Sta Travel Case

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

This report will consider the appropriateness of the services offered in Jetstar for leisure travelers in its discussion, and will draw a conclusion on how certain concepts of these strategies can be utilized by managers at JS. Also, the interpretation of the different product strategies JS can implement. Lastly, the report will provide recommendations that could be implemented by JS for improvement to better understand the buyer’s characteristics.

The airline industry has long attempted to segment the air travel market in order to effectively target its constituents. The classic airline model consists of First Class, Business Class and Economy, and the demographics that make up the classes have both similarities and differences to the other classes. For instance there may be similarities between business class travellers on a particular flight, but they will not all be travelling for the same reason. An almost-universal characteristic of air travel is that customers do not fly for the sake of flying; the destination is the important element and the travel is a by-product, a means-to-an-end that involves the necessity of an aircraft that gets the customer from point A to point B.

Multiple alternatives have surfaced for Kootenay including facility expansion, financing and channel distribution. These opportunities can assist Kootenay to address the growing demand in Canada and North American for high-quality customized frame bicycle market.

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

Airlines are now able to expand their outreach directly to consumers through e-commerce. For example, airlines like Qantas are able to introduce ticketless travel through the use of technology (Thompson and Gamble, 2012).

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).

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

How ? ü  Built systems for external use by travel agents to search and book flights for customers ü  Established direct-to-consumer sales portals via the Internet. ü  The adoption of e-tickets Airlines' direct Web sites provided a number of services : —  The ability to purchase flights, which made them attractive destinations for travelers performing their own Web searches. —  These Web sites housed full flight schedules for the airline, real-time information on flight arrival/departure times, fleet information, and customer loyalty programs.

The World Travel Organization predicts that it will triple in size by the year 2020, becoming one of the largest industries in the world. This growth will provide many employment opportunities for people with the right qualifications.

The current CEO, of TARDIS Travel has requested this report on the 20th October 2014. The purpose of this report is to investigate TARDIS Travels business practices and the current practices of the online travel industry and to recommend how TRADIS Travel might best make a successful transition into this environment. This will be done by investigating online business models to identify a suitable model for TARDIS Travel. It will then identify and discuss a suitable marketing and promotion strategy and discuss the benefits and challenges of the recommended strategy for TARDIS Travel. Continuing on to developing a wireframe of the proposed website showing how it will present to potential customers. It will also describe and discuss the implementations of the legal and ethics issues that might arise in conducting this business online. While explaining the technology infrastructure, including the hardware requirements, that would be required. Next it will identify and explain the purpose and function of the type of software that would be suitable for TARDIS Travel, while identifying the advantages and challenges of taking this organisation online. Overall, the goal of this report is to give TARDIS Travel a clear recommendation for the organisations online initiative.

Distribution had always been costly process for the tourism industry until technology was introduced. Technological development in the tourism industry of distribution systems consists of three main stages from the evolution and development of airline reservation systems (ARS), computer reservation systems such as SABRE and global distribution systems (GDS) that are now currently in place. The roles of these distributors and stages will be assessed. The impacts of the growth and development of distribution via the internet causes global distribution system companies to create changes in their business models to adapt to the evolution of new technology.

The travel industry has evolved though history. As the travel industry developed and grew, so did the use of Management Information Systems. Today, the travel industry is global, and technology is capable of processing, storing, and facilitating travel with a large amount of flexibility and in a short amount of time. However, the travel industry was not always this way. As the industry has adapted, challenges have been overcome through the advancement of management information systems.

“Hotel operators and OTAs (online travel agents) have often been in competition in recent years. Yet they often share common strategic aims and by 2015 we are going to see amore collaborative approach to achieving common benefits.” (Hospitality 2015: Game changers or spectators, Deloitte, 2010)

This case study analyzes the impact of online reservation and e-commerce in the Air Travel industry. It focuses mainly on the United States, and displays the various evolutions that will lead an industry that was mainly ruled by very knowledgeable people and hardly accessible to the masses to becoming an open market where most, if not all of the information concerning the prices and services offered are “transparently” displayed. This case depicts the reason behind the long lasting success of the SABRE system. The main reason being that SABRE is an evolving set of systems that altogether are able to create a competitive advantage for American Airlines. The airline company was able to keep this competitive advantage for many decades, only because of their continual technical and product innovation. The SABRE system embodies the changes that the travel agent industry has suffered in the past. As the case points out: “continual evolution itself is not the success factor, but the combination of evolution with opportunistic exploitation of the opportunities offered by the industry environment” might be the key to it. At first, airlines were offering their services to travel agents via some reservation systems that were complicated to understand and utilize. This led the industry to be very segmented because the travel agents would basically become specialized in one or the other airlines’ system, thus making their life more complicated and their profit lower. On top of that,