Singapore Tour Guide App For Android And IOS

The Need for a Tour Guide App in Singapore

Discuss about the Development Of A Singapore Tour Guide App.

Singapore is classified as a top-rated tourism destination and attracted a whopping 17.4 million tourist 2017. The number of tourist visiting Singapore is also increasing on an annual basis at an average of 10% per annum due to the stable economic and political environment offered by the tourist Destination. Each of the tourists visits Singapore with the intention of experiencing the local attractions which can best be experienced by hiring a local tour guide. As technology advances, entrepreneurs are being forced to develop newer and more innovative business ideas so as to remain in business. With smartphones being the gadget of choice among most people, the application has become a common way of searching for services for most people (Wickham, 2006). Locating the right tour guide while on vacation in Singapore is critical if you want to gain the best experience of Singapore but locating a service provider is quite difficult since most are only out to make money.

To solve this problem, we propose the development of a Singapore tour guide app to help tourist locate the best service provider. Today there are several service search applications which businesses or individual can access to gain an overview of services being delivered in the market. Taxi services, handy mane and service providers, and businesses are all posting their advertisements and selling their services on similar applications but touring guides assistance is still not available for the public. There are also several travel advisors who offer stiff competition to the project such as show around, nuflit and Triposo all offer similar services making it important to deliver a unique service that tourist will be benefit from directly.

To resolve this travel and tour dilemma a Singapore tour guide application for Android and ISO smartphone shall be developed. This application would see the registration of both service providers and customers who will be able to secure tour guide contact information and later be able to rate the services. This will act as a very powerful tool towards guiding a tour operator and service provider database and network and help also streamline the industry. With the customer able to access tour operator’s services and also offer his feedback will help streamline the industry by highlighting the good from poor tour guides in Singapore.

In addition to streamlining the industry, it would automatically trigger the service providers to maintaining a good conduct so as to maintain a positive reputation on the market (Ratajczak-Mrozek, 2017). The internet, social media and review websites have been known to expose businesses misconduct which has resulted in severally damaging many brands image. This has made quality and customer satisfaction factors which every business must address today to prevent damaging their brand’s image which can result in serious long-term losses.

The proposed business idea will help boost tourism in the region as it would help build traveller confidence towards visiting the region due to the transparent service delivery.  With more businesses and consumers inclined towards checking customer satisfaction and a business’s reputation on the internet, businesses which have invested towards advanced IT service delivering at registering huge growth and expansion. This is simply due to consumers having built a much stronger trust with online visible businesses as they can easily run background checks to determine the business’s performance and conduct.

The Proposed Singapore Tour Guide App

Besides transparency, an online presence also helps instigate competitiveness between business rivals which is very important and benefited for the customers (Holtz & Havens, 2008). By launching a tour service application, most tour guides in the Singapore region will register their services and will begin competing to deliver the best service so as to secure a higher rating and customer preference. This will also automatically see the service providers improve and deliver a wider verity of services to the customers at affordable rates so as to help attract customers. These are major benefits for each tourist since they would be able to experience Singapore in a better way.

Registration of customers and service providers would remain totally free so as to attract the maximum number of users and help build the applications popularity among users. Revenue would be generated from the sale of advertising space on the application which shall also discreetly be positions to avoid distracting or frustrating the application user. The application shall be developed to support Android, IOS, and Windows which are the leading operating systems in the market (Laing & Mazzella, 2016). This would ensure the application covers 90% of all smartphone users thus maximizing the application’s exposure to the users.

Developing and using smartphone application has become a necessity for most businesses today since most people own a smartphone and are turning to use online services as opposed to traditions services delivery method. This makes smartphone application development a lucrative idea while considering the establishment of any new project or business as it would help speed up network connection thus helping businesses develop at a rapid pace.

Before launching the products, it is essential to perform in-depth market analysis to determine the proposed projects viability. Tourism has been identified to be a lucrative business, which allowed domestics business generates considerable amounts of foreign exchange. But keeping the tourism happy and satisfied plays a huge toll towards a nation’s tourism stability. It is essential for the economy or tourism destination to deliver safer and transparent facilities. Many travel and tour agents have been noted to take advantage of venerable tourism and over charge them for the services, which deliver a bad image among international tourism (Erickson, 2017). Many indentation tourist destinations are renowned for such behaviour resulting in tourist avoiding that destination. With research showing that tourist are more likely to opt for a stable and transparent tourist destination, offering the IT support to help tourist access reputed service providers is rising in demand. Among tourist making is a lucrative and promising idea business idea for a business to start up the Singapore market.

Where do you fit in the market?

Some major factors linked to the target market analysis would be determining our products current market position. This requires the product specification to be categories based on their features. This is important, as it would map the products current market position thus allow further improvements to be planned. The product must initial its entry to the market from the budget category to attract consumer and user attention. Gradually as the brand image develops, it can move to the competitive than target high-end consumers after the brands has developed a positive reputation and won consumer trust.

How does this compare with your customers?

Competition

Benefits of the Singapore Tour Guide App

The tour guide app assistance market is relatively new and only a limited number of application available in the Singapore market. This makes the market relatively open to new entrants as long as the right services have been delivered. With an estimated target market of just 30% of 17, million tourist visiting Singapore, rivals would not likely be a major obstacle for the proposed business (Fleisher & Bensoussan, 2015). On the contrary the project would benefit from the competitors as it would help deliver important strategies used by them to expand and tap in to the market.

Showaround

The application has registered 10 downloads on the play store which is a considerably low number compared to the target market available. While it has a high rating of 4.3/5 star the application is not being downloaded by a large number of users despite of their being a large target market in Singapore

Nuflit

Netflit is a major tour guide player in the Singapore market but the business has under developed mobile application and only reliant on their website. While the business is a major player and attracts many travellers each year, many are limited to accessing the service via computer or web browser which is considered inconveniencing by many smartphone users who prefer using mobile applications. This is a major drawback linked to this competitor leaving an open position the proposed business can infiltrate the Nuflit market

Triposo

Triposo is another major player in the business but focusing more if its operation on the international market. This makes it less of a concerning competitor as the proposed application would only focus on offering Singapore guides thus allowing for specialization thus helping capitalize the market.

When compared to the competitors Product ABC can be classified as a mid-range product due to the products specification being more attractive than most competitor application and it being focused to deliver tour guide support only for Singapore. The closest rivals Show around and Nuflet have expanded their operation abroad which has reduce their focus on a single market. This is an advantage for product ABC since it will be able to deliver high quality services to its customers by offering focused information related to the region which is essential towards the products development.

It would also be distributed for Free which would eliminate the buying cost further attracting users to opt for the application. While all the factors have been designed in favour of the customer, the application is likely to be accessed and used by 30% of tourist visiting Singapore each year. As per the 2017, tourist census reported 17 million tourist visited Singapore thus the proposed project must be prepared to cater to 5 to 6 million users per year which translates to catering for approximately 16,500 users per day on average.

How big is the target market?

TSS Model and Survey

To determine the projects viability, it is necessary to perform a TSS analysis to determine important statistics related to the proposed business. TSS stands for TAM, SAM and SOM

TAM – Total Available Market

Revenue Generation Model for the App

The total Available Market consistent of approximately 19 million tourists per annum, this is based on the average calculated using the statistics from 2016 and 2017

SAM – Service Available Market

Based on previous visitor habit statistics it has been estimated that 25% of the tourism which plan independent trips to visit the region. This accounts for 4.75 Million tourists that are unlikely to consider using the application as a tour guide or advisor. Thus leaving approximately 14 million tourists that will consider seeking advisory guides to locate the best and most reliable service providers.

SOM – Share of the Market

Targeting only 30% of the SAM market the application is likely to reach out to 4.3 million tourists per annum only for Singapore. As the application improves, are features and wins user confidence the application will gradually increase its target market share by an estimated 10% per annum.

Each of these factors has a direct effect on the proposed businesses viability thus making it important to perform an in-depth research analysis, which takes statics related to each of these factors in to consideration and reports the results taking in to consideration the entire projects viability. It is essential to ensure a TSS analysis of all market and customer components are established, as this will ensure accurate data related to the product and potential customers is attained which will help towards determining the projects viability, success and growth rate.

Who are the customers?

While the TSS helps determine and map the consumer market, it does not deliver accurate results related to the target consumer. While a market may offer several million customers, it is essential to filter the data to determine a target customer or user and factors, which would influence users to opt for the service. The customers targeted by the application are people that travel often. Singapore is an established as an attractive place for tourists. Therefore, people tend to visit the place more often to relax and enjoy the scenic beauty of the country. The target market of the application can be the people that have visited the country for the first time so that the loyalty of the customers can be maintained. For this the development of the service of the application is essential.

At the same time, the service provided by the application opens up opportunities for the participation of the local Singapore people. For example, the application can target people that are fluent in more than one language. People with the knowledge of Mandarin, Tamil or Malay can assist people that visit from China, India or Malaysia (Kemmer & Ehnert, 2012).This provides an opportunity for the local people to earn money and be employed. With this initiative, the application can expand its horizons in the Singaporean market.

What are the characteristics of the customers?

The demographic characteristics of the customers are from different regions. The local people of Singapore are also targeted as customers as both tourists as well as service providers. People willing to travel great distance to enjoy the beauty of the country are provided with an opportunity to enjoy the application (Refer to appendix 2 for empathy map).

Importance of Smartphone Applications in Today’s Businesses

 
As observed from the above evolution South East Asia, Greater China, Europe and Oceania constitute to the majority of tourism visiting the region accumulating to 13,742,780 of the tourism which is approximately 81.3% of all tourism visiting Singapore in 2017.

What research backs assumptions?

Evidences that are mostly related to the tourism market of Singapore back the research. Assumptions are made based on the responses provided by the customers while touring the country and the manner in which the other countries contribute to the growth of tourism.

What is the market growth?

The products growth would be directly influenced by customer satisfaction, feedback and recommendations. To avoid over burdening the project managers and operation team a realistic growth and expansion target of 10% per annum would be set. This would ensure staff are putting their full effort towards catering to operation and at the same time are not overburdened to register over whelming growth rates (Pacek, 2012).

Market potential

Based on the analysis of the TAM and SAM, it can be said that the market potential of the application is good as only 4.75 million tourists may reject the use of the application. This may be due to reasons such as inability to use technology.

What are the projections and share?

Currently the application is shared to over 14 million people and the projection of the application can be attributed to the steady growth of the Singapore tourism sector. The share of the application is spread across different countries so that every people can enjoy the application.

Marketing plays a critical role towards informing the public regarding the new product or service thus its essential to develop effective marketing plants which would communicate the information to the target consumer. Being a product that targets the international tourist vising Singer pore, marketing and advertisement plans must be designed and published at the tourism home country.

To encourage people to buy the application it is essential to first offer the product for free and depend on advertisements to generate revenue during the first 30 day trial period. The customers should only be charged for accessing the services which would encourage them to use the application more. Monthly subscription must be avoided to prevent determine customers from needing to be linked in to a long term relationship. Applications which offer use of the go charges have been registered to be more successful than the ones which offer monthly subscriptions.

 This is would help inform and educate the tourist regarding the tour guide advisory application and its features thus allowing them to download, register and begin using it before even arriving in Singapore (Luther, 2011). While the product will also target domestic tourist, it would also be advertised on the local television and radio station to help inform the domestic tourist regarding reputed tour guides thus helping ease their travel and improve their experience. Initially the application would be designed for the Singapore tour guide services but gradually the target markets would be expanded thus helping the project net in more user. This would be implemented gradually as it would require for the business to also invest on the required infrastructure that would be required to support and coordinate the tourist seeking information and connecting them to well repute service providers in Singer power and other tourism destinations.

With tourism classified as being a viable income source for businesses and economies across the globe, it’s essential to invest on the initial stages to build the project after which the project can gradually expand its operations, which would automatically increase income generation and profitability.

Erickson, G. S. (2017). New Methods of Market Research and Analysis. Glos: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Fleisher, C. S., & Bensoussan, B. E. (2015). Business and Competitive Analysis: Effective Application of New and Classic Methods. FT Press.

Holtz, S., & Havens, J. C. (2008). Tactical Transparency: How Leaders Can Leverage Social Media to Maximize Value and Build their Brand. John Wiley & Sons.

Kemmer, M., & Ehnert, T. (2012). Procedure and methods of target market selection and risk assessment on the example of SMA AG: International Strategy and Sales Management. GRIN Verlag.

Laing, J. M., & Mazzella, D. P. (2016). Recalculating, 97+ Experts on Driving Small Business Growth. Brick Tower Press.

Luther, W. (2011). The Marketing Plan: How to Prepare and Implement It. AMACOM.

Pacek, N. (2012). The Future of Business in Emerging Markets: The success factors for market growth in the 21st century. Marshall Cavendish International Asia Pte Ltd.

Ratajczak-Mrozek, M. (2017). Network Embeddedness: Examining the Effect on Business Performance and Internationalization. Cham: Springer.

Wickham, P. A. (2006). Strategic Entrepreneurship. Financial Times Prentice Hall,.

Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:

Turnitin Report

Formatting

Title Page

Citation

Outline

Place an Order