plan should include this step, as this is the most significant step for the growth of the industry. Tourism Business using IT Transport Sector: This sector provides an significant link in between the origin of the tourism and the destination of it. The significant use of Global Positioning System is mandatory for the transport Xiang, Magnini and Fesenmaier 2015). The use of radio communication system in transport is also an important role played by IT. Accommodation Sector: The client has the access of all the information regarding he accommodation services and the price he has to pay for it. The reception computer has IDS software, which helps in maintaining the account of the guest (Filieri and McLeay 2014). The programmed electronic card that increases the security of the clients replaces the door keys. Attraction Sector: The potential customers need to be informed about the features, locations, accessibility and specialty. The tourist offices promote the tourist site by promotional videos, websites that are interactive, travel documentaries and advertisement through televisions. The introduction of E-visa has eliminated the time for the stamping required on the passports. Advantages of using IT in Tourism The integration of IT in Tourism has laid to the development of the tourism industry. The industry gained curtained benefits. The invention of Computerized Reservation System has given a big advantage to the industries. This system was first adopted by the airlines sectors but now the railway industries as well as the hotel sector are following this system. This system helps in the maximized of the revenue stream as I have an inventory control (Li et al. 2017). The travel agent is directly connected to the central host through online system. This system helps in increasing the volume of the sale and the product is sold efficiently having a great gain of profit. The Global Distribution System helps in distributing reservations as well as the services regarding information technology to all the outlets of sale globally. The Online Travel Portals helps in getting free information that depends on the supplier reliability. The online travel websites helps in increasing the accessibility o f information. The information of the product, price, loading of webpage and facility of online booking helps in increasing the customer satisfaction (Law, Buhalis and Cobanoglu 2014). The travel websites having the features of the accessibility, design, reliability and customization helps in customer retention. The payment is done through the protective gateway using debit cards and the credit cards. Risk of IT in Tourism Business The use of IT in tourism industries is challenging if the concerned country does not have the infrastructure to withstand the advanced information technology. The country might lack technical as well as the financial resource. The operational scale is also limited. The cheap cost of internet has laid to the growth of the useless websites those are in form of the small and medium enterprises that have low skills and resources for efficiently conducting of the website (Hugstad, Taylor and Bruce 2013). The websites having homogeneity information as the internet minimizes the cost of distribution with the elimination of intermediate commissions. It is seen that many online agencies does not have the infrastructure to take the advantages of the functionality that IT produces to the businesses. The profitability is not guaranteed by the using of IT (Sadgrove 2016). If the firms fail to gain profitability then it might faces tough competitive positions. The implementation of IT is could onl y be advantageous only when the business fulfill the prerequisites. Recommendations The social and the economic benefit the industry of tourism offers to the country. It play a vital role in providing income to the country. It could be improved by good policies. The policies should have good scope for the management capacity to function in an appropriate manner. The inclusion of IT reduced the operation costs of the tourism industry. The recommended way for having a good IT infrastructure is fast, cheap and efficient way of flow of information. The services like e-mail and internet should be used to the utmost level. In transport sector the surface and the water transport should use IT in case of booking and navigation. The attraction sector should take help of IT to incorporate modern products. The use of IT is significant in protecting the resources and maintaining the attraction sector for the tourist (Jung, Chung and Leue 2015). The accommodation sector requires a convincible way for communicating with the clients. The use of CRS and GDS should be followed in an effective and professionalism way. Conclusion The integration of IT with the tourism industry is advantageous for the industry if the industry employs maintaining the prerequisites. The usage of IT is predominant globally. Therefore, the customers are seeking for good services. The opening of numerous online portal for travel misguide the customers to certain extent. Huge numbers of clients are having the concept that the available online information is not adequate for making the decision (Sotiriadis and Van 2013). Therefore, the industries should follow the transparency as well as good relationship with the customers. Direct selling of the services to the customer has increased on a huge number. The online booking made easy for the clients as well s it saves time for them. The payment method is easy and suitable for the clients. Therefore, using the IT systems in tourism industry helped the industry to achieve a new level of growth. Reference Bartlett, K.R., Johnson, K.R. and Schneider, I.E., 2016. Comparing strategic human resource development approaches for tourism and hospitality workforce planning. Journal of Human Resources in Hospitality Tourism, 15(4), pp.440-461. Cassidy, A., 2016. A practical guide to information systems strategic planning. 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