Introduction
Tourism industry has been booming since last decade and people from all around the world are seeking for going to the long tours to different destinations of their choice. As a result, we can find several players into this industry that have been providing the best of the packages and services to the customers. The services seem to be modifying since the players want to provide the best services to their customers. They are introducing different schemes and offers so that the customers can buy from them easily.
And, it also seems to be a good trend of marketing and promoting such tourism packages so that the customers can know more about it. It will at least provide them with the necessary information that will guide them to plan for the tour. In addition, during festive occasions and other such events, customers can decide upon the destinations of their choice and a complete package can be selected in such cases. This report will thereby discuss upon how tourism has gained importance in the recent times. It will thereby take into consideration one of the leading tourism companies and will evaluate it from the SWOT and PESTEL Analysis perspectives.
Trafalgar tours is a company that deals in tour and travel and gives a managed and well scheduled holiday package worldwide to almost around 200 destination. The Travel Corporation is owner of the company which was established in year 1947. In Australia, Canada, China, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, and the UK and in USA it has its offices. It offers various tourism packages and even expert guides who gives complete knowledge of place that is been visited (Mathieson & Wall, 2006).
Tourism and travel have their own advantages. It broadens the mind and fills the gap between people. The travel or tourism business companies or agencies play a very important role (Lea , 2008).They take us to those places which are not stated in the guide books, to those people or tribe which we would have never visited or met and tradition of which we were not aware of. They take care that the tourist gets the complete insider view, a genuine and aggrandize experience which they would have never enjoyed alone.
Trafalgar is one among the top tourism company. Its great dedication towards its guest and passion to take them far off in the best places has helped it to achieve this height and place where it is, in the past 65 years (Lea, 2008). All over the world it is one of the best trusted and successful international holiday or Tourism Company.
They are spread all over Europe to the United States, South America to South Africa. They bring forward the hidden gems; cultural highlights and beauty of place their guest visit. They help their guest to do research on the places, cities or towns they visit and enjoy the true essence of environment and places they visit (Lea, 2008).
PESTEL analysis is a part of external analysis that is done while doing research on market. It gives idea of different factors that company should consider.
Political factors: It reflects the involvement of government in the economy. The few political factors are taxes, labor law, trade restriction, environmental law etc.
Economic factors: It includes the economic growth rate, interest rate, inflation etc. These factors greatly affect the decision taken in business and how to operate them (Woods, & Schmidgall, 2005).
Social factors: It includes social factors such as health issues, population growth rate, age, employment etc. The social factors directly affect the company’s product demand and working of company.
Technological factors: Under this come the environmental and ecological factors such as R&D activity, automation, change in technological rate etc. They can identify the problems and can even find out efficient production levels.
Legal factors: Under this comes the Law discrimination, consumer law, employment law etc. These factors can determine working of a company, its cost and sale of products.
A SWOT analysis is a structured planning technique that is used to analyze the power, frailty, chances and risk in a business. SWOT analysis can be done for a product, industry or a person. It specifies the objectives of project and recognizes the internal and external factors that are useful or not useful for achieving objective.
Strengths: The current business has been performing well since it is well aware of the environmental factors. The management is able to plan the strategies for the future, in order to capture the additional market share.
Weaknesses: The business has been lacking in gaining the right direction of business due to lack of human resources and necessary expertise. It needs to quickly resolve these issues in order to achieve the desired objectives of the organization.
Opportunities: The organization has the opportunity to expand into different nations and provide the customers with different tourism packages as per their needs. It can utilize the markets of those nations, wherein tourism has not yet developed. It can thereby, become the first player to enter into this industry for such nations.
Threat: The increasing market competition and the way of providing different tourism packages has posed stiff challenges to each of the organizations in this field or industry. Every time the customers will be expecting the best in terms of packages and services, and hence, the organizations, will be required to work upon such issues at the earliest (Woods & Schmidgall, 2005).
Thus, SWOT recognition is important as it informs the next step or stage in the planning to meet the objective. There are even factors that influence the growth and development of tourism business. These are as follows:-
Environmental factors: The two main environmental factor that has helped in growth of tourism are :-
Good climate: Tourist places with good climate attract more tourists. Tourist prefer going to those places where climate is opposite to the climate of place where they live for example people from summer areas move to cooler regions.
Beautiful scenery: Along with climate, the surrounding should also be pleasing which relaxes the mind and soul of visitor. For example fresh water lakes, and beaches etc.
Socio-economic factors: The four main socio economic factors that affect the tourism growth rate are
Accessibility: It is the most important factor among the entire socio economic factor. People prefer going to only those tourist places which are easily accessible by various transportation means like roads, railways, air and water.
Accommodation: Tourist place should also have good accommodation facilities so that tourist can plan their trip accordingly and choose their accommodation type as per their budget, standard of living, and other requirements etc.
Amenities: Maintenance of tourist place also plays an important role in attracting their clients. A tourist place should have good tourist activities like fishing, surfing, safari adventure etc. Emergency facility should also be available (Woods, & Schmidgall, 2005).
Ancillary services: facilities such as banking, finance, internet facility, telecom, hospital etc. in tourist place helps in holding the tourist for a longer duration of time. And this helps in growth of local economy.
Historical and cultural factors
Tourists are attracted to places which have a historical significance and are rich in culture. People prefer going to those places which have ancient monuments, forts, kings and queens palaces etc. Examples of such places are TajMahal, Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, and Great Wall of China etc.
Religious factors
People prefer going to places rich in religious values. They visit these places in search of inner peace, to get blessings of their gods and gurus, to attain salvation before dying etc. In such cases its people faith, beliefs and emotion that encourage tourism at holy places. For example Varanasi, Amritsar in India, Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia etc.
Other factors
Other factors also come up with features that attract tourism at unexpected places. For example UFO crash site in Roswell, New Mexico (USA) attracts many visitors from all over the world. Research activities, investigation on paranormal activities in ghost town, hot-water spring, geysers etc. are also few factors which attract tourist to some extent.
The potential improvements that can be made using the analysis are as follows:
The organization need to work on the retention of the customers by specifying the attractive discounts and offers to the loyal as well as the new customers. They also need to focus on their weakness and try to maintain the service, the organization is providing to the customers. Trafalgar also seeks the opportunities well, but still need to try grabbing the festive opportunities as compared to the other tourism industries and other various customers.
The main Objectives of company are:
Margins of 10% should be maintained on all airline travel
Through internet sale of 15% should be achieved
With all the service providers national, international and all over the world a strategic alliance should be made.
Mission
A Trafalgar tour is a company which deals in tour and travel. It provides exciting and adventurous travel arrangements and attracting packages. Main mission of Trafalgar is to attain the best place in market of Pacific Northwest in field of travel and tourism and become the best service provider.
Almost all of the Trafalgar employees and owner are enthusiasts of tour, travel and outdoor adventures (Jian, 2011). They are even seasoned travel industry professionals. Trafalgar seeks to attain connection between the new tour and travel guest and professionals with service providers, activities of adventure and housing arrangement as per clients desire, budget and skill level.
Keys to success
It efficiently divides and aims at that part of market in which huge number of travelers is present that are interested in adventures trip. It was successful in making its place and name in market as a tour and travel specialist. It effectively did its marketing through personal skills by direct contacting people and by even using communication media. It has developed its strong relation with its loyal and old customers.
Conclusion
The government and tourism company of different countries should work together for the development of tourism in their country. Various strategies should be made which forms the foundation for a long duration and well-coordinated approach for the growth of the tourism sector. The government and Tourism Company should also work on get into international trade business. They should even regular take care of tourist places and prevent them from getting damaged as it is the once of the main source which earns foreign currency.
The first step that should be initiated is collaboration between the tourism company and the government. The next step that should be taken is to work together to enhance the strategies and to set the priorities and main aim. Government of all the countries in collaboration with industries must work together to turn their plan into action (Taylor & Edgar, 2006).
Further, even the customers can provide their recommendations and opinions regarding what kind of tours they prefer and for many days they are planning for such tourism tours. They can provide their feedback so that even the tourism operators can plan tours for them. This industry is going to evolve on constant basis, and hence, we can find that, changes will come every now and then, and hence, in one way, it is better for the end customers. The tourism operators and the government agencies can collaborate and can provide the best packages and offers to their customers.
References
Lea, J., 2008. Tourism and Development in the Third World. London: Routledge.
Mathieson, & Wall, G., 2006. Tourism: Economic, Physical and Social Impacts. Longman, New York.
Taylor, S., & Edgar, D., 2006. Hospitality research: The emperor's new clothes? International Journal of Hospitality Management, 15(3), pp. 211-227.
Woods, R. H., & Schmidgall, R. S., 2005. Hospitality's influential authors: Using citation analysis to evaluate the research contributions of hospitality faculty and programs. Hospitality and Tourism Educator, 7(21), pp. 33-39.
Jian, Z., 2011. Overprovision in Chinese hotels. Tourism Management, 10(1), pp. 63-66.
