Introduction
A report following a global study of 44,000 people in the tourism sector by TripBarometer Connected Traveller report states that China is among the few top ten nations with connected travellers and categorises 49% of the Asians as connected travellers as most of them use a PC or mobile for booking trips . TravelBurma App targets the Chinese travellers, local business travellers, and other foreign travellers in the age group of 21-50 years. As Myanmar is a business district unit, people often prefer travelling there than any other part of China. During the year 2015, more than 4.68 million tourists visited Myanmar.
Services and Features of the App
Users can download this app and install it on their smartphones. It allows the user to register to the app using Google or Facebook accounts, who can then access their profile for information about accommodation and restaurants within the area that they travel. The app has extensive contextual help available, utilises simple language, and content available offline and online by using a switch in the settings. It has an interface with a professional map to guide the users to reach their destinations. It provides taxi-booking option, airline ticketing option, one-click travel arrangement, provides history and other relevant information about the local area, allows trip planning without using travel agents, and help in visa processing. The app has the ability to send a postcard directly from the app, allows changes to the itinerary, and provides basic translation facility.
Day-to-day Operations of TravelBurma App
Opening Procedures for TravelBurma include opening the office, getting the system ready, switching on the PCs and servers, checking for messages on the answering machines and attend to them, checking the social media for queries and complaints and answer them, update any required details on the website such as availability of accommodation, tickets, and other assets. The staff should inspect the status of fire prevention equipment regularly. Other things that the staff should check regularly are insurance policy status and any other documents that have expiry dates. The staff should check the network status reports for any issues and resolve them according to their priority. During the operations, the employees must follow the environment policy of the company. This might include following the water usage, energy usage, and recycling methods that the TravelBurma management had already decided. They should also follow all the security requirements such as locking doors and escorting visitors. They should follow procedures for use of equipment to control misuse.
Organization Structure
Currently, the owners and partners will manage the TravelBurma app. They will use functional organisational structure so that people will focus on their prime area of expertise. As the organisation grows, the organisation structure will become more formal with new employees becoming supervisors or subordinates.
Vision
TravelBurma app focuses on the convenience of the customer. Whether the customer is a business traveller or a holiday traveller, TravelBurma focuses on continuous improvement of customer experience throughout the customers’ journey and is the one stop shop for all customer’s travel needs.
Mission
TravelBurma Apps mission and passion is to share the experiences of Burma with all travellers. TravelBurma measures its success by the number of visitors who return repeatedly, who encourage their friends and family to travel to Burma using the app, and who act as the apps brand ambassadors. We are deeply committed to creating the benchmark in service excellence in offering travel services in Burma and offer the best and innovative programs at the most competitive prices.
The daily operations involve many facets. By managing service quality, the TravelBurma can practice continuous improvement, making their services targeted, reduce its costs, and provide a better service. Tourism depends on cooperative alliances and partnerships between various sections of the tourism industry and hence is important. Forward planning is necessary for crisis management hence it is important.
Procedures for Service Quality Management
The TravelBurma App management wants to incorporate service quality into every part of the business. This will enable them to do customer relationship marketing (CRM) and loyalty management. The app should be able to gather information about a prospective customer and his or her purchase preferences so that TravelBurma can build a relationship.
It is necessary that TravelBurma is able to deliver trouble free quality program to be successful, which requires careful planning. The tourism business works on wafer thin margins, therefore, the business must keep the overheads low. In the early stages of the business, outsourcing some tasks, participating in professional development activities of appropriate trade organisations, local and regional tourism associations is necessary. This will help the organisation in making contacts with other industry peers and partners and provide vital leads for business development.
As a first step towards service quality management, the organisation must write a mission statement, which ensures that everybody in the organisation agrees about the purpose of its existence. The next step is to determine the customer satisfaction dimension (CSD) using direct customers, indirect or surrogate customers, or prior research. Surrogate customers are employees who interact closely with the customers. After obtaining CSDs using the three sources and prioritising them, the organisation can decide which activities need its focus and develop a strategy accordingly. It gives direction to the organisation about how to exceed the customer expectations, improve reliability and ‘Wow’ factor, and recover from any mistakes.
TravelBurma must plan thoroughly and carefully for negotiating with the suppliers. The company must develop contingency arrangements for as many anticipated problems as possible, develop a management process for coordinating and dealing with those problems, a process for communicating with the customer, a policy for refunds and credits to the customer, and a system to track results. TravelBurma must check every property and service included in the app before negotiating the rates. All the details must be committed to an agreement. The property should assign a person with authority to liaise with TravelBurma, and TravelBurma must be able to offer contingency in case the property is unable to provide service, which the terms and conditions of the app must state.
TravelBurma must train its customer-facing employees in customer service so that they behave properly with the customer. They must use the appropriate telephone etiquette, use the proper direction to greet a customer while answering a call and answer customer calls immediately. They must follow proper procedures while putting a customer on hold, transferring a call, taking a message, or ending a call. Staff must respond to all business emails within 12 hours. TravelBurma must perform customer research as and when required to monitor customer’s satisfaction. It can do so using the feedback feature in the app, emailed questionnaires, or through informal interviews .
Recommendations
TravelBurma must train the staff on the importance of customer service. It should train the employees about procedures on handling customers. The company must have procedures to gather customer opinions and act on them. The company must have a complaints handling system.
Procedures for Suppliers, Alliances, and Partners
Potential suppliers or partners for TravelBurma are airlines, who are both suppliers and travel trade partners), ferries, accommodations, attractions, restaurants, in-province transportation companies, outdoor adventure operators, local sightseeing operators, car rental companies, performance theatres, and festivals. TravelBurma has partnerships and alliances with tour operators, travel agencies, incentive travel wholesalers, destination management companies such as convention and meeting planners, and destination marketing organisations. These partnerships help TravelBurma in gaining competitive advantage and in providing information and expertise for travel in Myanmar, recommending destinations and products, providing assistance in securing travel documentation such as visas for the people, processing travel arrangements, and assisting the travellers in the case of refunds and cancellations.
Since tourism is an “experience” industry, tourists act as both customers and suppliers. Instead of a chain, TravelBurma acts a hub providing services to the customers. Unlike goods, the customer supplies are random but the expectations are immediate, they can be incomplete, inaccurate, unrealistic, or unprepared. Due to this, the operator has a problem with delivering the required services. TravelBurma can do what is best for both the customer as well as the company and it is advantageous for it because it is directly involved with the customer, therefore it can optimise both the supply and demand, by nature, the TravelBurma app provides directed and individualised service, therefore it is very cost effective. Usage of TravelBurma helps the company manage the productive capacity as it reduces the cost of transfer of knowledge to the customer, reducing the cost of human resources by using technology and embellish tourists’ skills to enable self-service.
Business alliances include licensing, partnerships, technology transfers, franchising, joint ventures, and others, which provides quicker access. TravelBurma should look at all these possibilities to improve the range and capacity of its services. Licensing is a possibility but franchising may not suit TravelBurma, while TravelBurma must examine the others on a case-by-case basis. Alliances provide the advantage of location, brand name, and use of existing customer base. Since TravelBurma is a start-up, it should decide whether it wants to grow its customer base using these alliances or organically. While the former is easier, it costs money and the customer base may be more loyal to the alliance partner. The problems that TravelBurma can face with these alliances are coordination, conflict in goals as they are two different organisations so there will be differences, desire for independence as all businesses want to be independent after a particular stage, and knowledge loss due to the partnership. During the partnership, they become familiar with the other’s processes. Due to this, there are not many secrets and hence competitive advantage will be lost.
Governments endorse the use of partnerships. While partnerships are good for promoting discussions, negotiation, and exchange of ideas about developing tourism, they hinder decision-making and may reduce the influence due to distrust in partners due to which they are sometimes not preferred. The groups can use the three phases of Gray’s framework in partnership development, which are 1) problem-setting, 2) direction-setting, and 3) implementation. At the end of these three phases, the stakeholders come to an understanding, they know the trade-offs they have to make and support the decision; they must ensure that their partners are on the same page, ensure that a formal organisation is in place to drive this implementation, and be aware that some financial negotiations may be involved.
Recommendations
Since there is a difference between the supply-demand situation in the tourism industry and manufacturing industry, TravelBurma must be aware of that. It should use bidirectional optimisation, management of productive capacity, and management of perishability. By using the perishable periods to train employees, TravelBurma can gain value from these activities. Strategic alliances provide benefits through which TravelBurma can gain competitive advantage.
Marketing – PR and Crisis Management
Marketing for TravelBurma includes collaborating with PMOs and DMOs, direct sales persons, and marketplaces. Since direct marketing is prohibitively expensive, it should look at other ways of effective marketing. The Internet and digital marketing, app reviews by major publications, featuring in product manuals, travel calendars, and brochures are useful for marketing. PR is about creating a good image about TravelBurma in the public. TravelBurma can provide story items to local radio and television media, running a weekly column in the local paper or other media, and using social media effectively.
Harnessing the social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, website, and blogging require having a dedicated person, who understands social media, monitoring and managing the TravelBurma page. The company should determine which platform it wants to use, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The company must document the process for handling negative comments in the social media. Liking or following other travel organisations, partners, suppliers, and alliance partners will improve awareness.
If it can afford, TravelBurma must engage an external PR team, establish a media site, establish a spokesperson, inform everybody in the company to direct their queries to the spokesperson, review and revise the statements as facts unfold, and use social media to update status proactively rather than respond to queries. The company must ensure that all the staff has a consistent response to queries and it must monitor social media for any misinformation and be prepared to issue corrections immediately.
Recommendations
TravelBurma must have a marketing strategy, a social media strategy, and a PR strategy in case of crisis. It should have a social media, blogging, website management, and YouTube media sharing strategy. This will enable them to use social media marketing effectively.
Sustainability of the Business
Brundtland, in his report to World Commission on Economic Development (WCED), coined the phrase Sustainable Development to mean “Development that meets the needs of the current generation without compromising the needs of the future”. Sustainable tourism takes into account the social, economic, and environmental effects, addressing the needs of the visitors, industry, the local community, and the environment. The three pillars of sustainability are 1) environmental protection and resource conservation, 2) social well-being and equity, and 3) economic prosperity and continuity. According to this, high-volume tourism should be as sustainable as low volume tourism. The degree of sustainability that TravelBurma should aim for is very strong eco-centric sustainability position as it is completely dependent on the tourism. Due to this, there will be a decrease in resource usage and increase in market appeal as people are more interested in sustainable travel these days. TravelBurma can reduce the resource usage by recycling and reducing the energy consumption. TravelBurma can achieve this by training its staff, suppliers, and the public as well as conducting environmental audits. This is necessary, as it will reduce the costs, satisfies the demand from the customers, improves TravelBurma’s image, and reduces its impact on the environment. It increases market appeal as the customers have become more environmentally aware and are willing to pay extra. They can involve the community by recycling waste materials, reducing water usage, training locals, using local sustainable products, conserving wildlife, and cultural values.
TravelBurma can use indicators for sustainable tourism so that it can ensure the protection of resources. These include carrying capacity related to the ecological, physical, and related to the facility, social, and economic, which one can determine the number of people a particular tourist site can carry without damaging the environment and reducing the customer experience. To manage the visitor experiences, it can use metrics such as limits of acceptable change (LAC), visitor impact management (VIM), and visitor experience and resource protection (VERP). TravelBurma should work with the local and state government to arrive at these objective metrics. Based on this, TravelBurma can take either direct action by regulating the visitor actions such as banning fishing, camping, and littering or indirect actions such as influence or alter the behaviour of the visitors. The ten R’s of tourism for visitors are responsibility, resist, reduce, return, repair, reuse, recycle, restore, respect and reach out.
Recommendations
TravelBurma must have an environmental sustainability policy. The company must have a training program to educate its staff, suppliers, and partners about the importance of sustainability. It should work with the local governments to set metrics and measure them regularly. It should try to change its behaviour using the three R’s and educate the visitors about the 10 R’s that they should follow to change their behaviour for environmental sustainability.
Conclusion
This operational manual provides the systematic day-to-day basic operational procedures required for TravelBurma to perform its functions. The operational manual assists the full-time, part-time, temporary, or new staff to deliver consistent service delivery. It will help everyone at the TravelBurma to know the list of tasks that the employees have to do and what procedures they should follow to complete those tasks. It helps avoid duplication of effort and costly errors by the employees.
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