Tourism is an economic, cultural and social phenomenon which involves the migration of peoples for a short period of time to an outside place or countries outside their home. More than nine million peoples visited Australia for a single year ending August 2018. According to the international Visitor survey published by the TRA (Tourism Research Australia), international visitors spends more than forty two billion in this year to June 2018 which sets a new record as it rises up 5% from the last year (“Tourism Statistics: International Visitor Spend – Tourism Australia”, 2018). It is clear from the above statics that tourism is a lucrative industry and huge amount of revenue can be gained from the industries with optimal strategies. As the potential of earning is growing in this industries, several new company has been introduced in last 20 years and the competition is also growing as well.
The evolution of technology along with the adoption of such technologies is rapidly changing the typical business process of industries and assist them to gain competitor advantages. Internet has become a daily aspect of the human life and used by industries as well to enhance the business along with customer experience. In the tourism industries mobile application, mobile website and hybrid web application are playing vital role which are eventually used by both young and old visitors as well. TOURIZM is a Sydney based medium size Travel Company with several offices in each state and capital cities where tourism is a major income source for the regions. TOURIZM want to focus on their customer base, especially on old and wealthy visitors with disposable income. The use of ICT can be very beneficial to achieve their goal. The further part of the report will discuss about the several ICT technologies and recommendation will be given which will suits their business needs.
High speed and effective ICT software application and infrastructure has been crucial for the tourism industry and most of the companies in the tourism industries utilizes ICT to combine the supply chain management and customer management relations for providing various facility such as payment, tracking, fulfilment, booking and support. All the functions can be used with one tool with easy usability which makes this approach very useful to provide enhanced visitor experience and effective management services as well. The ICT has a huge impact on the industry and that led to change in supply and demand. The higher demand of personalized options, quality of information, flexibility can be considered as consequences of ICT use (Bethapudi, 2013). Technologies such as mobile websites, mobile application and hybrid web applications are the most popular and adopted by billions of people which are also use by tourism industries to strengthened their brand image and communicate directly with their customers by enabling the optimal communication and functionalities or promoting new package through social media.
Mobile applications are a type of application which designed to operate on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. This applications are embedded with the same functionality as pcs application. On the other hand, mobile websites increase the functionality of mobile phones and exercise the control over their interaction with organisations. Mobile websites are very effective with the external mobile functionality such as QR code scanner, two dimensional bar codes and sensing scanners (Watson, McCarthy & Rowley, 2013). A hybrid application (hybrid app) is combination of both web and native applications. Web applications are generalized for multiple platforms and not installed locally but made available over the Internet through a browser. Native applications are developed for a specific platform and installed on a computing device. Hybrid apps are often mentioned in the context of mobile computing. These can be used different type of operating system. Currently, android and ios are the most popular operating system in mobile devices. More than 2 billion people uses smart phones all over the world and the number is rapidly growing day by day(“Number of smartphone users worldwide 2014-2020 | Statista”, 2018).
The impact of the digital transformation is evident in most of the sectors and tourism industry is no expectation where such technology is also changing to cater to different market segments. The era of physical booing and travel agencies are outdated because of the effectiveness of such technologies providing various facility such as payment, tracking, fulfilment, booking and support effectively. A recent survey conducted by the eMarketer identified that travel based applications are listed 7th most downloaded categories and more than 60% users favour the travel apps for planning their leisure tours (Schegg & Stangl, 2017). There are hundreds of applications and websites for travel, some of them are listed below.
Kayak
Kayak is travel booking website which is available in all over 30 countries along with 18 languages. Kayak.com is the URL of the website and they also have mobile based application which provide useful functionality to search and book several travel sites from online travel agencies to hotel, car rental and airline. It is a noticeable mention as this application is constantly updating and recently rolled out the ability to search for hotels and flights via Slack (chat service for business).
Airbnb
Airbnb is the most popular website for booing household at a cheaper price. This application offer several households at very small price point along with more authenticate experience by allowing stay with locals and share their culture as well. This website also offers to book travel guide and developing to an all in one travel app.
Sydney’s Living History
When exploring a new place, it is pretty much impossible to know about every little information about the restaurants, events and pubs. Unlike Airbnb and kayak which are used for booking hotels and airlines, Sydney’s Living History provides significant details of hotels, events and tourist places that visitors may otherwise walk past without a second thought. It provides lists along with images, map and transportation details as a “fun fact”, highlighted in red, for users not into the fine detail. This application is available in android, ipad and iphone.
Intro Travel
It is a traveling based company based on Sydney. Introtravel.com is the url of their website where they showcase their previous travels along with blogs. They also provide travel insurance as well.
The tourist industry in Australia is in growth stage and has a high potentiality to grow and equipped with the number of tourist destinations to attract domestic and international tourists. TOURIZM can earn huge amount of profit and customer base if utilized optimal strategies. From the above discussion it is clear that ICT plays a vital role for promoting, integrating and building brand loyalty in Australian tourism (Ramos & Rodrigues, 2017). The strategy to attract more old visitors is a highly effective business plan which could increase their customer level along with loyalty level. In order to achieve the business plan ICT will play a vital role and the implementation of such technology will increase the profitability. Some possible technology implementation to attract potential older visitors is described below.
TOURIZM has their website which allow them to showcase their value proposition along with booking and support details. Nowadays, most of the company uses mobile application along with website. There are several advantages of having a mobile application over website. It is even easier to use a mobile application comparing to the website for old peoples as it provides easy functionality and customization which are preferred by the users. A mobile application also assist to gather the data from the user’s devices which can be used as insights to evaluate the popularity area, customers prefer action and satisfaction level. Effective design of website and application is also necessary along with optimal usability. The website and mobile application could be embedded with feedback functionality along with the previous travel experience of older peoples as well. Along with such functionality they could provide loyalty offer to the potential old visitor as well (Ashari, Heidari & Parvaresh, 2014). There are several advantages of using such mobile applications and website which are followed:
One Stop Solution: A web application can provide everything in a single travel portal such as information of sightseeing, car rentals, hotel booking, ticket booking and shopping along with real time weather update.
Excellent CMS: it is very much useful to gain useful insights about users preference and also capable of maintaining and managing all contents on the portal at same time.
Key Functionality:
Disadvantage and Risks: Embedding multiple functionality in a single application could be difficult and expensive as well. It is also possible that older peoples would not be able to use all of the functionality with a complex interface which could not be avoided due to the high-end functionalities.
TOURIZM can used AI to assist the older customers and address their quarries as well. Machine Learning, Chat Bots or Travel Bots and Robots can provide effective functionalities. . Thanks to AI, operations which usually require human intervention and a lot of time to learn new skills, can be automated, thus speeding up processes, while improving quality and performance, and decreasing costs (Gretzel et al., 2015). Online chat bots have already proved their merits when it comes to bringing in business and providing customer support. Both of these are factors that the tourism industry heavily relies on. Most of the travel apps can be seen as bloatware. Many potential visitors complains about the functionality of travel apps as different apps provides different niche. For instance, one application provides the real time weather updates and other for booking hotel and restaurant (Mariani et al., 2014). Using several application is a time consuming task and it will also use huge storage of smart devices as well. It is also often found that, visitors want to personalize their journey rather utilizing the plan trip provide by travel company.
Advantage: can be very useful to provide a cleaner alternative. AI makes it possible for travellers to receive notifications, updates and promotional offers, without downloading separate apps for each of the services they’ll be using during their trip. Conversations with travel AI bots are refreshingly different (Aramendia-Muneta & Ollo-Lopez, 2013). Someone interested in exploring a new city can just head to the chat window and ask a question like, “What are the 10 best things to do in <City>?”
Disadvantage: The implementation of such technology is very expensive and always need an expert to be able to manage and monitor the technology. Software programs need regular upgrading to adapt to the changing business environment and, in case of breakdown, present a risk of losing code or important data. Other disadvantages of the AI is follow:
A travel process management application can be very beneficial for older visitors. It will assist the company to achieve several goal, it can be used to use process redesign methodologies to streamline these processes and lower their cost as well. (sometimes, processing an airline ticket request or a cash advance costs more than 50$) it can also be used to start collecting consolidated data, enforce policies and leverage technology. With the help of such technology future discount can be negotiated with suppliers on the other side (Leung et al., 2013). The workflow system would be utilized internally to socialize expense reports and travel requests around the organization.
It is highly recommended to utilize the first two approaches as these could assist TOURIZM to attract more customer and earn huge amount of revenue. There are several advantages of having a mobile application over website as anything and everything can be housed and provided by a single Travel Portal – ticket booking, hotel booking, car rentals, and sightseeing, insurance, and even travel related shopping along with real time weather update. Additionally, AI and business process management application can be very useful to provide multiple effective functionality which will assist them to extend their customer base.
Conclusion:
From the above discussion it can be concluded that TOURIZM can achieve their business goals by implementing such technologies. The impact of digital transformation is evident in all industries and sectors, and the tourism industry is no exception where technology has disrupted the old order of things and completely reinvented the ways to explore traveling. The implementation of ICT in tourism has been a common practice which changing to cater to different market segments. The evolution of technology along with the adoption of such technologies is rapidly changing the typical business process of industries and assist them to gain competitor advantages. Internet has become a daily aspect of the human life and used by industries as well to enhance the business along with customer experience. In this report several approaches are discussed which are used by several company. In order to compete with others and construct an effective customer base, implementation of some ICT is mandatory which are recommended as well.
References:
Tourism Statistics: International Visitor Spend – Tourism Australia. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.tourism.australia.com/en/markets-and-stats/tourism-statistics/international-visitor-spend.html
Watson, C., McCarthy, J., & Rowley, J. (2013). Consumer attitudes towards mobile marketing in the smart phone era. International Journal of Information Management, 33(5), 840-849.
Number of smartphone users worldwide 2014-2020 | Statista. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartphone-users-worldwide/
Bethapudi, A. (2013). The role of ICT in tourism industry. Journal of Applied Economics and Business, 1(4), 67-79.
Schegg, R., & Stangl, B. (2017, January). Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2017. In Proceedings of the International Conference in Rome, Italy.
Leung, D., Law, R., Van Hoof, H., & Buhalis, D. (2013). Social media in tourism and hospitality: A literature review. Journal of travel & tourism marketing, 30(1-2), 3-22.
Ramos, C. M., & Rodrigues, P. M. (2013). The importance of ICT for tourism demand: A dynamic panel data analysis. In Quantitative methods in tourism economics (pp. 97-111). Physica, Heidelberg.
Mariani, M., Baggio, R., Buhalis, D., & Longhi, C. (Eds.). (2014). Tourism Management, Marketing, and Development: Volume I: The Importance of Networks and ICTs (Vol. 1). Springer.
Ashari, H. A., Heidari, M., & Parvaresh, S. (2014). Improving SMTEs’ business performance through strategic use of information communication technology: ICT and tourism challenges and opportunities. International Journal of Academic Research in Accounting, Finance and Management Sciences, 4(3), 1-20.
Aramendia-Muneta, M. E., & Ollo-Lopez, A. (2013). ICT Impact on tourism industry. International Journal of Management Cases, 15(2), 87-98.
Gretzel, U., Sigala, M., Xiang, Z., & Koo, C. (2015). Smart tourism: foundations and developments. Electronic Markets, 25(3), 179-188.
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