Online Travel Agency Supply Chain

* Impacts of technology e.g. on traditional operational practices for selling travel services, issuing e-tickets, offering dynamic packaging

New Frontier Touring is a tour booking agency based in Nashville, TN. They represent artists from the indie-rock, Americana, acoustic roots, folk, and jazz genres. With over 75 artists on their roster, technology is an important aspect of the company and keeping the business running. On a normal day, there are ten booking agents, two contract department workers, and at least two interns there at a time, each one on their own computer using technology.

Before the days of the Internet, if a family wanted to travel to a far-off, exotic locale, they would have to either find a local travel agent or call a travel agency and plan their getaway. In the 1990’s, the Internet became a staple of everyday life and began entering many homes. As the availability of the Internet increased, so did the services available to clients. With the increasing availability of the World Wide Web the travel industry found itself faced with revolutionizing changes. All of the tools that were once solely available to travel agents now became readily available to anyone with access to the Internet and a search engine. Websites quickly formed around the idea of providing consumers with quick vacation planning ideas at low costs. Getting

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this executive summary is to outline the outsourcing / contracting process for Travel Magazine. This process will ultimately be used to determine which business processes at Travel Magazine will be outsourced and which will remain in-house. In addition, this summary will include various vendor selection considerations, such as evaluation criteria and performance measurements, for those processes that will be outsourced.

Today’s on-line travel market is succeeding because the companies are using a more software-centric, online business model termed “E-commerce.” This has become the popular avenue for businesses as it mirrors the ideas of mobility. The sheer amount of data available, coupled with the advanced operating systems and social media platforms, have created new possibilities for E-commerce organizations. The infrastructure of E-commerce has expanded into platforms such as peer-to-peer networking, crowd-sourcing, social websites, and mobile devices and media. E-commerce trends are findings ways to incorporate every aspect of our daily lives into an online package associated with our everyday needs (Fishbein, 2013).

Senior management at Outrigger is aiming towards entering management agreements with large brands and third part owners. Online agencies such as Expedia, TripAdvisor, and Orbitz are threatening Outrigger’s ability to provide consumers information through human travel agents (Piccoli). I would recommend implementing more functionality into their web services to handle all kinds of travel requests so no revenue is lost to competitors. This would also eliminate the need for travel agents, instead replacing them with the occasional, cheap customer service employee, cutting costs as

The buyer’s power is increasing with access to online travel brokerages which automatically provide the cheapest available airfares to desired destinations, regardless of airline. These services allow

The bargaining power of buyers in the leisure & recreation industry has increased with the use of online travel booking and online customer reviews. Buyers are now able to become better informed with the services that they are purchasing and can

The success in the travel industry depends on the knowledge of the changing trend and maintaining pace with it. The company needs to respond to all technological changes with equivalent measures in order to be in line or even surpass its competitors. Focusing on the users’ and customers’ preferences, wishes, and fears, TripAdvisor will be able to enlarge its brand awareness and hence gain brand loyalty. This will be contributing to the company’s

àAs a result, the number of user-oriented travel tools on airlines’ direct Web sites increased dramatically in just a few short years. Aggregator Web sites : —  Such as Expedia.com, Orbitz.com, and Priceline.com —  A pseudo-competitive position relative to the airlines' own direct Web sites but also offered services beyond flight purchase, including hotel and vacation packages. —  The airline paid a fee to the

Of the total travel market only 1% was generated from the online travel market, and consumers still depended on customer call centers to confirm payment status. To counteract the risks it is important that Lucky Air create an effective business-consumer-business model that will do the obvious and draw consumers to their site and make an online purchase of airfare. To draw in consumers Lucky Air will need to focus on Web 2.0, which is the unique feature or features of e-commerce and the Internet coming together as applications and social media technologies. Web 2.0 will allow for a better online experience with inter-human connections, consumer interacted blogs and the staff to constantly monitor the site to provide consumer feedback. Web 2.0 is crucial to providing customer relationship management. Promoting reviews from consumers in regards to destinations and airline experience are important so the consumer can feel they are important enough to expose the truth from other consumers even negative remarks. But the single most important part of focusing on e-commerce is the ability to provide a online experience and advanced technology that enables customer self-service without the need for multiple customer call centers. Customers should be able to pay for fares, cancel fares, use a safe payment method that can verify a credit card, check on the status of flights and use rewards programs

As most travel agencies websites, Amex Web page offered the customer the possibility to research for flight only, flight with hotel, or flight with hotel and car as well as special offers for their members on hotels, vacations packages, complimentary resort stays. The commercial catch of American Express is that the web site offers customers many products with incentives and rewards with the convenience of a unique card when the travel is booked with them. An internaut can wander through the site without being registered but needs to become an American Express member to look deeper into detailed pages. The future customer has the obligation to detain one American Express cards; the gold or platinum car has an annual fee of 75 dollars, fees that can be waived for the first year as a promotion, or the blue or blue-sky card obtainable without any annual fee. Carrying an Amex card offers customary benefits to the travelers on a large array of services such as offering a no deductible and a collision damage waiver when renting a car as well as benefits in case of accidental death or dismemberment coverage with a very small premium. The web site offers a convenient one stop for reservations, planning, and payment arrangements for prestige travel around the world.

The buyers of the services of travel agencies are consumers, that is, individuals and businesses. For this industry we are dealing with a small degree of concentration, due to the wide range of services.

Past researchers have conducted studies on information technology adoption in the travel industry and found out that travel executives or managers do not have the proper

Online travel services provide the benefits of large amounts of free information, 24/7 availability and the potential for significant reductions in price.