The Global Trend
The tours and travelling industry in Australia is one of the biggest industries of the country and is a significant contributor to the national gross domestic product. The global tourism industry is the single biggest industry in the world and has long surpassed every other industry in sheer size and the amount of investment that is entailed. The automobile is the second biggest industry in the world but the gap between these two is stark and the automobile industry cannot possibly hope to catch up to the tourism industry in the near future (Huang 2013). The industry encompasses several other industries and is constituted of various different industries which are widely different in nature but are important inputs for the tourism industry. The tourism industry is an umbrella term that is used to refer to an industry that has under its shadow many other industries and uses different aspects, services and products of those contributing industries to provide the customers with services and other amnesties (Kim 2014).
The Australian tourism industry is also a big one and according to many sources is the biggest reason for the growth of the country in economic terms. The promotion and spreading of the tourism, and the gaining popularity has helped the country to efficiently increase considerable amount of foreign currency inflow, which again has given possibilities of virtually limitless investments.
The global tourism industry is currently experiencing conditions like never before and the international trend is projected to only grow in the coming years. The travel and tourism industry has been confronted with radical changes by only three travelling platforms, namely, Airbnb, Uber and Skyscanner. These three service based websites have completely changed the perceptions people had about travelling, be it domestic or international. In the modern era of globalization, travel and tourism industry has experienced some of the most significant changes and evolutions among the biggest global industries (Viljoen, Roberts-Lombard and Jooste 2015). The travel agency industry is focused with providing the customers with relevant information regarding information on different tourist destinations, helping with the booking for transportation in both domestic and international travels and is engaged in wholesale tourism. This means that travel agencies are responsible for providing overall planning in form of packages that takes into account everything from travel procedures, transportation, information on different places, accommodation assistances (Smith and Puczkó 2014). Travel agencies also serve as retail travel agents for the public as well as for commercial clients.
With the advent of the internet and an integrated world systems aimed at bringing people across continents closer and making flow of information to be able to happen without any hindrance, the travel agency industry has taken a significant hit as anyone can access any information regarding different aspects of travelling or planning tours from virtually anywhere and at any time that they want (Williams 2017). However, the industry has been able to adapt to the changes and have somehow managed to stay relevant even in this age and time by incorporating different new aspects so that they keep being of help to the customers of the industry who seek to purchase their services. Reliability and trust are the two fundamentals of the industry and the necessity to cater to the needs of the customers is the single biggest thing that drives the entire operations of the industry.
The Australian Context
The industry provides various services to the customers such as:
- Airline or rail bookings
- Packaged travel bookings
- Vehicle rentals
- Accommodation assistances
Brick-and-mortar agencies have successfully overhauled their entire operations to make sure that their services are still needed, while online booking agencies and other similar platforms and websites have also expanded exponentially over the years (Assaf and Agbola 2014).
Much like the global condition of the travel agency industry the Australian market has also been affected by the recent technological changes and the new methods of travelling. The online travel agencies have been experiencing phenomenal expansion which can be attributed to the growth of the internet and its access to almost every person on the planet (Glavas and Mathews 2014). However, the physical travel agencies have also managed to incorporate the new forms of travelling within their operations as well as making sure that tourists are provided with every form of modern facilities that are available so that their importance stays relevant and they do not wither out to the growing virtual competition (Pang, Kucukusta and Chan 2015).
It is a fact that the online travel agencies are absolutely helpful and contains more information at any single point of time than any physical agency can ever hope to provide the customers (Nicula and POP?A 2014). It is much easier to check and compare the prices and the costs of the different services and the other facilities that are provided by different agencies and furthermore, it is also possible for an individual to view the prices of different accommodation possibilities in the destination where they are travelling to (De Gruyter, Rose and Currie 2015). This is incredibly helpful in terms of successfully being able to make budget plans and plan the entire trip according to the price bars. Tourists can also choose the accommodation places as well as decide on which travel agent to choose for their requirements and this massive amount of information can be gathered at almost any point of time from anywhere, making online travel agency services to seem more logical and efficient as well as less time consuming (Buckley and Mossaz 2016). However, in many cases online travel agencies fail to make proper communication with the customers and this communication gap can prove to be severely problematic for the tourists and can also cause serious issues for them leading to loss in either time, money and time and energy or all of them. The only way to bypass this is by eradicating any form of human error associated with the travel planning procedure and making sure every last bit of information is communicated between the tourists and the travel agencies (Casaló et al. 2015).
The Australian travel agents are all vying to create a position for themselves that does not render them to become useless and/or irrelevant (Nicula and Elena 2014) and hence are trying their best to ensure that their customers are being given all the services that they require and also making sure that their services and products are all in cohesion with the ever changing requirements of the customers and the industry, while also adhering to the industry standards. The travel agents are all targeting the younger generation of tourists and for that they are conducting large scale promotions so that the maximum number of people can be reached (Lloyd 2014). Online promotional activities and the internet have proved to be of immense help in this aspect. The Australian travel agency industry is projecting their own country to their national populace just as much as to the international travelers, with aims to promote domestic travel even further and making sure that the young generations grow up with a better knowledge about their own country (Zanon et al. 2014).
Intrepid travel agency is one such agency in the Australian travel agency industry which is focused entirely on the point of promoting travel and tourism while making sure that the best of the country is experienced by the tourists. The travel agency believes that the tourists require something more than just a packaged travelling plan and hopes that their services will provide the customers with a more intimate feeling and would help them to create some of the best memories of their lives.
The travel arranges and plans tours and provides travel packages for their customers on both national and domestic levels. A spirit and sense of adventure runs at the very core of the company and they aim to give their customers some of the most exhilarating experiences of their lives.
Intrepid Travels is focused upon sustainable growth along with being highly enthusiastic about promoting travels and tourism across the globe. With this in head, the company has set up its marketing strategies revolving around both tourism and a bias towards protecting the environment. The company has engrained the phrase “with great power, comes great responsibility” at its heart and has moulded it into “with great travel, comes great responsibility”. Intrepid sincerely believes that the planet and the environment must be protected and the actions of the humans should not adversely affect the nature. A balance between the human actions and the ecology has to be maintained if sustainable growth is truly the aim of the company. The company believes that treading lightly on the environmental issues is not enough, rather actual and significant impact must be made.
The marketing strategies of the company has a lot of creativity and imagination poured into it, so that the ideologies of the company are always in the same line with its actions. The services that they provide are made to be presented to the customers in a manner that is adventurous, exciting and lucrative, as well as being very clear about their opinions about environmental protection. Every tour plan that the company does, is done so after in-depth researches of the ecology, studies on the local communities, a close observation on the human rights norms and the wildlife conservation projects of the area. These are more than simple words, rather they are ingrained in every operation of the company: both within the office and the trips that are provided to the customers.
The four Ps of marketing (4Ps) is a model that allows companies and organisations to properly understand their products as well as the different stakeholders of themselves, so that entire operations can be planned accordingly. The 4Ps identifies the key aspects of the organisational operations and helps companies to devise their marketing strategies in such a way so that the organisational goals are met in the best possible way, after careful consideration of all the aspects in the equation (Tapp and Spotswood 2013). This model helps to enhance the components of the market mix of a company that can enable the company to meet the customers’ demands and requirements. The four key components that this model addresses are:
- Product or services
- Place
- Price and
- Promotion
Product or services: The basic functions and operations of an organisation is formed around the single thing: the commodity that the company sells to the customers. It is of utmost importance to decide upon the commodity that is going to be sold by the organisation and to clearly define what market purpose would it aim to fulfil (Tapp and Spotswood 2013). The company itself has to know clearly what do they want from the commodity as well as decide the feature of the product or the service based on the industry and market requirements. They have to clearly define how will the product be used by the customers and what forms will it be available in. This information is vital to impact the decision making of the customers so that the market share of the organisation in question grows in size. Intrepid Travels have all of the services, that they provide, catalogued and easily available to the customers. With the rise of the internet as an integral part of human activities and daily necessity, Intrepid has also successfully stepped into the market of online travel agents who help customers to plan and book travel services at any time, according to their needs and requirements or budget (Khan 2014). The packages are all elaborately described and in the online platform of the company, Intrepid tries to keep their services and operations as transparent as possible: they give customers the idea about what are the same commodities priced at by the competing companies and what are the facilities that entail each service. Thus, Intrepid offers the customers the liberty to choose according to their needs and makes sure that the customers are not kept in any darkness.
Place: It is a vital thing to properly target the place where the product or the service will be sold to the customers. Attending sales fairs, making catalogues are all important and proven ways to make sure that the commodity of the company is available to the customers. Identifying the key distribution channels is important to know how to best expose the customers to the commodity and vice versa. Intrepid Travels uses a single brick and mortar office from where it operates and keeps track of the daily and basic operations of the company. The company also has an online presence and pages on every social media platform, where a lot of customers can come and gather information about the various products and services of the company at the same time (Khan 2014). Intrepid also keeps a check on the market competition on a regular basis to observe the places where the competing companies sell their products and services and try to incorporate the best examples within their own strategies.
Price: Pricing of a commodity is vital and has to be done based on a lot of market research so as to understand the standard rates of the industry and the best strategic prices so that the maximum number of customers can be pooled in. from a customer’s point of view, the pricing of a product is the first thing that is noticed and customer decisions are hugely impacted by this aspect. A competitive pricing can help companies immensely, whereas higher pricing may induce customers to opt for other companies and their products. The concepts of price and income elasticity of demand have to be analysed in order to understand the impact of the price of the commodity and how may that influence the customers. Giving discounts based on the product or service package is also to be analysed (Fitzgerald, Cavanaugh and Bhiro 2014). Intrepid strategically plans for all the services, both individual or as a package and these are done after the market is surveyed to understand the pricing policy of the other companies and the industry standards. Intrepid seeks to make sure that their services are competitive and the customers can afford their products by keeping the packages and other services pocket friendly.
Promotion: In order to make sure that the customers buy the commodities of a company, it has to be made sure that the customers and the market know about the product. In order to achieve this, organisations rely on promotion of the products. Promotion is to convey the ideas about a certain product, commodity or any other notion to the targeted audiences. This can be done so through the medium of a number of technologies like the radio, television, the internet, social media as well as newspapers, billboards and word of mouth (Khan 2014). To achieve this, significant investments and capital is required. Intrepid focuses primarily on the internet, billboards and word of mouth. The logic of the company behind is that humans often believe more on the reviews and recommendations of people who have already used the service or the product rather than boastings of the company itself. Word of mouth is a powerful driver for customer decision and this is why Intrepid gives their best to their existing customers so that only the best of reviews are circulated to the future potential customers, making them more reliable. Social media is also used extensively because this helps the company to reach a huge number of people at the same time.
The biggest competitors of Intrepid travels are Holland America Line, TEMES S.A and Freedom Leisure. These companies pose a strong challenge to the current company and the marketing strategies of each of these companies are simultaneously the biggest influencing factor for the marketing strategies of each other. However, Intrepid firmly holds it ground and stays ahead of the competition through the better services, customised travelling plans and a better pricing than their peers.
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