Thursday, 27 April 2017

SKILLS FOR TRAVEL AND TOURISM START-UPS (SM10)

The concept of travel and tourism is very ancient from middle age. Human being wants to travel from one place to another. Some of the travel and tourism are for refreshment or fun while another can be profession or business trips. For normal people it is for fun but for the travel agent or tour guide it is for earning. The government of respective countries have focused towards the development for tourism and its destination. According to the world tourism tourism is something where people move from usual environment to a new location normally for fun. Tourism has various categories such as local, domestic, national or international. A recent report of 2016 says that tourism has become major source of income for many countries and thus it affects the economic condition of host countries. Breakout of influenza virus most of the countries’ tourism department suffered a huge loss. The topics deal with the travel and tourism for Start-up Company. Along with this it will have details discussion about skill and characteristic required to become successful enterprise and also their strength and weakness. The other two tasks will say about development of tourism and steps required for a start-up business in context with travel and tourism.

As the essay is all about a start-up company of travel and tourism so let's select an arbitrary company based on own choice. The name of that travel and tourism company will be “Let's go” and this is a fictitious company. This company will provide tourism facilities for national and international tour. The organization main motto would be to keep satisfy all the tourist will our quality of service. Of Course it's another objective will be to earn profit but at the same time will focus on service and satisfaction of customers. The company will try to give quality service will less price. It will also focus on giving respect and keeping good relation with the tourist. This arbitrary company will also pay attention towards health and safety of the tourist. The company will also try to preserve the cultural art and dignity of the country such as handicrafts, monuments and natural resources. It will even try to raise or donate funds for the welfare and development of the tourist destination. This organization will try to offer air tickets for LCC and offline carriers. For tourist guidance this arbitrary company will also pay attention towards health and safety of the tourist. The company will also try to preserve the cultural art and dignity of the country such as handicrafts, monuments and natural resources. And help it will have a 24/7 helpline number. If possible it will have connection with the tourism ministry of respective countries.
Figure 1: Logo of let’s go
(Source: Ibrahim and Lucky, 2014, p.125)

Every human being requires some skill to continue their individual life smoothly. When the matter is related to entrepreneur, then they require a special type of skills. But this skill varies from organization to organization (Ibrahim and Lucky, 2014, p.125). A start-up or establishing company of travel and tourism requires skills which could help the company to improve its position and also to earn more profit. Other objectives of this entrepreneur is to keep the customer satisfy and also to give tough competition to competitors. Some the skills are as follows:
     Discipline: One of the most important skills required for entrepreneurship. This skill helps to overcome hurdle, set plans and to design strategy to achieve those plans. A successful entrepreneur is always disciplined and focus towards their goals.
     Confidence: For making organization successful it is very important to have confidence to achieve that objective and to make organization a successful one. The confidence helps to increase the efficiency in business (Mohammed and Obeleagu-Nzelibe, 2014, p.25). This skill is basically for the knowledge of the business.
     Competitive: Skill to compete other business as no one can do job better than them. Participation in business should always for giving tough competition to the competitors. An entrepreneur competitive skill to improve business help to have competition in the market.
     Creative: It is very necessary for an entrepreneur to be creative and to adopt strategy to make organization successful. This skill helps to have good relation with unconnected events.
     Time management: An entrepreneur should know the value of time. One should always fix to one job at a time until the job meet its goal. A start-up business requires minimum 8 hours of work per day.
     Sales: Entrepreneur should have the quality to increase the sale of an organisation. As ultimate motto of a company is to increase sale.
     Leadership: The most important skill is leadership as this help organization to manage and control all the staffs. These skills even help in production and service.

Strength of an entrepreneur is as follows:
     Risk taker: Entrepreneur is the person who takes all the risk of an enterprise. He personally bears all the financial, management and production risk. If company fails he is the only person who will bear all the loss. So it's a big courage to take all this risk.
     Business oriented: An entrepreneur is always focused on business and growth of organization. His full attention is on goals, objective, profits and production of the enterprise (Grant, 2016, p.45).
     Determination: The strength to be determined or focus upon certain thing is very important. The entrepreneur is fully determine about his goals and objective and also tries to achieve them.
     Creative thinking: The biggest of all strength is this particular point as this help the person to be creative minded and always try to do something new and unique. This thinking always brings profit to the organization.
Weakness of an entrepreneur is as follow:
     Depend on other: Most an entrepreneur is the master of an organization so he depends on other for the outcome. He only gives order and hopes to achieve target with the help of others. The real contribution is not provided by the entrepreneur (Phillips and Pittman, 2014, p.124).
     Poor administration skills: Most of the entrepreneur does not possess administrative skill so an organization needs to have a good administrative department. As entrepreneur is the master so he does not focus on these areas.
     Lack of time management: Entrepreneur does not have quality to manage time according to the requirement so he ends up in wasting time doing useless things. Hence enterprise faces all the loss.
A personal action plan is something which is related to the objectives of business that is solid. There are various strategies which would help to be successful entrepreneur can be through above mentioned skills and strength (Ibrahim and Lucky, 2014, p.125). All the required steps and process are to be obtained and complete them, division of work according to the capability and lastly work according to the goals of the organization. 

This task needs to take two travel and Tourism Company of UK. The selected two enterprises are Thomas cook and Travel stop. Bothe the company deals with holiday package, flight tickets, cruise and vacation. The details development of the selected two companies is as follows:
Thomas cook: This is a British company founded by Thomas Cook. He was born in the year 1808. The person is very famous because he founded the first travel agency named as Thomas cook & son. According to Lall et al. (2016, p.56), the first trip begins with the 500 people from Leicester Campbell to Loughborough. After few years Thomas cook arrange a party and travel from Leicester to Liverpool. In the very next year he took 350 people from Leicester to Scotland. Thus gradually his travel agency business grew up. In the year 1851 he took 150,000 people to London for exhibition. The office of Thomas cook also contain a shop where essential travel related accessories were been sold. By 1888 the organization had opened its own office all around the world.
Travel stop: The agency was established in the year 1991, aims to provide travel agency service to tourist. The agency hopes to fulfil the expectation of the customers and to go beyond that expectation. This agency started with a small school trips but gradually it enlarged. Presently company have a strong connection all around the globe. It even have own office in most of the countries. It always thinks about the customers and select right trips for them. Agency believes in caring, independency and honesty (E. Dobbs, 2014, p.68). The company have potential to give information beyond Google. Above mentioned points are the main factors for the development of the enterprise.
Porter’s five forces would help to get the answer more clearly:
     Fear from new entrants: every business organization has competition in the market. Thomas cook and Travel stop also have fear from entry of new travel agency in the market. This entrant would affect their business and customers would be diverted.
     Threat of substitutes: The service or product that are been provided by Thomas cook and Travel stop could be provided by some other company (Shaul and Tauber, 2013, p.80). This would be a big threat for the enterprise. Price of product can bring threat from substitute.
     Supplier’s bargaining power: When there is many service provider then bargaining power of supplier increases. Presence of single supplier could also increase bargaining power.
     Bargaining power of buyer or customer: Entry of substitutes bring bargaining power in customers. As they will have many option so they will bargain with price of the service.
     Competitors: Tough competition among the present competitors brings rivalry among the enterprise. Thus this will affect sale of product.
Figure 2: Porter’s five force
(Source: Shaul and Tauber, 2013, p.80)
There are various factors which are responsible for the success of an enterprise. But sometimes it varies from enterprise to enterprise. Some important factors are as follows:
     Growth:  As per Armenski et al. (2015, p.60), growth of an enterprise has a deep relationship with the success. Expansion or growth gives success to the organization. If we look at the above mentioned enterprise Thomas cook or Travel stop then we could understand the real meaning of growth. The enterprise expanded or grew from local to national and then to international. Growth of an enterprise is unstable procedure with no problem.
     Competitors: Competition has its own advantage along with some disadvantage. Giving best for the competition brings ultimate success to the enterprise. Day by day travel competition among the travel agency is increasing.
     Opportunities: Opportunities always gives chance to compete with the competitors. This competition would give a positive outcome in form of success. Report says that chance or opportunities always gave success to travel and tourism enterprise.
     Trends: Travel agencies need to adopt the current trends as most of the people wish to take short vacation rather than taking a long one. Enterprise needs to change their strategy and planning according to the trends (E. Dobbs, 2014, p.68). This would help to attract more customers and thus enterprise would get success. Hence proved that trends could give success to enterprise.
     New technology: An enterprise needs to keep itself updated with the current technology. Travel enterprise needs to keep itself attached to the social networking site and application. This would help to gain attention of customers. Advertisement in Facebook, twitter and YouTube would be much benefited to the enterprise. Thus increase in customer would give more sales. Hence enterprise will achieve its success.

Every enterprise needs financial support for smooth functioning and operation. Travel and tourism enterprise needs huge amount of financial help. Support can come from any direction and in any form. Smooth operation of this enterprise is possible only with the support of following sources. The sources are as follows:
     Ministry of Tourism: All most every country possesses this ministry department. The primary aim of this ministry is to develop the tourism industry and to attract more tourists to the host country. Ministry of tourism (MOT) do not supply funds for tourism but have a scheme named as tourism demand subsidy scheme (Roberts et al. 2014, p.87). Main aim is to motivate the small industries to invest funds for development of infrastructure. MOT is providing $28 million for 4 year aims at developing and overcoming barrier of tourism. Each new project related to tourism will be helped by government up to 50% of total expenditure.
     Private funding: Tourism industry gets financial help from seed capital, venture capital, private equity, loans and leasing. When industry is started then it get help from seed capital. Venture capital provides funds for long term. When individual or private enterprise invests funds for the development are related to private equity. Loans are been provided from banks to the tourism enterprise for the purpose of development and establishing the business. Leasing is something where a company signs contract to provide all necessary equipment at affordable price.
     International agency: Agencies like IBRD, IDA, IFC, TFCI provides funds for the development of tourism industry. International bank for reconstruction and development supply funds to the developing nation for purpose of development (Frank, 2014, p.105). International development association provides funds to the poorest countries for improvement. All this funding are been used by the tourism industry for the development.

As the selected company let’s go is on its starting stage so it needs to give good service in the field of tourism. The company’s main focus is on the low scale people and hopes to fulfil their dream. The company will have various problem related to finance, management and competition but still it need to focus on its goals. Some goals of the company are as follows:
1.    Attract a equity revenue of $300,00.
2.    Have its own website and web service.
3.    Good quality of service.
4.    24/7 helpline customer service
5.    Satisfy the customer.
6.    Earn profit from end of 2018.

Market analysis states that current generation people like to travel from one place to another. Most of the people focus on short trips rather than long trips once in a year (Rachet, 2014, p.147). Company will even focus on the strategy of its competitors along with the process to overcome them. SWOT analysis helps to understand the market.
     Strength: The selected company let’s go understand the travel and sector very nicely. It have own contact with the people of attractive location. Experience team is a part of the company.
     Weakness: As it is a start-up company so its weak point is that customer won’t trust the company. It has lack of financial support.
     Opportunities: As the company is providing same quality of service with fewer prices so it has big opportunities to attract more customers. The current market support tourism industry very much (McKeever, 2016, p.110). 
     Threats: As this is a armature company so it will face problem to compete other. Tourism is a very tough industry and has many competitors.

Image result for swotImage result for swotswot-graphic.jpg
Figure 3: SWOT analysis
(Source: Burgess et al. 2015, p.123)
 Target customers will be basically people who love to travel. The primary age group will be the youths and the retired people. These two groups have leisure time so they can go for trips and tours. Next target will be the customers who have low income and low living standard.

A business plan is something which has full description of business. In details it will deal with product service, market, price, finance, human resource and infrastructure. In another word it deals about the past and present condition of the company and this also help to determine the future of the company. There are various reason for preparing business plans and plans are been read by commercial bank, private investment funds, development funds and private investors (Burgess et al. 2015, p.123). Business plans is been prepared by the chief executive officer, marketing and sales managers, development managers and financial managers. The business plans for selected enterprise “Let’s go” needs to have following steps. They are as follows:
     Assessing the situation of the market: This will deals others opinion on the chosen enterprise. This will help to know the current position of the company.
     Develop a mission: Before going in further details with the business plans a clear mission is to be identified. This will motivate the shareholders, employee and the customers.
     Getting ready: After selecting a mission it is needed to get ready to achieve that mission. The mission of let’s go is to promote tourism wit5h good quality of service in low price. Collect all the required members who will help to achieve those goals.
      Setting goals: Goals will help the company to have a good future in the field of travel and tourism. The goals will be time bound and measurable (E. Dobbs, 2014, p.68).
     Working for plans: Main focus would be on the sale, development and service. Let’s go will pay attention towards this entire factor so that it can have a smooth functioning.
     Employee roles: The whole task of company needs to be divided among all the employees. This will help to complete the task in less time. Sales and production manager will give details about individual roles.
     Monitoring process: The last stage of business plan is to monitor and notice whether all the steps are in proper operation or not.  

The entire requirement are been fulfilled with full details. Improvement or development in tourism industry is at high peak. People desired for travelling is increasing. The start up company let’s go would be a very successful one if it follows above mentioned plans and strategy. According to the world tourism tourism is something where people move from usual environment to a new location normally for fun. Tourism has various categories such as local, domestic, national or international. A recent report of 2016 says that tourism has become major source of income for many countries and thus it affects the economic condition of host countries. This arbitrary company will also pay attention towards health and safety of the tourist. The company will also try to preserve the cultural art and dignity of the country such as handicrafts, monuments and natural resources. It will even try to raise or donate funds for the welfare and development of the tourist destination.

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