Category: Free Essays

Information and communication technology is the new style of doing business in a useful method. This method was using since 1930s. in past 15 years this system have followed by various industries such as retail, banking, telecommunication, government, tourism etc This method covers huge series of applications like internet, wireless, Digital Cameras Wi-Fi, VIOP, GPS, Digital Radio, etc. all the industries are trying to apply this method from one way or the other to develop their business performance. in an article they have mentioned (“daily telegraph IT”) that majority of organizations will not 24hrs without the help of ICT

This growth was expected and this made the work easier and faster. This is the main reason why outsourcing of work start. The cost of making was condensed and so was the cost of goods. This technical development has removed the national limits and helped various industries to go worldwide, thus mix markets as well as market across the world.

This rapid growth in the technology has lead to the concept of E-Business and E-Commerce. With e-business there are various advantages due to the presence of global audience, online transaction, etc. This is playing a major role in reshaping the tourism sector across the world. This concept of ICT has brought people much closer to the tourism service providers. Now, customers do most of their holiday or travel plans online. Many tourism companies are adopting this technology.

The tourism sector being one of the traditional sectors it was not a smooth ride in taking up this technological advancement. Many small could not afford this kind of investment. They had to terminate a lot of workers as after this advancement there was minimal response to the traditional high street travel agencies. Although physical services are the core products of industry, it is dominated by information systems. (Shankar, 2008)

ICT for business and the travel industry in particular:

Information technologies have made high changes in the environment by using the new technologies in business. Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) can provide powerful planning and planned tools for organizations when properly applied and used can bring more advantages for promoting and strengthening their competitiveness. The increase of the Internet, as a main stream communication media and as an info-structure for business dealings has a high range of designed implications for businesses and for the travel and airline industries mainly

ICT revolutionized business processes and practices

The current ICT developments have vast implication for the business, structure. And plan of organizations. The computation of future market will leads to a great extent and it will depend both such as development and purpose of these technologies. The creation of the World Wide Web will forces most of the organizations will make to re think about two things i.e.,

In which they are performing their business.

How they can re-engineer their business methods.

The business can be performed more efficiently by system, by facing so many new opportunities and challenges. ICTs contribute towards good organization, output and competitiveness development of both inter-organizational and intra-organizational systems.

The affiliation between ICTs and competitive advantage and their performance is still vague. Even though there is an indirect and complex sporty relationship between ICTs and success, it is difficult to be measure and describe. Technologies have already developed a wide range of functions including business functions, external environment monitoring, communicating with associates and with clients in high level. Clear planned goals and obligation are basics for the growth of a proper ecommerce plan and the growth of web sites and other technological solution. The growing mobile technologies and mobile business are estimated to modify severely a number of industries and to force business to think again about their strategic management.

ICT in the travel and tourism industries

The main function of travel and tourism industries is run by ICT. The internet will allows them to demonstrate their products clearly and they can communicate easily with the customers. Intranets will provide friendly environment access for employees of organization , extranet will shows authorized partners with the ability to use computer information to operate through online, so many internal management applications shows the planning and operational management and marketing of travel organization.

ICTs support all business functions and are critical for operating in the travel industry as a worldwide. Few other industries rely on so many partners to work together directly for delivering their products and few other value chains are as involved as the one for travel. ICTs provide the tools to look for important and profitable place market segments, to identify their value added components

Cost success and suppleness are serious assets contribute by ICTs in this process, as they help the cost decrease and make best use of effectiveness. The power of ICTs on travel business is enveloping, as information is serious for both day-to-day operations as well as the planned management of organizations. On the strategic level, travel organizations have to constantly assess for all elements of their outside surroundings, as well as their opposition and customer requirements, and so, adapt themselves in order to improve their competitiveness.

Using ICTs, tourism organization can make a distinction their product customizing the final product and by adding value according to person supplies. ICTs support the strategic management of travel business by allowing long-term result making and by providing a platform for teamwork and dealings between associates. ICT will help the complete industry to operate by empowering internal procedure, coordinating partners, as well as by interact with future travelers and the general public. As a result, the recent ICT developments have develop the entire system and have thoughtful implications for both the strategic and planned management of travel organizations. Most important that they have severely changed the industry structure and polluted the competitiveness of all players in the market.

Airlines and the Internet revolution

Internet was introduced in 1990’s and due to the development of intranet and extranet have forced on airlines to make a changes in their panning on technical improvement in order to enhance their competitiveness.

Finally airlines have identified that the internet is important product to handle distribution costs and to modify the structure of the industry. In 2001 that British Airways CEO ROD Eddington said that BA spent 1.1 billion of pounds on distribution and that have became the third most costly after labour and fuel

In the Internet era, GDSs is as self-governing business from airlines developing their offer to provide the backbone for the complete industry to establish the info structure for the dealings undertaken by high number of Internet travel entrances. In addition, they slowly reinvented themselves to main technology suppliers for a broad range of tourism organizations as well as airlines, travel agencies and Internet travel portals.

At the same time a number of plain airlines appear in both countries i.e., Europe and the US. These airlines concentrated on lower input cost in as many areas of their operations. They also developed simple distribution strategies and took full benefit of the Internet for converse with their clients. Internet near the beginning adopters, such as both well-established and newly-established airlines recognized a clear opportunity.

They invested a lot in order to develop their on-line brand name and to gather the important market share.

Some of the high established airlines, such as American Airlines. Recently established airline industries such as Bratthens, Rynair and Easyjet they have adopted the Internet from the early stages.

Several carriers even decorated their aircraft with their Internet address at the same time as they arranged special promotions with the media to make transfer to their web sites. They provide incentives for consumers to book online and ensured that they were not distributed through the GDS in this way airline are forcing their clients online.

Easy Jet and Ryan is a good example:

In the year 2002 the majority of airline booking have done through the internet and the consumers have got the 5 pounds discounts on their original. No frills airlines are managed by the Internet and other ICT tools, made the industry reengineer. By introduced a number of ICT-enabled innovations including:

Electronic/paperless tickets

Transparent and clear pricing led by proactive and reactive yield management

Single fare tickets with no restrictions on staying or Saturday nights rules

Commission capping and publication of net fares

Financial incentives for self-booking online

Auctions and online promotions

Powerful Customer Relationship Management Systems

Online and context-relevant advertising

As the customers are enjoying the facilities which have provided by the airlines and the customers are benefited by low rates provided by the airline. Therefore some of the airline have followed the no frills carriers to develop their online marketing and to also satisfy the customer needs

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE USE OF ICTs IN THE AIRLINE INDUSTRY:

Most of the airlines are using advanced ICTs and mostly the airline functions highly depended on ICTs. Sharing and partnership is perhaps one of the most important areas of ICTs contribution. Majority of low-cost to be dependent on support on ICTs for displaying their availability and for the communication and transaction with their clients. ICTs have the equal importance in operations management and contribute for the improvement of procedure and processes and also good facilities such as in flight entertainment and good customer service

Most of the airlines have been investing on ICTs service since 1950’s. They have introduced ICTs to get effective, quickly, quality and exact procedure of their inventories (reports) in which to communicate easily with travel agencies and with others. When the airlines have changed the date, time and route to update easily with in fraction of seconds for the clients.

SABRE computer reservation system (CRS) was introduced in 1962 by American airlines alternatively to expend its Boeing 770 fleet by 50% (8-12 aircrafts). This project have described as a technically to feel amazement to represent a program task that increase the power of coding efforts which is needed for NASA Project Mercury . In mid 1970’s SABRE have made as a powerful inventory control system. SABRE made base for the changes in flight plans for aircrafts, tracking spare parts, managing events for crews and for developing the level of decision support system for the airlines management. Then after all the airlines have followed the same system to provide the facilities to satisfy the clients (customers, consumers) needs.

In 1970’s USA air transportation deregulation made airlines to make a changes in their fare and routes. This have made a huge growth of air traffic and increased the demand for information, CRS gave a chance for airline to improve their internal organization and CRS have made into powerful tool (product) to control the airlines inventories (reports) in this way CRS made airlines to communicate easily with travel agencies, consolidators, other distributors by providing update routes, availability price standards. Because of deregulation airlines have increased the tariffs and computing and communication needs. Agents and others have used newly introduced computer technologies to control their reservation and to get easily about tariff information.

Slowly CRS have became strategic business unit (SBU) in its own way, because of one reason i.e., huge usage of this in airline (airline are using more because due to this they have increased their income or sales ratio).

In 1980’s airlines and CRS executives realized that air transportation was a fairly small and has large travel experience then travel agencies are demanded to increase the number of carriers from a single terminal and to increase the value of information on destination. CRS were developed to much and introduced GDS (Global distribution systems) by offering a huge range of tourism products, such as hotels and car rental reservations. SABRA system have developed there database to include their itinerary and inventory from other airlines, the same procedure have introduced in EUROPE to develop the Galileo and Amadeus GDSs, then GDS have became backbone of airlines by providing good communication between airlines and travel agencies. GDS will handle millions of tariffs in their database by making 40 millions of changes in their inventories in every month. Finally GDS have developed their standards to control more than 500,000 passengers’ records and nearly 2000 messages in each second.

In 1990’s GDS have became like a travel supermarket by offering information and reservation capacity by providing high level of travel products such as accommodation, car rental, exact plans for non- air transportation etc., GDS offer a chance for travel agencies to access their essential information on their screens and to develop the travel schedule (itinerary) from the convenience of one inter-connected system. GDS have became a one of the marketing, important procedure for scheduled airlines operational and strategic agendas as they can control and distribute the majority of airline seats. Due to some changes CRS results into four major GDS such as SABRE, world span, Amadeus and Galileo. These four GDS have the permission for recruiting the travel agencies and they select their own market place by increasing number of value added services for travel agencies and airlines.

The below table will shows ho GDS moved highly successful business in their own way by getting and providing high profits for airlines, travel agents and others.

S/ no

Company

Period ending

Worldwide locations

segments

per year (m)

Total revenue

(m)

Operating expenses (m)

Operating income or loss

Operating margin

Other income

Less taxes

Net earnings /loss (m)

Net margin

Sales and marketing support:

Airlines contain lengthy used internal Computer Reservation Systems.

Airline are using this to co-ordinate easily with GDSs and with the airline Internet site in order to increase the sales and marketing by distributing inventory globally

.airline is using these systems to issue electronic tickets and to sale their e-tickets in hyge number by travel agencies over all the world.

Inter views suggested that they greatly need to encourage their web site as their primary reservation path and as an alternative to the GDS/travel agency route. Such systems link all partners in the handling process, automate procedures, and support smooth communication flow.

Airlines try to do something by use technology to improve their effectiveness and therefore they attempt to combine new technologies such as electronic scales, stacker systems, handheld terminals, and bar coding to increase their usage competence and to reduce preparation costs.

These systems will support the airline internally such as administration, accounting, and passenger or goods handling process by coordinate inventory management, sales and marketing, yield and revenue management, ticketing, and departure control systems and other departments.

Airlines will use decision support systems to control traffic and bookings on computer reservation systems because in order to identify customer activities, traffic flows or trends, as well as the performance of followers and sales agencies.

This system will also follow the pricing of their challenger for several city join up.

These systems will also permit airlines to charge their situation against the performance of their competitors and also accept positive and immediate actions.

A broad information foundation will show the way to more right decision for heart airline plan and arranged activities, such as marketing & sales, schedule planning, yield management, and pricing.

Distribution, marketing and sales support with partners

In the past majority of marketing and distribution of airline are done by the travel agencies for the distribution of their products. Then now the air line are linked travel agencies is normally facilitate by the global distribution systems and they provide the info structure for the itinerary building and facilitate for the total transaction. Airline high level management employees have explained that they like to communicate with the travel agencies on Extranet, by using internet in order to avoid the GDS bookings fees.

For example

British airlines have developed a separate web site for the travel buy and sell (www.batraveltrade.com). They have developed this website to develop the extranet in order to make easy the process.

Some of the travel agencies slowly find out the useful financial features. For example if the customers are using the credit card payment they will charge the airlines for the credit card payment, in the same way KLM provided the web fares for only extranet GDS fares are more expensive to cover the additional costs.

Airlines also employed numbers of General Sales Agencies in all regions that they have to stop the person who are operating in their own office do not operate their own offices. They have appointed by international airlines to secure business from IATA and non-IATA agents in markets anywhere agency networks are so far to be fully automated and where airlines need monetary security to cover business risks.

They also involved in their reservations and distribution in local and they will maintain the good relationship with the executives to promote the product in the market.

Now a day the travel agencies are buying the seats in a large quantity and selling in local market by providing the discounts to customers. These discount rates, can be updated through online for the customers by using ICT

Resource Management Systems

Airlines are needed to maximize the consumption of their most expensive resources such as human resources and fleet, for that they have to ensure that their tools and aircraft are efficient and its ability fully used. Maintenance Control systems have manages some things such as aircraft maintenance, commercial, and operational requirements. Airlines have to make sure that aircraft and other equipment is frequently maintained and also that technical problems and unprepared services are deal with as capably as possible to minimize out-of-service periods whilst minimizing service disruptions.

These systems are built-in with proper systems for allowing airlines to arrange parts and other consumables online, at the same time as engineering systems may be included for providing online manuals and technical support.

Technical documentation management systems such as create, distribute, and manage complex technical data and documents. Hence, airlines aim to maximize task force utilization by improving maintenance, repair and repair performance. The airline will get this result by optimizing the supply chain network, aircraft downtime, and materials management.

Airlines will manage their crew schedule through crew management systems. Planning duty schedule is a difficult process as there are several key limits including skills and they should have the ability to operate tools, level, immigration problems, rest periods, and cost of rest periods.

Crew management systems use complete crew record to start pairing construction, schedule making, and crew manage in order to optimize the human resources performance. They need to be coordinated with all associated activities, such as flight arrangement, operations manager, crew contact, flight meeting, etc.

These systems will also undertake a number of usual tasks, such as inspection legalities, publishing rosters and announcements, and administrate hotel accommodations, deadheads and pick-up services. Communicate setting up information with crews (notices) and next duty period (briefings) as well as information regarding flight load, crew composition, aircraft and airport details is also critical. A number of intranet solutions facilitate this process.

It is the coordination of all these systems that ensures that airlines enjoy operational efficiency and are empowered to achieve their long-term strategy

SWOT ANALYSIS:
What is SWOT analysis?

Swot analysis is a planned method; this method is used to extract the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats involved in any business project. This analysis will identify the internal and external factors that are useful to achieve the product.

Strengths: the point or a quality or a power of a company that are helped to achieve the product.

Weakness: the point or a quality or a power of a company which are harmful to achieve the product.

Opportunities: the external situations which are helpful to achieve the product of a company Threats: external circumstances which can do the damage to achieve the product.

SWOT ANALYSIS OF ICTs IN AIRLINE INDUSTRY

Abstract

As a great attention has been paid for the development of new generation eMediaries, the rapid escalation of the Internet and ICT (Information and Communication Technology) has also precious for recognized tour operators. The main purpose of this report is to examine the use of ICT by the tour operator Thomas Cook and to analyze the key issues. The report uses information from journals, company’s reports and trade press articles. The report highlights the fundamental aspects of Thomas Cook’s Business Strategies and the Business Model. (Marianna Sigala)

The eBusiness impact is well documented by Jacsson and Harirs (Jackson): suggested that the Information and Communication Technology affecting the processes of company’s operations followed how they do business, is well interpreted and how company need to reorganize and restructure themselves continuously. The aim of this report is to explain the acceptance of eBusiness by the traditional operators, and to explain the competitive advantage of eBusiness and Information and Communication Technology with a neat explanation and interpretation by analyzing Dniel & Frew’s view (Daniele).

The report briefly explains the Thomas Cooks strategies, as a large tour operator increasing profitability with the vertical integration and how it produced a substantial concentration in the market. The report explains the key factors and the need of ICT for tourism, like the importance of IT trainings and education for business policy makers, key role players and managers in the industry. Explains the integration of different sectors in this industry, example: transport, lodge, etc., the up gradation of organizations Technical Infrastructure and the need of Human Infrastructure like people with technology skills, vision and management skills. (Shanker, 2008)

The report explains the importance of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and how tourism industry adopted ICT to make the best sales trough eMarketing as well as online sales. It supports several indications like internet connectivity ad usage of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) Systems. It also explains the customers’ expectations and market competition. And the gap between small scale companies and large scale companies utilizing ICT and applications of eBusiness. The report briefs the use of eBusiness for Thomas Cook’s business strategy on business objectives like business integration and delivering planned synergies, use of eBusiness to strengthen the main stream model for tour operating, implementing the independent travel segments, to expand the group’s financial services. (plc, 2007)

The report summarizes information on computing and Information Systems, here Information and Communication Technology plays a vital role to present the organizations ability to satisfy its customers travel safety measures and presenting them for great leisure time. The way Thomas Cook approaches its customers to explain the tour packages with visualizations on their website and in other way of electronic communication like contacting them by means of Tele-Communications, electronic mails and social networking sites. This report presents the way Thomas Cook achieved its success in competitive advantage.

Conclusion:

The report presents the e-Commerce and the e-Governance approach towards its customers, and how the web makes it easy for travelers to plan their holidays. How Thomas Cook provides appropriate online experience to its visitors to ensure the quality conversion and sales. Explains “how online booking become an impotent part of their business and growth is set to continue” (TravelMole, 2007). And the research methods Thomas Cook taken about, its “customers progress through the online journey and how it will continue to enhance its websites and tools respectively” (TravelMole, 2007).

References:
Daniele, R. &. Intermediaries to Market-Makers:. In A. J. (Ed), Information and Communication Techonologies in Tourism (pp. 546-557).
Jackson, P. &. (n.d.). EBusiness and Oraganizational Change: recounciling traditional values with business transformation. Journal of Oraganizational Change Management , 16(5), 497-511.
Marianna Sigala, L. M. (n.d.). Tour Operators in in an eBusiness World. Retrieved March 19th, 2010, from http://books.google.co.uk: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=s9f5_kvYrZoC&pg=PA207&lpg=PA207&dq=thomas+cook+information+and+communication+technology&source=bl&ots=KkiM3J5HGo&sig=iL2qLClFWLyN8wzC6Dgx3PXScUc&hl=en&ei=1vykS5jQFIS80gTFitT1CQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=
plc, T. C. (2007, June 27). Thomas Cook Group plc. Retrieved March 19th, 2010, from http://www.thomascookgroup.com: http://www.thomascookgroup.com/media/tcgpresentationfinal2007.pdf
Shanker, D. (2008, May 15 – 17). ICT and Tourism: Challenges and Opportunities. Retrieved March 19th, 2010, from http://dspace.iimk.ac.in: http://dspace.iimk.ac.in/bitstream/2259/536/1/50-58.pdf
TravelMole. (2007, October 02). Thomas Cook e-commerce director highlights online trends. (http://www.marvellousmedia.com, Interviewer)

Abstract

This essay throws light on the use of ICT in the airline industry and what impacts developments in ICT have made on the said industry. The essay highlights the role of ICTs in enhancing airline’s capability to interact with customers, reducing the operational costs, increasing the convenience for making reservations, managing air traffic, administering the crew and airport staff, improving the passenger’s in-flight experience, maximizing airline’s revenue by variable fares, improving security standards, promoting partnerships and alliances among airlines, integrating value added services. It has been argued that automation increases efficiency but human factor is yet very important in personifying the customer experience.

Introduction to the Airline Industry

An airline provides air transport services for passengers and/or freight. Commercial operations of airlines date back to early 1900s, however, evidence of increase in operations is found after

World War I. Over the years, airline as an industry has grown tremendously. It has facilitated economic growth, world trade, foreign investment, tourism and has played a significant role in globalization of industries.

Full-service airlines have a high level of fixed and operating costs in order to establish and maintain air services: labor, fuel, airplanes, engines, spares and parts, IT services and networks, airport equipment, airport handling services, sales distribution, catering, training, aviation insurance etc. Keeping in view such high costs and complex nature of operations, it is essential for airline companies to take advantage of ICTs to carry out operations smoothly and optimize expenses.

Use of ICT in the Airline Industry

Technology is dramatically and profoundly changing the nature of services. Technology is also profoundly changing how services are delivered, and it is enabling both customers and employees to get and provide better, more efficient, customized services. These changes have significant implications for managing service operations as well as for predicting and managing consumer behavior.

Impact of Developments of ICT on Operations of Airline Industry

In the text below, major operations of the airline and airports have been discussed. It has been analyzed that how the developments in the ICT have impacted the processes of the said industry. The developments in the ICT have significantly influenced the way Airlines interact with customer, develop loyalty programmes and implement customer retention strategies. Few developments to enhance the passengers’ in-flight experience have also been made.

Interaction with Customers

The proliferation of internet and World Wide Web has made it enormously convenient for the organizations to interact with their customers. Internet has provided a very economical way of interacting with customers, has reduced distribution costs, and has increased the profit margin by direct selling. Internet has also served as a purveyor of information about travel. Carriers everywhere have embraced online ticket sales as a means of reducing distribution costs. Travelers now have the opportunity and convenience to compare price and service offerings of all airlines quickly and efficiently, and to act on those comparisons instantly with only a few keystrokes.

McIvor et al. (2003), present analysis of four airline companies and their use of internet to provide innovative interaction and transactional mechanisms with customers. They state that internet has increased the expectations of customers for the services and service delivery. In fact, the internet has become essential to the strategic development of the airline companies. They further argue that the scope and boundaries of the airline industry have become less clear as a result of the adoption of internet technologies at the customer interface. The offering of a range of products and services is creating industry convergence. Exploitation of the internet at the customer interface has become a key catalyst in the transformation of the airline industry.

In the past, airlines have been selling their product (i.e. an airline seat) through travel agents. The travel agent’s competitive position was based on exploiting the information insufficiency at the customer end. However, nowadays, the website of the Airline makes customer autonomous to decide on the fares, routes and various services associated. The internet enables airlines to build a direct and superior relationship with customers.

In this era, the airline’s site support complete automation of the booking process and limits the need for human intervention. Airlines are extensively investing and utilizing the Internet to further undermine the travel agents which has also resulted in improved process efficiency. Furthermore, removal of the travel agent layer has reduced transaction costs and has enhanced the relationship with customer through the provision of more detailed and up-to-date information.

Customer Retention and Airline Loyalty Programmes

The cost of developing a new customer is several times higher than the cost of keeping an existing customer. With the increasingly fierce market competition, companies would like to retain their existing customers as much as possible. Fan (2007), state that “competition has changed gradually from price of products and services to grasping customers”. Only those companies that can more precisely understand customers’ demands, more quickly respond to the changing needs and can improve customer satisfaction and loyalty can win the competition. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has become particularly important in this age. Data mining technology, as the founding base of CRM, can help the airlines to effectively capture valuable information about passengers from extensive information available in their databases, which is essential for making strategic marketing decisions.

McIvor (2003), state that through sophisticated Information Systems available now, it has become possible to automatically inform staff about customer preferences such as aisle seats or in-flight entertainment. Previously, such information may have been collected but not used to enhance the needs of their most profitable customers.

CRM and Data Mining allow companies to target groups effectively, and allocate marketing resources to best effect. As is shown in 80/20 rule, 80% of sales of a company come from 20% of its clients, it is essential to conduct customer segmentation and find those 20% of high-value customers. Zhang and Chen (2009), state that in order to better ensure continued profitability it is necessary to keep customer satisfied. Through a lot of accumulation of data on passenger satisfaction surveys, using data mining technology such as principal component analysis, factor analysis to identify the main influencing factors of passenger satisfaction, as well as the relative importance of various factors can help airlines make improvements, enhance the overall customer service levels and the competitiveness of companies.

McIvor et al. (2003), further state that Airline loyalty programmes have been the major means of keeping customers to a particular airline. Airline loyalty programmes provide significant value to customers. Airlines are now associating their Loyalty Programmes with the complementary products and services such as car rentals and hotel accommodations. In fact, the airlines are attempting to create a one-stop shopping experience for the customer with all the required travel products and services available on-line. With the provision of these complementary services, airlines have enhanced value of the core service.

It is, therefore, very important to take full advantage of the data mining and other modern information technology to identify the valuable information about the customers buying pattern and choices and address them in timely fashion to provide more personalized service which will ultimately improve passenger satisfaction and loyalty.

Operations and Business Intelligence

Negash and Gray (2008), discuss the case of “Continental Airlines”. They state it as the seventh largest airline in the world with 2300 daily flights to over 200 destinations. An airline, as big as this, and requiring decisions about each take-off and landing, each passenger’s fare, ground operations, detecting fraud, security and customer relations, need for a ICT based intelligent business model was indispensable.

In 1998 they implemented a real-time data warehouse and began their climb to being a top airline. For example, they integrated customer information, finance, flight information, seat inventory, and security to improve revenue. The warehouse data also allowed them to spot travel agent fraud.

They moved forward from there to real-time applications. For example, they began using optimization techniques to design fares based on current demand; they gave their gate agents and flight attendants details on customer experiences on previous flight segments and flights; if a connecting flight was late, they used dashboard displays so their high-value customers would be helped in making connections for themselves and for their baggage.

To make all this work, Continental built an 8 terabyte real-time data warehouse (called an operational data store or ODS) that coordinated 25 internal and two external operational systems. These systems include both Web and desktop BI.

In-flight Entertainment

The advancement in technology has enabled Airlines to enhance the passenger’s travelling experience. Back in early 1920s, Aeromarine Airways pioneered in the digital entertainment of passengers by showing a movie during the flight. Since then, digital technologies have evolved from single shared screen to individual screens offering variety of infotainment stuff such as movies, games, news, flight information, weather information etc.

Furthermore, as reported by Nelson (2010), in-flight WiFi internet access was made available to passenger in 2008 by American Airlines after the test in 2005. The capability of providing internet facility during the flight has phenomenal impacts and lets the passenger stay in touch with the world even on the go.

Security
Future

As discussed in essay, opportunity for in-flight WiFi access still exists. Few major airlines, like

American Airlines, have already provided this facility on certain airlines. Provision of the internet and staying in touch during the longer hours travel will have considerable implications and will be great source of providing competitive edge.

Furthermore, reported by HotHardware, BlueBox Avionics is aiming to integrate iPad into their next in-flight entertainment solution. Whether or not they integrate the iPad to the back of the passenger’s seat, distributing the iPad among the passengers during a long flight will certainly enhance the passenger’s experience. iPad certainly provides a much richer entertainment as compared to currently installed display screens.

Conclusion

The evidence presented in this article has illustrated how the Internet represents a powerful technology for commerce and communication between customers and airline companies. The Internet clearly enables the customer to move from being a passive participant to that of being proactive and more sophisticated in their relationship with airlines.

The United Kingdom is one of Europe’s most influential countries. The United Kingdom is a sovereign state positioned near the north-western coast of continental Europe (Appendix 1), comprising of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea.

The UK is one of the 27 member states of the European Union and is spread across about 243,000 sq. km (about 94000 sq. miles). The UK has the world’s seventh largest economy by nominal GDP and eight largest economy by purchasing power parity. It was the world’s first industrialized country Mathias (2001).

Tourism is one of the foremost industries in the UK size wise. According to statistics by Wikipedia, the UK is the world’s 7th biggest tourist attraction behind France, USA, China, Spain, Italy and Turkey, with approximately 29.2 million visiting in 2011. In 2011 15.3 million visitors spent time in London with an estimated spending of over ?9.4bn that represents 52% of all inbound visitor spending calculated by VisitBritain in 2011. (Appendix 2)

It is predicted that UK tourism could grow to ?188b within the next decade that is 60% by 2020 and the number of jobs related to tourism could increase 264,000 to 2.89 million, according to VisitBritain.

Recently however, the UK tourism industry though having a great potential of growing faces some challenges and a serious competition from other most visited tourist destinations.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS:

UK tourism industry can easily be analysed critically with the help of Michael Porter’s five forces model. Porter in his five forces model refers to an organization but can be applied to a certain industry via which we can determine the competitive strength and weaknesses of that particular organization/industry. (Appendix 3)

PORTER’S 5 FORCES:

Porter’s five forces include:

THREAT OF NEW ENTRANTS:

When it comes to tourism, people want to explore new fascinating countries and that is why new entrants catch the attention of travelers. The UK tourism industry faces threat by new entrants such Turkey, Germany and Egypt while Malaysia and Mexico have attracted many tourists in 2011.

The estimated number of international tourist arrivals in the UK till June 2012 were around 29.2 million which was 28.3 million in 2010 and the change from 2010 to 2011 had an increase of +3.2% according to UNWTO (2012).

In 2011, Turkey climbed up in the most visited tourist destination above the UK to become the 6th most visited tourist destination in the world with an estimated number of 29.3 million tourists which was 27 million in 2010 and showed a massive +8.7% changed from 2010 till 2011 mentioned in Tourism Highlights by UNWTO (2012).

The UK is facing a serious competition from Germany, which had 28.4 million visitors in 2011 and has shown +5.5% change from 2010 until 2011.

THREAT OF SUBSTITUTES AVAILABLE AND COMPETITIVE RIVALRY WITHIN THE INDUSTRY:

Most of the tourists look for alternative destinations when they face problems in getting visas, bookings etc. and that is when substitutes get the upper hand. In Europe, Spain, France and Italy have been the biggest competitors of the UK tourism industry from the beginning, attracting huge amount of interest from tourists all over the world.

France, which has been the most visited tourist destination and a country with a romantic image, still leads the raking of tourists visiting with approximately 79.5 million and is third in receipts with US $54 billion. Spain is second on the earners list with US $60 billion with approx. 57 million arrivals in 2011. Italy, ranks 5th with 46.1 million tourists in 2011 and receipts of $43 billion in 2011 UNWTO (2012).

BARGAINING POWER OF BUYERS AND SUPPLIERS:

There is a lot of influence of buyers and suppliers on a tourism industry. In this report, buyers are the main tour operators of the product here, which is tourism. There are many tour operators working in the UK that offer competitive prices to tourists and discounts such as Thomas cook. They identify new locations/places and possess the power of convincing tourists to visit those destinations that has a lost cost attached to it.

For every tourism industry, three “A’s” are very important and this similar is the case with suppliers. The three A’s are:

Attractions

Amenities

Access

Attractions include those places that are either famous for their natural beauty or are built in such a way that attracts tourists. If such places are owned by the government/owners, tourist should be allowed to visit them and the owners should always welcome them. There are many places in the UK that attracts a lot of tourist just because of their natural beauty or the way they are being constructed like

The Tower of London, Windermere Boat Cruises, Flamingo Land Theme Park and Zoo, Royal Botanical Gardens, Stonehenge, Eden Project etc. Amenities include basic conveniences for tourist such as hotels, guesthouses, motels etc. A lot of funding is needed for this and there has to be a proper look after of these facilities. Last but not the least, Access includes means of travelling. The UK has an excellent transportation system that includes airports, railways, busses, motorways etc. London is famous for its magnificent underground tube system, which serves almost 3.22 million; people daily UNWTO (2012).

PEST ANALYSIS:

UK tourism industry can also be analyzed by doing PEST analysis. Which comprises of Political Factors, Economic Factors, Social Factors and Technological Factors.

POLITICAL FACTORS:

Political factors are those in which there is governmental interference such as laws, policies, tariffs, good and services, education, infrastructure etc. When we talk about businesses, political factors plays an important role in the regulation and operation of it. Political environment of the UK is fairly stable.

There have been minor ups and downs with the issues regarding the UK joining EU and accepting Euro plus European Union’s expansion and the UK supporting USA in its terrorism campaign, which has adversely affected its political stability. Other key issues includes the Visa Processing by the UKBA, VAT on tourism services, Air Passenger Duty etc.

VISAS:

Over the past few years, there has been a lot of new rules and regulations by the UKBA because of which many tourists face problems in getting their visas even after paying a hefty sum in visa fees. A short term visa to the UK costs ?78 which is ?25 more than that of a Schengen Visa (?53) that gives an access to 25 counties and this is why 50% more visitors from India travel to the UK via France. From 2000 till 2009 the revenue generated via tourists from other countries has increased by 37.4% (in USD) which when compared to France (49.7%) and Germany (85.6%) is very low, according to Tourism Alliance (2012).

Those tourists that come from counties other than the EU or those who require a visa are about 11% of all tourist that visit the UK (3.4m) and spend a lot on their travelling expenses per trip that contributes to an approx. ?3 billion to UK’s economy, Tourism Alliance (2012).

VAT:

According to recent statistics by Tourism Alliance (2012) , the UK is one of the only four (others include Denmark, Slovakia and Lithuania) out of 27 EU member countries that charges full rate VAT to tourist on accommodations which is the second highest rate of VAT in Europe. This can be in a sense harmful to the UK tourism industry when compared to other tourist destinations across Europe. If the UK reduces taxes on accommodations and famous tourist destinations, it could result in a profit of ?2.6 billion over the next 10 years according to Deloitte/Tourism Respect. Other locations that have a full rate VAT in the UK includes amusement parks, museums, theaters, shows and cinemas and the UK also charges full rate VAT on restaurant meals which in EU countries averages up to 8.8%., while the average rate of VAT on accommodation in Europe is 10.3% as per statistics of Tourism Alliance (2012). When we look at competitors of UK, France in a couple of years after reducing VAT on restaurant meals from 19.6% to 5.5% showed that there were about 62,700 new jobs in that sector Tourism Alliance (2012) which is a clear indication of what other countries are trying to achieve and change in their tourism sector.

AIR PASSENGER DUTY:

IATA predicts by looking at the current figures that in 2014 there will be an estimated 3.3 billion tourist travelling via airplanes of which 2 billion will be travelling domestically. In November 2010, the UK Government increased APD of up to 55% and statistics from Tourism Alliance study in 2012 shows that APD has jumped to 650% for passengers travelling in economy class and 750% for those travelling in business class in the previous 5 years that contributes approx. ?2.2 billion yearly in revenue to the Government. A report by Oxera for Airport Operations Association in 2010 showed that if the government replace APD with that of EU, the Gross Value Added would show an increase of ?4 billion and there will be approximately 100,000 more jobs.

ECONOMIC FACTORS:

Economic factors are those due to which the spending of tourists can be affected. It includes inflation in the country, employment/unemployment statistics, Exchange rates, GDP etc.

At the beginning of inflation that started to take place in second quarter of 2008, shortage in arrivals was reported and the inbound tourism of UK fell by 5% according to the Euromonitor International Figures. When the inflation struck in 2009, it affected a lot of business and tourism industry was one of those. People living in the UK preferred to spend their holidays domestically and the number of tourists from abroad also shown a decline. The Euromonitor International Figures that were recorded in 2009 showed that there was an approx. 12% decline of people travelling abroad from the UK. The inflation rate of the UK, which was last recorded in November 2012, was 2.70% according to ONS. (Appendix 4)

In a report published by UKCES in 2012, it is mentioned that tourism accounts for approximately 6% of UK’s GDP and has given employment to approximately 2.5 million people. Each UK nation has a tourism strategy that aims to ‘raise the ambition of tourism over the next decade’ (People 1st, 2010a).

Exchange rate and the fluctuations in currencies also play an important role in the spending patterns of tourists. The comparison of pound sterling versus euro has contributed a lot in the Britons spending more when they travel to other European destinations and Experts have noticed that the euro being cheaper than pound sterling has made it cheaper for the Britons to travel on holidays to European countries (Hall, 2012). The total UK tourism spend by sector can easily be seen in this image. (Appendix 5)

SOCIAL FACTORS:

The style of living of people and the cultural aspects that mainly comprises of population, growth, trends, careers, how safe the place is where they are living and being cautious about their health are generally considered as social factors. Tourists from other countries may not know much about the traditions and customs of the country they are visiting that may prove to be a problem at times.

Some impacts of such social factors mentioned in a report of Travel and Tourism by Ann Rowe, John Smith and Fiona Borein in 2002 suggests that it will be good for the local people as well as the tourists to get together and learn more about different lifestyles which can be beneficial to both the parties as there is a room for improvement in the sectors of infrastructure, health and education, sports, traditions, heritage etc., as London is main hub of people for across the globe.

In recent time’s people of the UK and the tourists are concerned about their safety and when travelling to the UK the riots of 2011 served as a minus for the tourism industry at that time. According to the Daily Mail UK, in India the editor of a magazine warned his followers in twitter that they should avoid coming to the UK at all. Due to these riots, many questions were raised on the safety and security procedures for the upcoming 2012 Olympics.

TECHNOLOGICAL FACTORS:

Technology plays an important role in the development of any business or industry and when a certain business provides facilities and are equipped with latest technology it creates a better relation between them and the customers. Bookings tickets and online holiday bookings have really excelled as the time progressed. According to ONS (2011), wireless hotspots in the UK were accessed by approximately 4.9 million users and 77 per cent of households had internet access.

OPTIONS AVAILABLE TO THE UK TOURISM INDUSTRY AND RECOMMENDATIONS:

If the UK wants to compete with the other famous tourist destinations across Europe and on the list, first of the few recommendations would be to reduce the visa application charges and restrictions along with the APD and bringing them on the same level as that of other European destinations because a family comprising of 4 members from India/China pays a hefty sum of ?612 as their Visa and APD charges when travelling to the UK, Tourism Alliance (2012).

Tourism Alliance (2012) in their report show that when in 2009, Taiwanese visitors were granted visas to the UK, visitors grew by 39% and the revenue obtained from them increased by 155%.

Another report by Tourism Alliance in which it is clearly mentioned that APD has already cost 23000 people their jobs in last seven years and if it continues to increase at this level by 2017 it would have resulted in ?1.1 billion loss and 6000 more jobs.

Secondly the high VAT that the UK charges to its tourists, Tourism Alliance in 2011 predicted that if VAT on tourism is reduced to and brought in alignment with that of European nations, the UK tourism could earn approximately ?1.3 billion per annum that is 7% increase and since this report looks at the upcoming three years the short term losses in VAT receipts would be recovered in short span of three years.

CONCLUSION.

There has to be a better investment and marketing plans, events like the Olympics 2012, managing them successfully so that tourist get value for the money they paid, about which a report by Deloitte and Forecasting organization Oxford Economics has predicted that tourism sector is likely to grow by 3.5% per annum between 2010 and 2020. Together all the governing bodies and agencies should work in collaboration and every one of them can play their part in making the UK a better place to visit and explore.

This report looks at the strategy evaluation of the UK tourism industry to be implemented. Firstly, the paper provides the background information to the UK tourism industry issues within the last few years. There is depicted a place of tourism industry in the United Kingdom regarding the economy and law regulations. Moreover, the paper determines the current issues of improving this kind of industry.

The role of Visit Britain is indicated as well because it is the crucial tourist organisation that enables the UK to hold its position along with the competing markets and sustains the country to be the leading international attraction for tourist, proved by the seventh rate place in the world for visitor quantity. Hence, every year Visit Britain runs its promoting campaign to accomplish the key objectives of increasing and maintaining the level of the tourist industry inbound and outbound, such as to enhance the quantity of tourists for a period after Olympic Games drawing the precise attention to the Chinese tourists. In order to achieve those goals there are a few issues of the tourist industry indicated in this report.

The section dedicated to the target group focus, namely the UK visitors, analyse the main features of encouraging tourists, especially Chinese, to this kind of industry, declared by the UK government as the leading key objective. Some of them are to investigate and analyse the obstacles that occur therewith to ease an extent of making the country more accessible and affordable. Moreover, the report offers the possible suggestions for such issues.

In addition, the paper analyses product presentation in campaign put on market by Visit Britain and the country government for a period before the Olympic Games. The report determines pros and cons of this campaign, and consequences appeared in the framework of its application.

Importance of the UK competitive markets is briefly drawn. The key point is to evaluate the statistics of visitor quantity and spend in the UK and other competitors.

The strategic options and suggestions are provided in the report as the main markers of increasing the tourism industry in the UK.

Introduction

Tourism industry is regarded as the essential market sector in the United Kingdom’s economy. A lot of strengths and efforts have already been given to attract the home and foreign visitors to visit the country’s spectaculars, especially the Olympic Games 2012, hence, the UK government is dedicated to engage even more visitors and gain more profits.

Visit Britain is the one of tourist organisations that creates and implements the special measures for increasing the UK popularity among tourists.

Methodology

In order to collect information for the report analysis the electronic and written sources were applied. This information generated was mostly obtained from the market reports and statistics provided by the tourist organisations, such as Visit Britain, Institute of Travel and Tourism, Tourism Alliance, Tourism Management Institute, Tourism Consultants Network, Office for National Statistics and International Euromonitor. The data collected has been analysed and evaluated in order to formulate the strategic variants and recommendations. There were applied a few analytical schemes, such as Porter’s competitive position model. The information provided was managed in this report.

Evaluation of Findings

According to the Tourism Alliance Tourism for Growth (2009)?± the United Kingdom has a great potential for improving the economy and condition, such as employment availability, from the tourism industry. As a proof of the above mentioned was issued the major study Economic Contribution of the Visitor Economy: UK and the Nations (2010) that states there is a wide space to develop domestic and inbound types of tourist industry up to ?58b (3,5%) within the next decade. Moreover, the Visit England’s English Tourism Strategy provides the depiction of the possible potential increase in the tourism value:

In addition, there is the possibility that the outbound tourism rates in the UK will heighten at the same pace, the tourism value could be up to ?400b within the next decade. Thus, such situation would accumulate an evaluated 700,000 additional workplaces in all sectors of the UK. This sets the important fact that the revenue gained from this activities will be distributed among cities, towns and rural plots, described in the diagram as follows (Economic Contribution of the Visitor Economy: UK and the Nations (2010)):

Tourism is regarded as the sixth largest industry in the UK bringing to ?105b income every year. The main sectors of the tourism industry in the UK are hospitality, attractions, events, visitor transport, education and tourism services.

For the period, when there is the Olympics promoting campaign of the UK tourist organisations, the extent to which this campaign is successful is shown in the table provided by Visit Britain corporate website:

It is considered to engage the Chinese visitors into the UK which can be explained only by the reason that the development of India and China makes those countries the possible target for worldwide tourism. The government of the United Kingdom clears out the situation by stating the will to start the GREAT campaign, at first in these countries.

The product presentation over the years has gradually changed its position according to the Tourism Policy Report (2009) where is depicted the table of the most competitive countries in years of 2007-2009:

Key Issues

The information gathered in the report assumes the following issues identified:

The inability to keep up with international competitors for attracting customers from countries with substantial population due to strict visa regimes

The insufficient level of providing service performed by tourism organisations

Tourism industry does not always correspond to the requirements of green living and sustainability

Strategy Options

The first key strategy task is to make improvements of competitiveness internationally. According to the information, within 2010-2011 the product competitive status in the UK domestic tourism has decreased. The reason for this was stipulated by the Government that has increased Air Passenger Duty, VAT and visa charges, while some competitive countries have lowered the same prices. For instance, a four-member family form China will have to pay at least ?600 for a visit to the UK in comparison with ?200 to the countries of Schengen zone (Report 2011, 7 p.). Moreover, the parallel of prices for accommodation and catering between the UK and other competing countries is twice as much. In such a way, the UK economy suffers a lot and loses the valuable income. Thus, tourists will count for the charges and those with low and medium income would prefer to use cheaper country’s tourism. To increase the competitiveness with other tourist countries, the following main options should be taken into account and implemented as soon as possible by the UK government:

The government should be in touch with the charges reduction in other competitive countries, and it should make everything possible to lessen VAT on tourist services. Moreover, when the government should take into account the average European rate, and if it lowers, they should take some measures to make the tourism industry more attractable and profitable.

The government should make the visa process easier and make the application guidance forms better. They should also take a notice of constraints and limiting conditions about visa accessibility and any other rules and regulations.

The government should support the aviation by helping tourists ease the procedure in an appropriate way.

The second key strategy task is to decrease the poor and excessive regulation level. In fact the organisations of tourism industry are under heavier pressure than any other UK sectors. Hence, the Tourism Alliance conducted a thorough analysis about the preferable legislative changes. With help of the UK government the tourism organisations, especially SMEs, will have the greater opportunity to create jobs and accumulate their development. In order to relieve the impact of the poor and excessive regulation level, the possible key options may be taken into consideration:

The creation of the Tourism Regulation Task Force will follow all requisite regulations in implementing the empirical, cost-effective and profitable measures.

The sector as the tourism industry should be seriously considered as the vital source for the economy improvement by the new and altered legislation.

The third key strategy task is to enhance the level of quality and skills. As the customer needs and beliefs about the tourism services are always rising, the level of providing such services should be high. It is considered that the developments in the workforce training and education are necessary if the UK is willing to hold its positions in the world market. Although it is the liability of the organisations that provide the tourist services on the local level, there are also some regulations and rules submitted only by the government. In most cases it is connected to the no public financing. Moreover, the difference between the big businesses and the small ones are pretty obvious as the former may afford the staff training while the latter may not. The possible main options may be as follows:

To engage small tourism businesses into the estimated revenue from the Olympics Games 2012

To monitor whether the self-financing quality schemes follow the demand of tourists and whether the small organisations of the tourism industry correspond to the regulatory standards.

To ensure organisations of the tourism industry in the UK in the fact that tax incentives will provide the high quality of the products offered.

The fourth strategic task is to develop and increase a level of sustainability although the tourism industry is already such kind of institution. It assists and supplies any kind of services that is in demand, and sometimes the level of environmental impact is neglected. Hence, the tourism industry should be examined on keeping the appropriate level of sustainability. The possible strategic options may be the following ones:

To assist programmes that enable the organisations of the tourism industry run more environmentally-friendly.

To present the Daylight Saving in order to accomplish the evaluated profits of the tourism per annum, such as ?2.5 – ?3.5b, and to create new workplaces by 70,000, as investigated the Policy Studies Institute in 2008.

To engage the tourism organisations to create and implement strategies that will stimulate visitors to get known to the sustainability.

To comply with the tourists’ needs and demands concerning the transport means.

The fifth one is to engage public financing in order to improve the public profit. The persistent cuts of public financing assets of such organisations as Visit Britain and Visit England constitute an issue that may be effectively eliminated by more useful utilisation of the Government support existed. Naturally these cuts reflect to the lesser revenue from the tourism industry. The Olympic Games is the additional source of income for the UK economy. There was an assumption that the Olympics may provide ?2b extra as a tourism income. As bright evidence the Visit Britain and its promotional campaign helps to gain ?12.5m annually for public finds. The bigger the public financing into the tourism industry in the UK will be, the greater the investments into the public sector will become. The strategic options may be offered as follows:

The government should increase financing to Visit Britain in order to improve its competitive intelligence and the potential for the Olympic Games realisation to be accomplished.

The government should be aware of the stable funding of Visit England with the purpose to fulfil the objectives of the Government Tourism Policy.

In order to strengthen the marketing abroad the effectiveness between Visit Britain, the National Boards and London should be maintained and succeeded.

The UK government should provide all requisite assistance in establishing the tourism network that will be functioning in England with complete cooperation among Visit England, destination Management Organisations, and organisations of the tourism industry. The idea of fulfilling the tasks of the Government Tourism Policy will be completed in order to implement the Tourism Strategy.

The government in the UK should be open to new funding sources whether they are private or from other countries, perhaps competing ones. Moreover, the appreciation should be directed to the Regional Growth Fund by the government.

The UK authorities should guide the local business partnerships concerning the demands and opportunities of the tourism organisations.

Conclusions

The United Kingdom has got the integral features that has and will have the essential meaning for the tourism sector development, particularly visitor attraction. The country has the significant historical background and cultural heritage. It is also the attraction to the English-speakers who would like to feel comfortable in actually foreign country. Moreover, it encourages some students to visit this country in order to improve their English skills as it is a source of original English language. In addition, the United Kingdom is a centre of valuable sport and music events, e.g. the Olympic Games.

The United Kingdom’s tourism industry has a wide range of opportunities. Among of them are to investigate new markets and to find new niche in the existing ones; to incorporate new cultural events, such as modern music styles, or up-to-date art approaches.

However, due to some constraints and limiting conditions, the UK economy has got some losses. In order to visit this country and to have the full-fledged rest or holiday, the issue will become the high charges for everything, beginning from a flight ticket to the accommodation and catering, excluding all cultural arrangements. Moreover, the issue may be the process of obtaining visa to the UK.

At the same time the UK economy and the tourism industry in particular face the actual negative impact of the above mentioned problems, which is the fact other countries with the quite the same services and opportunities are much easier to visit than the United Kingdom. Hence, a number of tourists would rather have fewer problems and visit another country, e.g. USA, Italy, etc., than they would rather have a lot of inconvenient situations and issues.

To summarise, the United Kingdom tourism industry has a huge potential for growth that has not been developed yet, and the government should take into consideration all options and recommendations suggested. The first step was taken by Visit Britain and Visit England that eagerly make the attempts to popularise its own country and to engage into altering this sector structure in an appropriate way so that the UK economy will have some profit.

Annotated Bibliography

Evans, N Campbell, D and Stonehouse, G (2003). Strategic Management for Travel and Tourism: Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, Chapter 7, 15. In Chapter 7 the authors apply the STEEP approach with the purpose to analyse the outdoor environment. Moreover, it is related to the tourism case studies as a bright example of the approach implementation. In Chapter 15 the authors provides the distinctive ways to comprehending each strategy. They also depict the critical background of every approach along with its pros and cons.

Penrose John MP. Government Tourism Policy. Department for Culture, Media and Sport. UK. March 2011, 52 p. This work is devoted to the tourism industry in the UK in general and to the tourism organisations, such as Visit Britain and Visit England, in particular. Furthermore, the work introduces the crucial drivers of the UK economy and the issues both existing and possible.

Porter, M (1996) What is Strategy? Harvard Business Review, Nov/Dec. This is an article where the author represents the wide range of problems while defining the actual meaning of a strategy.

Tourism Alliance (2012). Annual Report 2012. Available at: . This document provides the insight into the activities of the Chairman, Policy Director and the Tourism Alliance in general. To be precise, it is dedicated to key policy objectives and financial report figures for the year of 2012 in the UK tourism industry.

Deloitte & Touche LLP. (2010) The Economic Contribution of the Visitor Economy: UK and the Nations. Oxford Economics. June 2010. The work introduces the general image of UK Visitor Economy, its structure, its dynamics and contribution into the UK economy status in general. The information presented in clearly comprehended via various schemes and diagrams provided.

The aim of this paper is to address the potentiality, requirements and expectations of people with disabilities and its implication on customer satisfaction in hotels.

Design/Methodology/Approach:

This article is based on secondary data collection: journal articles, websites, textbooks, pamphlets on people with disability, customer satisfaction and hotel marketing. The methodology of this article is by analysing the people with disability as potential market segment to the hospitality industry and identifying approaches, that hotel could inculcate for better customer satisfaction.

Findings:

In the hotel sector people with disabilities are tend to be seen as a marginal segment with limited service options available, thus the motivation, experience and satisfaction is greatly affected. However, suggestions provided addressing this issue could enable hotels improve on customer service thus facilitating satisfaction.

Research Limitations:

This paper exclusively based on secondary data brings out limited outcomes and limits the findings and interpretation compared to primary research data collection.

Practical Implication:

Hotels catering to tourist with disabilities than just being compliant with the law can do more in order to increase satisfaction and loyalty. This article is useful to organisations to understand this market segment and help develop better service operations.

What is original / value of paper?

The paper addresses the issue of customer satisfaction focusing on particular tourist segment i.e. people with disability in hotels. The main target audience are hotel managers and employees desiring to understand and achieve customer satisfaction through services offered to tourist with disabilities and in-addition would help hotels aspiring to open doors to this niche market segment.

Introduction

Customer satisfaction is of utmost importance, often given high priority and frequently is of a matter of concern to managers, employees, marketers of hotel and hospitality service providers (Yuksel and Yuksel, 2001 and Oh and Parks, 1997). Hospitality industries such as hotels strive towards making guest feel more than welcome, provide customer service in such a manner that would satisfy, delight, and make guests come back. Hotels commonly serving non-disabled customers could take step ahead and provide customer service to older and disabled people by making services offered more than accessible, providing accurate information and assistance in a friendly manner, which would enable the industry to secure a more loyal niche growing clientele that remains not quite touched upon (ADA Business Connection, 2006).

From the late 80’s until early 90’s researchers focused on, people with disability within the hospitality and tourism context, yet the study in this area lost impetus (Yau, McKercher and Packer, 2004). However recently Burnett and Baker (2001), Darcy (2002), Ray and Ryder (2003) and McKercher, Packer, Yau and Lam (2003), have recalled this area of study. Hence, research regarding People with disabilities in hospitality context is limited (Burnett and Baker, 2001; Darcy, 2002; Ray and Ryder, 2003 and Israeli, 2002). People with Disabilities are an emerging market segment, which is of interest, with approximately 50 million individuals and expected to double by 2030 (Stumbo and Pegg, 2005). Moreover, the growth of People with Disabilities would also comprise majorly of ageing senior citizens or ageing baby boomers and this market segment would gradually prove to be of importance for the continuing success of the travel and hospitality industry (Burnett and Baker, 2001).

Hence, this article focuses on customer satisfaction of people with disabilities as holidaymakers in hotels, which is of importance in order to capture a loyal market not only from a business point of view but also as a responsibility towards society. Moreover, the impending 2012 Paralympics games would certainly witness large number of disabled players and an increase in arrivals of disabled tourist. If hotels wish to exploit the benefits from the disabled tourist, it would be of importance to provide an exceptionally satisfying welcoming experience that would capture a loyal market and ensure return in the future (Department for media culture and sport, 2007a). Thus, customer satisfaction of people with disabilities becomes all the more important.

Review of Literature:

Disability Defined:

Disability under the UK Disability Discrimination Act is defined as a ‘physical or mental impairment, which has a substantial and long term adverse effect on a person’s ability to carry out normal day to day activities’ (Office of Public Sector Information, 2009a, p.2).

However, British Council of Disabled People defines disability as a ‘disadvantage or restriction of activity by a society, which takes little or no account of people who have impairments- that is caused by physical, mental or sensory condition; and thus excludes them from mainstream activity’ (Busby et al., 2000,p.3); ‘Thus, disabled people are with impairments disabled by society'(ibid).

Types of disability would include people affected in mobility, manual dexterity, speech, hearing, eyesight, memory or ability to concentrate learn or understand, also people suffering from diabetes, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, HIV, cancer are some of the conditions considered under disability (Department for Work and Pension, 2006). Hence, people with disabilities are not a small group but varied and hotels to achieve customer satisfaction will have considered serving the needs of people with different disabilities.

The implementation of the Disability Discrimination Act to an extent has drawn the attention of the hospitality sector towards People with disabilities and have gradually begun to identify them as profitable potential tourist (Shaw and Coles, 2004).The act enforces that service providers do not discriminate people with disabilities whilst providing service (Office of Public Sector Information, 2009b). Business or organisation that provides service, offer facilities or supply goods to public are liable to duties of the Disability Discrimination Act under Part III and this does include hotels (Department of Health, 1996).

The duties of this act for the service providers were rolled from 1996 to 2004 in three stages. The main essence of the duties that were introduced in three stages were that service providers discriminating or treating people with disabilities less favourably than non disabled customers was unlawful. In addition, service providers had to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ for disabled customers such as providing extra help or making changes to the way service is provided and reasonable adjustment to make the premises barrier free (Disability Rights Commission, 2002).

Reasonable changes as stated by the legislation could be one reason as to why service providers just tend to be compliant with law by providing minute alteration such as ramps and tend to do nothing more extensive. Prideaux and Roulstone (2009) express that despite of broad explanation expressing the vitality of accessibility to disabled, the representation of term ‘reasonable adjustment’ as stated in the UK Disability Discrimination Act legislation is still unclear and service providers tend to relive themselves from the responsibility of having extensive accessible service and facility.

Customer satisfaction and its importance:

Hospitality service providers use customer satisfaction as primary tool, as it helps retain customers, help reduce promotion cost intended to attract new customer since satisfied customers tend to return and aid in promotion of the property (Yuksel, 2001). This can also hold true for disabled tourist, as they tend to get loyal to providers that meet the needs, expectation and have facilities that are accessible, and would aid in promotion. Daniels, Rodgers and Wiggins (2005) establish that people with disabilities when loyal to accessible providers that cater to them, promote and learn about new properties mainly through word of mouth, followed by internet sites and at times also through travel guides. Horner (2004) acclaims that industries benefit with retained customers as these customers who are loyal are likely to return and promote the goodwill of the industry to others which may bring in future business. Thus, customer satisfaction has benefits as it helps minimize extra costs, enables industry know their repeat customer better, which could help in improving future service.

Defining customer satisfaction :

Customer satisfaction is based on the involvement of various processes and at times on the customer experience and expectation and this makes it highly complex (Johnston and Clark, 2001). Moreover, customer satisfaction based on components like controllability, emotion, inference, motivation, performance by management or employee or any happening during the service delivery; all of which could work independently or in combination influencing the complex process of satisfaction (Oh and Parks 1997, Bowen 2001, Bowen 2002 and Bowen and Clarke 2002). Being a complex process, it is difficult to pinpoint one single definition and as result, customer satisfaction can be defined in various interpretations (Yuksel and Yuksel, 2001). However, Oh and Parks (1997, p.37) based on critical analysis of customer satisfaction suggested a convincing definition that ‘customer satisfaction may result from a very simple or complex process involving extensive cognitive, affective and other undiscovered psychological and physiological dynamics’.

People with Disability as Potential Market:

People with Disabilities are potential customers for the hospitality sector and catering to this customer base would tend to generate billions in the sector (Arellano 2003). Moreover, senior citizens are likely to experience disability in some form as they age, and tend to coincide with that life stage when they enjoy a retired life having time to travel with surplus disposable income (Fleischer and Pizam, 2002). United Nations, (2007) claims by 2050 universally the number of old age population would double. Thus, disability in some form would also be increasing (Mann, 2005). Groschl (2004) express that as people with disabilities is increasing so is desire to travel, and this awareness has given rise to the need for making travelling and facilities barrier free as hospitality industries in the future would have to depend on this market segment (Glover and Prideaux, 2009). Based on the research conducted by Oztruk, Yayli and Yesiltas (2008), in the hospitality sector in Turkey made it evident that hotels and travel agents encounter tourist with disabilities and have a positive opinion in the growth of this market segment.

Another market that Huh and Singh (2007) express are families with a disabled members too travel on holidays and choose hotels having facilities that are accessible too all members and this market fails to be realized by service providers. Disabled holiday makers may at times travel with their partner or children who could be normal and would prefer to stay in hotel room of their choice not in a predetermined segregated accessible room, however disabled tourist have very little option in rooms selection due to limited available rooms (Clark, 2008). This point out hospitality industry such as hotels rarely gives thought to the motives and expectation of disabled tourist whilst designing. Thus, Gladwell and Bedini (2004) acknowledges that hotel employees failing to deliver appropriate service to disabled tourist are not only the ones affected, but also the service affects the family members or individuals accompanying them.

With the introduction of Disability Discrimination Act, work places have accepted employees with disabilities, in addition, media has assisted in the gradual change in ideology, attitude of the society and this has vastly given rise to attempts made in order to understand People with Disabilities as a potential market segments thus becoming a new phenomenon (Burnett and Baker, 2001). People with disabilities being a niche market segment in the hospitality sector, a prime .concern that this market segment faces is accessibility to facilities offered, which plays an important role in destination or accommodation decision making; moreover accessibility is measured differently compared to non disabled tourist (Isareli, 2002).

Disability in the U.K.

In the U.K. about 10 million disabled people dwell (Office for Disability, 2008). Possessing an estimate annual spending power of 80 billion (Breakthrough-UK, 2009). This might suggest that having realized the economic value of this market, hotels would cater and try to delight disabled customers.

However an assessment carried by tourism for all estimates that 2% of hotels are found to be wheelchair accessible, moreover the British Hospitality Association assess that out of the new 10,000 hotel rooms built from 2004 only 1% were wheelchair accessible (Department for culture, media and sport, 2007b). This would make one ponder if very few hotel rooms are accessible only to wheel chair users let alone other disabilities, then it might be possible that the customer service offered to disabled tourist too may not be optimal, satisfying or delightful.

According to Employers forum on disability (2009), survey conducted in 100 UK companies revealed 44% offer accessible products, only one- third front line departmental employees take into account the preference and needs of people with disability and only 44% companies accept the fact that their websites are accessible to people with disabilities. Hence with so little done suggest that hotel consider disabled tourist marginal and customer satisfaction might not be of importance. The reason behind this could also be due hospitality industries fear that an increase in disabled tourist could displace the normal core business (Phillips, 2002)

Attitude towards people with disability:

Darcy (1998) reflects how important is recreation for disabled and senior tourist and their attitude towards tourism, but the outlook towards people with disabilities at hospitality destinations (hotels) are a matter of concern. The attitude of the individuals in society and marketers in industries towards People with Disabilities is likely to be prejudiced and hospitality providers such as hotels aim to just be compliant with the discrimination act, but little attention is given on how the act can help satisfy the lucrative People with Disabilities tourist market (Burnett,1996). Attitude against people with disability as in Asia can also be experienced where disabled members are seen as disgrace and believe that people with disability suffer as a result of the doings in previous life (Parker, 2001).

Daruwalla and Darcy (2005) based on study conducted suggests that, the attitude of hotel staff can be changed by organising role play , visual information about various impairments and empowering customer service employees to communicate freely with People with Disabilities would change the mindset, moreover such training could be initiated at hospitality institutions. Kaufman-Scarborough (2001) argues that though the ability and necessities of disabled individuals is addressed, very less attention by hotels is given towards understand their needs and capabilities as consumer. Williams, Rattray and Grimes (2006) suggests organisation must view accessibility as a service beneficial to all members of the society and not just confined to People with Disabilities,, moreover such a service which satisfies all members of society would indeed prove to deliver a competitive edge in the market. According to Israeli (2002) hospitality sectors whilst catering and serving People with Disabilities find it difficult to meet their needs since the service hospitable attitudes does not flow genuinely and hence not able to serve them well. This indicates that tourist with disabilities when on holidays at hotels will certainly evaluate every facility differently from the point of accessibility and if the service towards them does not flow naturally this could leave them dissatisfied.

Thus if hotels take initiative to make- facilities accessible, training employees adequately in order to service and communicate with disabled tourist appropriately will indeed achieve customer satisfaction and be able to capture a growing profitable loyal market.

Barriers and its impact on service:

Although this disability market segment, requiring special needs is gradually becoming of importance to the hospitality sector, majority of the hospitality industry do very little and tend to do adjustments just to be compliant with the law (Burnett and Baker, 2001). Besides that hotel managers do nothing more to cater or meet the needs of this niche market and tend to project indifference whilst meeting expectations and wants (Rice, 2006). According to Sen and Mayfield (2004) lodging facilities have numerous limitations when catering to People with Disabilities such as transportation, misplaced wheelchairs, the issue of accessibility to various public facilities, and the incapability of dealing appropriately towards people with different disabilities. People with Disabilities find it difficult to move around freely and perform activities and gestures within normal time as compared to non-disabled people (Daniels, Rodgers and Wiggins, 2005). Hence A prerequisite at hospitality sites to serve this special market segment so that their desires to enjoy leisure, experience facilities and rejuvenate at hospitality sites which are same as non disabled people is requirement of qualified human resource (Oztruk, Yayli and Yesiltas, 2008).

Non disabled tourist have better experience than disabled tourist and hence if hotels wish to cater and serve people with disabilities then the barriers faced by people with disabilities such as mobility impaired, visually impaired, mentally impaired must be considered (Thapar et al., 2004). This segment comprises of various challenges that industry may face due to need for special equipments, change in structure, incapability of staff to handle customers (Ray and Ryder, 2003). It is vital that tourist sites that intend to cater to such a lucrative segment must address to special needs and consider barrier removals in order to make facilities accessible and enjoyable (Oztruk, Yayli and Yesiltas, 2008). Which would service not only people with disabilities but other’s too such as guests carrying heavy luggage or having baby pushchair (Westcott, 2004). Oztruk, Yayli and Yesiltas (2008) do opine that much more needs to be done for this market segment in order to increase the number of trips taken by disabled tourist, increasing activities in hotels and vitally hospitality sectors need to be educated on interaction and maintaining positive relationship with disabled tourist.

Besides the structural barriers, disabled tourist due to their personality and difference in communication whilst socializing transpire as constraints to have an effective relationship with the society (Daniels, Rodgers and Wiggins, 2005). However, McKercher, Packer, Yau and Lam (2003) underpins that People with Disabilities as tourist are very well capable of establishing relation with people around them. In the tourism industry, service providers, which also include hotels, do little in regards to educating and training their employees in areas of understanding and serving People with Disabilities appropriately (Grady and Ohlin, 2009; McKercher, Packer, Yau and Lam, 2003 and Miller and Kirk, 2002). Lack of communication, knowledge about various impairments and negative prejudice leads to individuals maintaining distant and tend to have a wrong mindset about People with Disabilities. Thus, at times hospitality service providers having a stereotype view of People with Disabilities assume that a disabled person is incapable of any activities one such example is the assumption that ‘wheelchair chair user is unable to communicate’ (Daruwalla and Darcy, 2005, p. 552). This suggests that negative attitude and lack of knowledge will indeed put employees in a position not knowing how to react or serve and communicate with disabled tourist.

Smith, Austin, and Kennedy (2001) assert that tourist with disabilities when confronted with barriers that mar their movement greatly lowers their leisure satisfaction and tend to avoid such destinations. Through the survey conducted by Grady and Ohlin (2009) it was evident that hospitality managers find it difficult to cater to the needs of People with Disabilities as tourist since hoteliers lack the knowledge of dealing effectively thus meeting needs and expectation. Daniels, Rodgers and Wiggins (2005) state that hotel employees are prone to be underprepared in effectively dealing with People with Disabilities as tourist as they lack information and training in dealing with them. This points out that with such service delivered would certainly not satisfy or delight the tourist.

Accessibility and impact on customer satisfaction:

People with Disabilities and their quality of life is greatly impacted by recreation and it is vital for such recreational sites to be accessible, since through empirical research it was evident that accessible recreation sites have positive enriching effect on People with Disabilities (Darcy and Daruwalla, 1999 and Ray and Ryder, 2003). Before embarking on a travel journey, in order to be safe and have an enjoyable experience, people with disabilities must judge and decide on various concerns, determine risks by gathering required information and the criteria’s that influence decision process is more complex than for a non disabled tourist (Yau, McKercher and Packer, 2004). If People with Disabilities as tourist are not provided with necessary accessible information by the hotel or through hotel website, the satisfaction of choosing the hotel may not be experienced and this would restrain the motivation and desire to travel (O’Connor and Frew, 2002). This suggests that if initially itself the motivation and desire to travel is not that high, due to lack of information the customer satisfaction could also be at jeopardy.

Moreover, despite of risk evaluation People with Disabilities encounter many hurdles whilst they travel and sites that are inaccessible could have an impact on them, spoil their holiday and could even diminish their travel as well as stay experience (Oztruk, Yayli and Yesiltas, 2008). Hotels in particular though claim to be accessible, are in-fact not completely and easily accessible to disable tourist, and hence disabled tourist lack trust on hotels and rely on personal inspection of accessibility (Ray and Ryder 2003). This indicates that people with disabilities would be apprehensive whilst selecting places. Hence Ray and Ryder (2003) suggests that marketers can reach out to People with Disabilities and can be attracted to destinations is by highlighting them in advertisements, which could encourage the selection of destination. Therefore, according to McKercher, Packer, Yau and Lam (2003) people with disabilities unlike non-disabled tourist face barriers that are inherent, economic, and environmental – that hinder participation, interactive barrier- that is due to the attitude of hospitality service providers and non-availability of accessible information.

The above-mentioned barriers are ascertained by Clark (2007) based on his life experience he expresses that, holiday for people with disabilities could be miserable. Since often, hotels have few accessible rooms and tend to be occupied by non-disabled people; moreover online hotel reservation websites lack the option for selecting an accessible room and in addition, travel agents charge more for service offered. Thus, Westcott (2004) articulates that people with disabilities tend to be more loyal and would return to those locations, which are accessible, where their needs are catered and make holiday experience memorable.

Hence, it is suggested that to better serve People with Disabilities, which would satisfy and delight them it is important that hoteliers understand what within the establishment would prevent disabled tourist to participate in activities (Goodall, Pottinger, Dixon and Russell, 2004).

Web site barrier:

The advocates of People with Disabilities believe that hotel web sites that fall under the disability discrimination act and must be made accessible, however courts are yet to ensure that (Kreismann and Palmer, 2001 and Sherwyn, Eigen and Klausner, 2000). People with Disabilities such as visually impaired find it difficult to navigate through website (Mills, Han and Clay, 2008). In addition, face way-finding barrier, which can be over come with the help of facilitator (Thapar et al., 2004). This suggests that the satisfaction of visually disabled tourist may not be optimal since hotel websites if not accessible would influence the decision and service experience. Williams, Rattray and Grimes (2007) ascertains that hospitality industry when developing websites rarely take impaired users into consideration and hence few websites can be found that are friendly to visually impaired users.

Mills, Han and Clay (2008)says that websites with accessibility barriers pose as a problem and decreases the opportunity of using websites, however websites when made accessible make People with Disabilities independent and can get-into websites for information despite the impairments. Some facilitators that can be used in websites are screen-read software’s that convert text on websites into speech or can also convert text into Braille (O’Brien 2005). Web content accessibility must be capable to serve individual in society, which also includes People with Disabilities, however hotel website information accessibility is low and fails to meet the needs of disabled tourist for whom information provided plays an important role in travel decision-making (William, Rattray and Grimes, 2007). Despite this, various hotels fail to make provision for people with disabilities and on inspection by William and Rattray (2005), they discovered that many hotels have their web pages that are not accessible and even if they are, it was found to be compliant only with first level of accessibility addressed by world wide web consortium (W3C). Hence, it is evident that without proper web accessibility and inaccurate information for such a large market of people with disabilities who wish to travel may experience dissatisfaction through the service offered by hotels. Nusair and Kandampully (2008) put forth that service offered through websites that are accessible, helpful and providing desired information greatly affects customer satisfaction positively. To facilitate accessibility to all including disabled tourist the world wide web consortium have developed web content accessibility guidelines, following which, enables access to all(World Wide Web Consortium, 1999.)

Apart from facilitators that convert text to speech or Braille which is very convenient for people with disabilities such as blindness, deafness but it is also important to address web accessibility for those have reading difficulty. WebPages commonly use option for changing the text size for accessibility but pay little attention to colour, it is important to note that some users cannot differentiate between colours and options must also be available to view text without colour and colour scheme used must be contrasting enough (World Wide Web Consortium, 1999). These simple guidelines in hotel websites could influence satisfaction, help in decision-making and the people with disabilities as tourist may patronize such hotels.

Practically most of the industries universally lose some of their customers to competitors (Devlin, Gwynne and Ennew, 2002). This may be because the competing service provider is likely to meet the customer’s satisfaction level and expectation. Forsyth (1999) put forth that suppliers tend to cater to specific wants; however, customers commonly wish to do be associated with suppliers and their employees who are creative, honest, responsive, knowledgeable, approachable and cater to all wants and this makes customers see them as professional and tend to switch and maintain relation with such suppliers.

Influence of hotel service on customer satisfaction.

Customer oriented industries such as hotels place customer at the core whilst evaluating customer satisfaction, however in order to do so is it important to understand the customers needs and expectations which would help maximize satisfaction and maintain competitiveness and profitability ( McMullan, 2005). The study conducted by Danaher and Mattsson (1994) reveals that customer satisfaction in hotels is based on evaluation of various services offered which customers are likely to evaluate them separately and not collectively hence strongly impacting customer satisfaction.

According to Forsyth (1999) in hospitality industry such as hotels, customer service is of prime importance to maintain good customer relation and maintain customer satisfaction. Cartwright (2000) argues that delighting a customer is also of importance and can be achieved when product and facilities serve more than expected. Service providers are now realising that delighting customers is more vital since by just satisfying customers and gaining their loyalty though are primary factors whilst satisfying customers cannot be entirely relied on. Disabled customers too travel and wish to enjoy facilities, services and are delighted when all is accessible, hotels need to keep them in mind whilst assessing their services. Shoemaker and Bowen (2003) revealed that in order to delight, maintain loyalty and connection, and gain trust from customers for the organisation it is important that all services and facilities are designed keeping customers into consideration.

Based on survey conducted by Wei, Ruys and Muller (1999) concluded that people with disabilities and including senior travellers gave more importance to facilities and service that the hotel offered than other attributes such as decor, price, food and beverage, when judging the satisfaction they experienced during their stay. Zeitmal and Bitner (2003) explains that in order to achieve customer satisfaction, it is important to maintain quality and standard in every customer service encounter, in-order to do so it is important that employees understand specific requirements and priorities of customers during each service encounter.

Findings and Suggestions:.

From the literature it is evident that people with disabilities experience a lot of constraints, and have to consider various risks when planning to travel, also they face with limited options during travel selection process (United Nations, 2007). The lodging facilities such as hotels too are few that are able to cater to their needs and treat them as expected (Vignuda, 2001). Thus, often-disabled travellers are forced to select only those hotels that they are aware of, which will cater to their needs, since other hotels fail to treat them as expected and would fail to provide a satisfying experience. It is apparent that gradually in the future hospitality industries such as hotel would have to cater to this growing market and customer satisfaction would be of importance to ensure repeat business and draw such a niche market into hotels.

Most of the service providers are reactive and implement installation of ramps or automatic door or design few accessible guest rooms, toilets or have special parking space or may implement Braille menu (Kaufman-Scarborough,1998). However more than physical changes it is worthwhile having implemented welcoming service accessible to all, which would ensure people with disabilities to enjoy d

When predicting future travel patterns, it is critical to first have basic knowledge of a persons travel motivation and what is motivating them to pursue travelling to destinations that they have selected. As Pearce, Morrison & Rutledge (1998) have defined tourist motivation as “the global integrating network of biological and cultural forces which gives value and direction to travel choices, behaviour and experience”.

Each tourist is driven by different motives that determine their travel choices. These choices can be for new experiencing, culture fascination, recreation, pleasure and relaxing and shopping. Although what motivates people to travel may differ, but there is always recurrent themes emerging. For instance, a person may choose to travel and escape from their usual place of living and decides on taking up a holiday for different surroundings and relaxation, to explore new things, places and people.

Many have viewed motivation as a major determinant of the tourist’s behaviour. Theories of motivation is the concept of needs and they are seen as the forces that arouses motivated behaviour and to best understand what motivates people, it is useful to discover the needs they have and how these needs can be fulfilled. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory is the best known motivation theories. The push and pull concept is another line of travel motivation, while Plog’s allocentrism/psychocentrism model will help explain phenomenal rise and fall of travel destinations.

Cohen (1972) in his early studies, draws attention to the fact that all tourists are seeking some element of novelty and strangeness while, at the same time, most also need to retain something familiar. How tourists combine the demands for novelty with familiarity can in turn be used to derive a typology. According to Johns & Gyimothy (2002) Cohen distinguished tourist using sociological principles into organised mass tourist, individual mass tourists, explorer and drifter.

In this essay, we shall discuss different author’s approach for travel motivation and typologies of tourist’s behaviour and shall critically review and compare these theories and typologies.

Travel Motivation

Travel motivation includes two factors, the push motives factor which describes the need for exploring, relaxing, and interacting socially in the vacation decision. While pull motives is the attraction caused by the destination to the person, these factors include sight seeing, and historical attractions and sites. Push factors are known to form a desire for travelling, and pull factors are known to explicate the choice of destination. Crompton (1979). Push factors can also suggest avoidance of work and pressures at home caused culturally or socially. And pull factors suggest simply seeking adventure, freedom, escape, leisure and play. Seaton (1997)

Maslow’s theory involves five needs forming a hierarchy, in a pyramid shape from lower to higher needs. Maslow explained how when the lower needs Physiological needs (basic life needs- air, water, food, shelter, warmth, sleep, sex), Safety needs (protection, security, low, limits, stability, order), Belonging and love (family, affection, relationships, work groups) are achieved the person would be motivated by the needs of the next two levels Esteem needs (achievement, status, responsibility, reputation), Self-actualization needs (personal growth and fulfilment).

Although Maslow’s theory has been criticized as the basic five needs remain ambiguous, while some feel that it has provided relevance in how human actions are understandable and predictable.

The tourism industry has borrowed a lot from Maslow because he provides a convenient set of containers that can be relatively labelled. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has also produced a useful tool for understanding psychological motivational factors in tourism. For instance, a person may choose to travel to visit friends and family, but the underlying psychological motivation may be brought by the need for belonging and desire to reunite family links.

Iso-Ahola (1982) stated that when tourists are on holidays their roles over time may be switched and different needs will emerge. Sometimes a single motivation may not always be the main factor for travel, if while on holiday and the initial needs are satisfied, other motivations might rise. It is congruent with Maslow’s theories of needs to argue that if there is a primary need for relaxation while on holiday, the satisfaction of relaxing will create a new need such as exploring the place to enable processes of self-actualization to take place.

The four motivational needs Beard and Ragheb (1983) stated are derived from the work of Maslow (1970). These components help in assessing the extent to which individuals are motivated to participate in and are involved in activities such as learning, discovering, exploring and imagining; the social component helps in assessing the level where individuals are participating in leisure activities for social reasons. Friendship and interpersonal relationships is one of the basic needs, while the second need is the esteem of others. While the competence-mastery component assesses the level of which individuals engage in leisure activities in order to accomplish, master, challenge and compete. These activities are usually physical in nature; it is escaping and getting away from overbearing life situations. It drives individuals to seek solitude, unwind, rest and search for calm conditions to avoid social contacts.

Sefton and Burton (1987) has replicated these four motivations to form the foundation of their Leisure Motivation Scale. However the original Ragheb and Beard Scale, contained items such as to use and develop physical skills and abilities. This attitude is associated with competition and staying fit, others have demonstrated that competency and mastery can be established in ways such as intellectual pursuits. Other researchers have also identified four groups of motivations, which are linked to Maslow’s ideas. These ideas include physical motivators such as health and less tension; cultural motivators such as religion, art and heritage; interpersonal motivators such as visiting family and friends; status motivators such as self esteem and personal development.

Hudman and Hawkins (1989) made a list of ten main motivators that motivated tourists. These ten motivators are anywhere from physical activities to physical inactivities. They are curiosity, sports, health, natural resources, man made facilities, visiting friends and relatives, business, religion, self esteem and physical inactivity such as simply sunbathing and relaxing.

Similarly to the above, six combinations of motivations were grouped and the six combinations included; educational and cultural which be the interest of historic sites, relaxation, adventure and pleasure, health and recreation, ethnicity and family. This leads to the been-there-done that factor to a tourist.

The Iso-Ahola’s theory indicates that what motivates tourism is the assertion of personal escape whereby overcoming bad mood and changing the pace of your everyday life, personal seeking whereby boasting about your experience to others to feel good about yourself, interpersonal escape is whereby you escape the stressful environment you are in and avoid interactions with others, and interpersonal seeking is being with individuals with similar interest and to meet new people. Snepenger et al (2006)

Another seven elements of tourist motivations were identified by Dann (1981) and his motivation elements included; travelling as a response to what is desired, destination pull in response to a motivational push, motivation as a fantasy whereby engaging in activities that are deemed unacceptable in their culture and home environment, motivation as a classified purpose such as visiting family and relatives, motivational typologies, motivation and tourist experience, and motivation as an auto-definition and meaning such as the way in which a tourist will explain their situations and respond to them.

The Travel Career Ladder is another travel motivation and it consists of five elements developed by P.Pearce (1988) these five travel motivation elements vary from motivations of relaxation, stimulation, relationship, self-esteem, to development and fulfilment. A tourist motivation is an ever changing process and moving up the ladder while progressing through the various life-cycle changes. The model Pearce developed showed that motivations are divided into two categories. The need may be self-centred for instance relaxation may be done solo and the holiday maker seeks a quiet restful time alone, or the need is directed at others for instance it can be relaxation with other individuals and springing from the need for external excitement and desire for novelty.

More examples of self-centred needs and needs directed at others are; self directed needs springs from the concern for own safety, relationship can be self-directed which means giving love and affection and maintaining relationships, self-esteem and development maybe self-directed like development of skills, special interests, competence and mastery, fulfilment is another example of self-directed needs, as if fulfils and understands oneself more and experience peace. While needs directed at others can be directed toward others arising out of the concern for other’s safety, or it can be directed at others by means of receiving affection and to be with group membership and it may be directed at others like prestige, and glamour of travelling.

Seaton (1997) criticized Pearce’s travel motivations. For instance, as Pearce argued that stimulation may be understood alone a dimension of risk and safety of oneself or of others, it may be argued that there is a distinctive difference between these two motivations. A concern about the safety of others might mean placing yourself at risk to help others from danger. The willingness to do this relies on the certainty of a person’s psychological maturity.

It has been suggested by Pearce & Lee (2005) that in the Travel Career Ladder framework, the term career indicates that many individuals orderly move through a series of stage or their travel motivational patterns are predictable. As some may influentially say to the Travel Career Ladder, others may remain at a particular level, mostly depending on opportunities and other limitations such as health and financial situations.

Typologies of Tourist Behaviour

Cohen (1972), in his early studies, draws attention to the fact that all tourists are seeking some element of novelty and strangeness while, at the same time, most also need to retain something familiar. How tourists combine the demands for novelty with familiarity can in turn be used to derive a typology. Cohen (1972) the sociologist, identified four types of tourists:

The organizational Mass tourist who buys tourists packages or all inclusive tours in order to visit classical mass tourism destinations, where everything is predetermined before hand and has a low degree of participation and involvement in the travel search for information. There is no sense of adventure or exploration. He/she belongs to an institutionalized type of tourism where the contact with the organizers of tourism industry is a constant.

The individual mass tourist is similar to the organizational mass tourist, however this one is flexibility on his/her decisions and want to participate more in the process. The tourist strongly depends on the tourism industry but want to try some new things out of the closed and predetermined packages.

The explorer is more adventurous, he wants to find his/her own experience participating actively in this decision choice. He arrange most of the elements of the travel by himself/herself, however sometimes he/she has to turn to a travel agency or tourism professionals to get some comfort or security amenities.

The drifter looks for intensive experiences and he want to feel immerse in local communities. He/she completely abandon his relations with the institutions of tourism systems planning everything by him. He practiced a non institutionalized type of tourism.

With this classification of tourists Cohen established an interesting link between the need of living unique experiences and the need of the perception of security. The more secure a tourist wants to feel, the more he will trust on tourism specialist and thus he will live less unique experiences (more standardized). Stanley Plog (1974 cited Plog 1991) developed a similar psychobiological model designed to explain what type of people prefer what type of destination according to its psychographics characteristics. To the author, tourist population could be divided into a continuum of personalities distributed along the Gauss curve; from psychometrics, individual travellers whom look for the unexplored, in one extreme to allocentrics, mass tourism tourists, in the other.

After Cohen and Plog, researchers such us Dalen (1989), Smith (1989) or Urry (2002) for instances; they have attempted to create new categories of tourists based on their subject of research. It has to be pointed out that all the models proposed until now they are just descriptive and not relevant to the general tourism demand. They are just focused in one area of study and not in the bigger dimension where the tourist is immerse.

In addition, they also fail in the same thing: they do not take into account the factors which determine the different types of tourists (Sharpley, 1999). These factors might be grouped into demographic and socioeconomic factors such us age, life cycle, gender and income; and structural social factors such as the existence of non tourists and capitalist tourism (Sharpley, 1999).Therefore, every person goes trough different stages in life, and depending on the age, familiar circumstances or income tourist will change from one typology to another. Moreover, in these classifications it is not always the tourist who can decide what tourist is going to be, but it is the society who is going to classify you (Swarbrooke and Horner, 2007)

Conclusion

To better plan and market tourist destinations, a better understanding of motivation is crucial. Travel motivation theories can help us understand what motivation is, and what elements must be considered to understand it, and then interpret the different findings to understand the motivation of a certain type of tourist. What motivates a person to travel may vary from one seeking adventure to one visiting a family to feel a sense of belonging or whether they are affected by the Push motive or the Pull motive. Therefore it is difficult to differentiate the different individual motives of travel and people often may not constitute to the real reason of travel. However, understanding travel motivation and typologies of tourist has enabled and explained why certain tourism destinations are more developed and successful than others. All the theories explained above are used as tool to gain knowledge about what is driving tourists to travel and why are they choosing the places they are travelling too. Travel motivations fundamental in tourism and is important for development. The motivation that indicates a tourist’s behaviour can show how people set their goals on the destination of their choice and it will reveal how these goals reflect their choice and their travel behaviour. Last but not least, after undertaking this research, understanding the motivations and the typologies of a tourist is the key success to the tourism industry.

Part BAbstract

It is revealed that high labor turnover is a major global problem in hotel industry. The human resource management in the hotel industry is facing challenge about retaining employees and minimizes the turnover. Therefore, it is worth to investigate about the human resource management in the hotel industry.

The purpose of this study is to explore the labor turnover in hotel industry, and its associated the factors affecting the labor turnover and how to manage the labor turnover. The labor turnover in hotel industry is influenced by the work related factors, external factors and external factors. According to some statistics, the cost of labor turnover in hotel industry is very high. Moreover, some retention strategy are propose to overcome the labor turnover are discussed including training, employee motivation and employee recognition.

Section 1 : Introduction
Reason for choice of topic

The tourism industry is the leading industry in many countries. Hong Kong tourism industry contributing $162.8 billion or 10.8% of gross domestic product in 2009(http://www.gov.hk/en/residents/, http://www.tourism.gov.hk/textonly/english/statistics/statistics_perform.html ) and Thailand tourism industry generate 6.5% of gross domestic product in 2008 (http://www.thaiwebsites.com/tourism.asp). Accommodation is an essential element of tourism service and it is vital to the quality of the tourist experience, as it constitutes a major part of consumption.

This study is to investigate the labor turnover in the hotel organization. It is general known that the hospitality industry has a major challenge about the labor turnover and staff stability rates. These problems are usually occur in the front-line staff as it is related to a lot of unfavorable working conditions in hotel, such as the long working hours, unstable working schedule and lack of promotion opportunities. Therefore, many people are not willing to enter to the hotel industry or some people have work for many years in hotel industry but shift to another industry because of those unfavorable working conditions. Besides, the human resource management in the hotel industry are facing some serious problems about retaining the employees and recruits the right people to fill in the right job. Therefore, it is worthwhile to investigate the factors that cause the front-line employees to quit the job. In addition, to discuss what the human resource management can do to retain the staff and manage the labor turnover in the hotel organization.

Another reason for choosing this topic to study is the author’s want to become the human resource manager in a hotel. Therefore, it is vital that the author have a clear understanding of what challenges that the human resource management are facing and to use the specific approach to overcome those problems.

1.2 Academic objectives of dissertation

This paper aims to achieve the followings objectives:

To find out what is the meaning of labor turnover and have an overview of the turnover culture in the hotel industry

To discuss the factors that influence labor turnover in hotel industry.

To explain the cost of labor turnover in hotel industry.

To find out what the human resource management can do to managing the labor turnover.

Outline of sections

In section 1, the author talked about her reason for choice this topic and the major objectives through this project. In section 2, the authors explained the concepts of labor turnover briefly and provide an overview of the turnover culture in the hotel industry. In section 3, the author would explain the factors influence the turnover in the hotel industry and have an understanding of the cost of labor turnover. It could help to show the labor turnover is a serious problem within the industry. Moreover, in section 4, the author wants to make others understand how to manage the labor turnover in the hotel industry. Finally in section 5, would be the summary and conclusion about this project.

Section 2: Literature review
2.1 What is labor turnover?

According to Price (1977, p.15) the term ‘turnover’ is defined as the ratio of the number of organization members who have left during the period being considered divided by the average number of people in that organization during the period and also each time a position is vacated, a new employee must be hired and trained. This replacement cycle is known as turnover (Woods, 1995, p. 345). Labor turnover refers to the movement of employees in and out of a business. Labor turnover affects both workers and firms: workers may need to learn new job-specific skills, whilst firms incur the costs of hiring and training new workers (Brown et. al., 2009). The new workers may be more highly motivated and more highly skilled. Hence, turnover may enhance firm performance. However, high labor turnover causes problems for the firm as it is costly, lowers productivity and morale.

Labor turnover can be divided into two main types: voluntary, where the employees leave of their own free will, and involuntary, where the employer decides that employment should terminate. Retirement can fall into either category (Boella, 2000). Most often the voluntary turnover arises where some employees leave to escape negative work environment factors and other are pulled away from the organization by more attractive opportunities and Cheng and Brown (1998) stated that people quit their job for many reasons, but most reasons are not related to management. In recent study, the involuntary turnover can applied to those employees have a poor performance or have did some serious mistakes then the organization would encourage them to quit than fire them.

2.2 The turnover culture in the hotel industry

Everyone knows that the hotel industry is a highly labor-intensive industry but the high labor turnover is a serious problem within the industry all around the world. Some theorists such as Mobley (1977), Price (1977), Price and Mueller (1986) identified a range of other variables such as pay, communication, social integration, reutilization, role overload, promotional opportunity, training, supervisor and co-worker support, and distributive justice as having a significant impact upon turnover.

According to the research Griffith University, the primary reason for managerial and operational turnover was voluntary resignation, followed by an internal transfer. Performance related terminations were very low. The main motivating factors for executives, managerial and supervisory staff to change jobs, within the hotel industry, were better career opportunities and better working hours. Changing jobs outside the industry was primarily motivated by higher salaries, working hours and better career opportunities. The data suggests that higher wages and better working hours are the major drivers for managerial employees to leave. Similarly, operational staff seek better wages, better working hours and improved career opportunities.

In the pervious years, a small among of staff in hotel industry will stay for longer than five years but the voluntary turnover is gradually increase compared with the last decades. According to Kennedy and Berger (1994, p. 58) they stated that, in the hospitality industry, ‘the highest turnover occurred during the first 4 weeks (in employment)’. The cause of turnover is often poor human resource decisions and the unmet expectations of newcomers.

2.3 Factors affecting employee intent to leave in the hotel industry

There are many factors affecting employee turnover. According to a widely accepted though, employees usually quit their jobs because of lack of wages. However, many studies show that there are also many complex factors affecting employee turnover other than wage, such as the management of the company, economics, and psychology. In the following section, some factors affecting employee turnover are discussed.

2.3.1 Work Related Factors

The work related factors are other factors that will influence the labor turnover in the hotel industry. The following section will mainly focus on the job satisfaction, pay, working environment, work performance, promotion opportunities and the organization commitment how to influence the labor turnover.

2.3.1.1 Job Satisfaction

Job satisfaction is containing the satisfaction with pay, satisfaction with the work itself, satisfaction with the supervision, satisfaction with the promotion opportunities (Khatri et. al., 2003). According to Davis (1981), job satisfaction can be defined as pleasantness or unpleasantness of employees while working. In addition, Oshagbemi (2000) has defined job satisfaction as ”individual’s positive emotional reaction to particular job”. The term job satisfaction is considered an attribute that exists as the equity of a variety of desired and non-desired job-related experiences. It is also defines as the degree of fit between the features of a job and employee’s expectations. In addition, there are researchers who view that job satisfaction is a result of both employees’ expectations and aspirations and their existing status (Clark & Oswald, 1996). When the employees with a lack of job satisfaction they will be quitting the job, and the basic reason is that they expect to have a more satisfying job. On the other hand, if the employees have a high job satisfaction, the organization will be fewer labor turnovers. Price and Mueller (1981) stated that job satisfaction has an indirect influence on turnover through its direct influence on formation of intent to leave. Another study stated that employees with higher degree of trust would have higher levels of job satisfaction in the hospitality industry (Gill, 2008).

2.3.1.1.1 Pay

According to the past study, the average annual wages of hotel are very low compare with the other industries such as the IT technology and education industry. A low starting salary is found in the frontline department in the hotel industry such as the housekeeping, Food and Beverage and front office. It was shown that dissatisfaction with pay is among the significant factors responsible for turnover (Pavesic and Brymer, 1990; Pizam and Ellis, 1999).

Pay is received by the staff and money is equivalent to staff’s effort to provide service. The salary, compensation and fringe benefit received by the staff are also the pay. Therefore, if the pay is increase, it can reduce the labor turnover. The relationship between pay and job satisfaction has received considerable attention (Churchill, Ford&Walker, 1974; Lawler, 1995). The pay was the most important job attribute contributing to job satisfaction in the Hong Kong hotel industry. Therefore, higher pay is significantly related to greater job satisfaction. The staff will be more satisfied with their job when the actual pay is more than the expected pay.

The other situation that causes the staff to be more likely to leave their organization is that when they perceive that they are receiving lower salary but they know the other people elsewhere are offered better pay. Therefore, offering higher wages than competing organization will enable the organization to retain some talented worker.

2.3.1.1.2 The work itself

The work itself is a critical dimension in employee job satisfaction (Luthans, 1992; Lawler, 1995; Qu, Ryan & Chu, 2001; Groot & Van Den Brink, 1999) and Glisson and Durick (1988) considered the worker and the nature of the work itself as two important factors affecting job satisfaction. The internal satisfactory factors are related to the work itself, such as: feeling of achievement, feeling of independence, self-esteem, feeling of control and other similar feelings obtained from work. And the external satisfactory factors such as: receiving praise from the boss, good relationships with colleagues, good working environment, high salary, good welfare and utilities.

There is a relationship between job satisfaction and stress. Barsky, Thoresen, Warren and Kaplan(2004) argued that high level of work stress will be decrease the job satisfaction and finally leaving the organization because workers feel their job duties are difficult to fulfill. Price (1977) divided job stress into four types: lack of resources to perform, the amount of workload, the clarity of the role obligations and the role conflict. Those job stresses will also make the employees intent to quit the organization.

2.3.1.1.3 The supervision

Supervision, being one of the dimensions of job satisfaction (Rust et al., 1996), is defined from the employee-centeredness perspective, it is manifested in ways such as checking to see how well the subordinate is doing, providing advice and assistance to the individual, and communicating with the worker on a personal as well as an official level (Luthans, 1992, pp. 121-122). Some information show that, satisfaction with supervisor will influence job satisfaction positively and finally decrease the labor turnover. If the supervisor provide more concern and social support to the employees, they will be more satisfy and the turnover will be decrease.

2.3.1.1.4 The promotion opportunities

Price (2001) stated that promotion opportunities are the potential degree of movement to a higher level status within an organization. The promotion opportunities are also the important category to define the employees are satisfy or dissatisfy, because promotion opportunities are usually associated with increase the salary.

However, the result show that hotel sector are lack of promotion opportunities rather than not having enough fair promotion policy (Iverson and Derry. 1997). Due to the hotel industry are lack of promotion opportunities, it will reduce the chance to retain the talented employees in the organization. When employees suffering from unfair treatment, they will change their job attitude immediately and may quit in long run (Vigoda, 2000).

2.3.1.2 The Organization Commitment

According to Pennstate (2006), organizational commitment is the relative strength of an employee’s attachment or involvement with the organization where he or she is employed. Organizational commitment is important because committed employees are less likely to leave for another job and are more likely to perform at higher levels. There are three dimensions of organizational commitment, which are affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment.

Turnover literature has consistently found a strong relationship between turnover and organizational commitment, indicating that employees with low commitment are likely to withdraw from the organization. Alternatively, a positive relationship has been found between organizational commitment and career progress or internal promotions indicating that promoted employees are more likely to exhibit higher organizational commitment.

2.3.1.3 Work Performance

Employees work performance is another factor affecting labor turnover. According to a study conducted by Jewell and Siegal (2003), it was found that the employees having high performance were not willing to leave their jobs. At this point of view, if the employees having low performance leave their jobs for any reasons, labor turnover is not an important matter for the company. On the other hand, if the employees have a high job performance. Low wages, exclusion from prizes, unsuitable jobs are also among the reasons causing low performance and high employee turnover.

2.3.1.4 Personal Reason

Some employees also leave their jobs because of personal reasons. A principal reason that employees leave their jobs is lack of incentives (Pizam and Ellis, 1999). Employees may simply want recognition or an opportunity in advance. For example, The Ritz Carlton Company has reduced employee turnover by focusing on quality recruitment, providing better training and orientation, establishing realistic career opportunities and creating long-term incentive and reward systems.

2.3.2 Demographic Factor

Most voluntary turnover models include demographic variables such as age, gender, race, tenure, marital status, number of dependents, and educational experience. However, this paper only focuses on the level of education, gender, marital status and age.

2.3.2.1 Level of Education

One of the major challenges of the hospitality industry is the retention of highly educated employees. We define highly educated staff as employees who have followed a higher education program at a bachelor’s or master’s level successfully ( Deery and Shaw, 1999). Carbery et al. (2003) noted that those more highly educated managers or non-managers are more likely to intent to make a turnover decision. One research study by (Blomme et. al., 2010), it shows that among alumni of the Hotel School The Hague who are working worldwide has shown that within 6 years after graduation about 70% of all graduates from the hotel school The Hague leave the organization in which they are working. The more highly educated staff will be less easily satisfied with their jobs than those staff with lower education level because the highly educated staff have higher expectations in job status and salary and they may not be willing to join or stay in the hotel industry. In addition, the external labor markets will provide many opportunities for those highly educated people to satisfy their high expectation on financial benefit. (Wong, Siu & Tseng, 1999)

2.3.2.2 Gender

Some study noted that, the female and male have their particular behavior that would influence the labor turnover. According to a study conducted by(Doherty and Manfredi,2001:62), it was found that women workers leave their jobs more than men workers, because the roles of women have to taking care of children, having baby in a society and doing house work. In addition, Hersch and Stratton (1997) stated that women, especially married women, spend more time engaged in household activities and are substantially more prepared to quit their job for a family-related reason than men . Some women workers also do not want to return to their jobs after having baby.

On the other hand, the study conducted by Tang and Talpade (1999), it stated that males tended to have higher satisfaction with pay than females, whereas females tended to have higher satisfaction with co-workers than males. Its means that women tend to rate social needs as more important than men such as working with people and being helpful to other. Men tend to consider pay more important than do women.

Women often begin their careers with much lower expectations than men do and they are willing to take career risks and change employers to do so.

Finally, women workers usually work at the entry level jobs in hotel and accordingly get less pay than their men co-workers. According to a study conducted by Iverson (2000) in the USA, it was found that women managers in hotel got very less wages than men managers whether in the beginning or top of their careers. In a similar study, it was found that men workers got more wages than women workers got (Burgess, 2000). It was also found that in order to balance the wage differences among men and women workers, basic and routine job were given to women workers than men workers.

2.3.2.3 Marital Status

According to Pizam and Ellis (1999), it stated that marital status could influence labor turnover. Those married employees are most concerned with the balance between their work and family life. Hom and Griffeth (1995),stated that married employees will not want to have a voluntary turnover. Because they have many concerns about the financial needs for their family. If they cannot afford the long and unstable working hours, they will tend to give up the job. However, this issue mostly occurs on women. Therefore, they will have more time for family life and take care of their child.

On the other side, the unmarried employees will consider factors related to their jobs such as promotion opportunities and organization commitment more than those married employees (Wong, Siu & Tsang, 1999). Therefore, they are less satisfied with their job than married employees.

2.3.2.4 Age

In recent study, Hartman and Yrle (1996) points out that the Generation Y employee mostly creates the labor turnover in hospitality industry. In addition, the study conducted by Iverson and Deery (1997), it stated that younger employees have a higher propensity to leave than older employees. The problem was arisen in this decade; as the employees born in the baby boomer are retire gradually. The baby boomer is anyone born between 1946 and 1964. They have been through periods of war; therefore have less opportunity in education institutions. They tend to demand more stability in their workplace, and they are very loyalty to their employees. On the other hand, the Generation Y employee who was born between the years 1979 and 1994, they can adapt the changes easily and seek a higher standard of life therefore, they consider more about their interest in the work. Furthermore, they usually change their job, as they want to gain more experience and make their life more diversity.

2.3.3 External Factors

The external factors are the factors that we cannot control and very difficult to predict. Some of these factors include political shifts, legislation, new or modified regulations, global economic conditions, technology changes and major mining disasters.

In some study, the hotel industry is quite easily influenced by the global economic conditions. The economic situation could predict most of the labor turnover within the industry. Therefore, the unemployment rate affects the employee’s perception on job satisfaction. If the economic is down turn, the employees who perceive a high level of job dissatisfaction, they may still stay in organization because they don’t want to lose their current job and also the job market is a lack of opportunities for them to get a better job. On the other hand, if the economic condition have improve, the employees will leave the organization immediately to find a better job. Therefore, it may create the high level of labor turnover when the economic have improved. In the later part of the literature will focus on how to manage the labor turnover in order to minimize the labor turnover within the hotel industry.

2.4 The cost of labor turnover

In the previous section, some of the critical factors that affect the labor turnover are discussed. The following section will focus on the cost of labor turnover and its impact. Labor turnover is a significant cost to hotel and it may be the most significant factor affecting hotel profitability, service quality and skills training. (Davidson et. al., 2009). The cause of labor turnover is multidimensional, such as low morale, low productivity, low standard of performance and absenteeism.

According to the statistics from TTF Australia(2006), the annual cost of replacing managerial employees was $109,909 per hotel and the annual cost of replacing operational employees was $9,591 per employee. The total annual cost of turnover ($49M) equates to 19.5% of 64 surveyed hotels total payroll costs ($250M). Another study stated that the Marriott Corporation alone estimated that each 1% increase in its employee turnover rate, costs the company between $5 and $15 million in lost revenues (Schlesinger and Heskett, 1991).Therefore, the cost of labor turnover is very high.

Labour turnover is not only a significant tangible dollar cost but also an intangible or ‘hidden’ cost associated with loss of skills, inefficiency and replacement costs (Lashley & Chaplain, 1999). The direct impact of labor turnover will cause financial suffering such as administrative cost and Lashley (1999) refers to lost investment in training and lost staff expertise as particular examples of turnover costs and opportunity costs. For the indirect impacts caused by high labor turnover are lack of manpower, poor quality of service and low morale of employees and also if turnover increases, service quality may decline as it takes time and resources to ‘back fill’ departing employees, especially at busy hotels (Lynn, 2002).

Labour is a significant cost and the leakage of human capital through unnecessary turnover is an element of critical importance to bottom line performance. A number of HRM practices have been suggested as potential solutions for turnover, such as investment in training, offering organisational support, adopting innovative recruitment and selection processes, offering better career opportunities (Cheng & Brown, 1998; Forrier & Sels, 2003; Hinkin & Tracey, 2000; Walsh & Taylor, 2007; Walters & Raybould, 2007) and adopting measures to increase job satisfaction and commitment.

2.5 How to manage the labor turnover in the hotel industry?

High staff turnover is the common problem in hotel industry, it is also a major factor affecting workplace efficiency, productivity, and hotel cost structure. Labor turnover represents a challenge for contemporary HRM strategies and practices. Therefore, in this section, it will turn to focus on how to manage the labor turnover from the human resources perspective.

In the previous section, the cost of labor turnover in the hotel is discussed. The total annual cost of turnover ($49M) equates to 19.5% of 64 surveyed hotels total payroll costs ($250M). The turnover cost are very high, thus the awareness of the importance of employees staying with an organization is evident. Hinkin and Tracey (2000) advocate that hospitality executives who understand the value of human capital and adopt organizational policies and management practices in pursuit of employee retention will outperform the competition. Effectively designed and well implemented employee retention programs that increase employee tenure more than pay for themselves through reduced turnover costs and increased productivity (Hinkin and Tracey, 2000).

According to 2500 supervisors, managers and executives within this sector, the top five most important aspects a company can provide to retain their people are as follows: communication, Leadership, Career path, development and understanding aspirations and helping the individual towards achieving them.(Baum ,2006) This shows that, the employee are highly concern for this five elements to determine their job satisfaction. Therefore, when HRM design for a retention scheme, they can consider those five elements before their decision.

2.5.1 Training

In organizations where employees receive the proper training needed to assume greater responsibilities, turnover rates are generally lower. Several studies show that training activities are correlated with productivity and retention (Delery and Doty, 1996; Huselid, 1995; Kallenberg and Moody, 1994; MacDuffie, 1995; Shaw et al., 1998; Terpstra and Rozell, 1993; US Department of Labor, 1993, Walsh and Taylor, 2007; Youndt et al., 1996). Staff is a unique asset in the company. Therefore, many hotel have invest a huge number of money per year for staff development. Because they realize that provide training to their employees would enhance the organization produtivity and improve their job performance. For the long-term purpose, training can solve the problem of high labor turnover in a hotel.

Moreover, the hotel industry are now have a general shortage of the middle management staff. Therefore, the training should be around to develop and train new management personnel. For example, in 2004 Shangri-La Hotel & Resorts’ Shangri-La Academy was born, this is a full-time facility that handles internal training for progression up the ranks. In addition, the Intercontinental Hotel Group also launched an in-house training center in order to groom their high potential employees to take on managerial positions within their company. Those measures of the Shangri-La Hotel and the Intercontinental Hotel Group is to do the retention of their employees and confront the trend of shortage of experienced staff and try to minimize the labor turnover.

2.5.2 Motivate the employee

Staff motivation is as vital to success as any skill or personal attribute and its also plays a key role in staff retention. Motivation is the process by which a person’s efforts are energized, directed, and sustained toward attaining a goal.(Stephen & Coulter, 2006:482) . Staff motivation is a key element in retaining staff and help them increase the job satisfaction thus the labor turnover rate may be decrease.

It is essential for the management of hotels to develop efficient HRM polices and practices that enable them to motivate competent employees who can contribute to the achievement of their objectives. This requires employees at different levels of management and at different stages in their career in order to maintain high morale and high performance (Enz and Siguaw, 2000). If hotel managers can satisfy their employees, it will help them to improve customer satisfaction in the long run and retain them. (Tsaur and Lin, 2004).

2.5.3 Employee recognition, rewards and compensation

Numerous studies have addressed the impact of employee compensation, rewards and recognition on turnover and retention. If the hotel manager gives more recognition, rewards and compensation to their employees, it can minimize the turnover.

Several research studies found that highly competitive wage systems promote employee commitment and thus results in the attraction and retention of a superior workforce (Becker and Huselid, 1999; Guthrie, 2001; Shaw et al., 1998). Shaw et al.’s (1998) study further noted that employees will remain with an organization as long as it serves their self-interest to do so better than the alternatives available to them elsewhere. The study also found that companies providing incentive plans to employees are more likely to experience lower turnover rates among non-managerial employees.

Milman (2003) concluded that the most significant retention predictors included intrinsic fulfillment and working conditions rather than monetary rewards. Similarly, the study by Walsh and Taylor (2007) revealed that although compensation and work-life balance are important, it is the absence of opportunity for professional growth and development that affects management retention and turnover (Walsh andTaylor, 2007).

Section 3: Summary and Conclusions

Labor turnover refers to the movement of employees in and out of a business. Labor turnover may enhance firm performance but high labor turnover causes problems for the firm such as lowers productivity and morale. Labor turnover can be divided into two main types: voluntary and involuntary. High labor turnover is a serious problem within the industry all around the world. A range of other variables such as pay, communication, social integration, reutilization, role overload, promotional opportunity, training, supervisor and co-worker support, and distributive justice as having a significant impact upon turnover.

The reasons of labor turnover in hotel industry can be classified as work related factors, demographic factors and external factors. For the work related factors, job satisfaction can be defined as pleasantness or unpleasantness of employees while working. It is containing the satisfaction with pay, satisfaction with the work itself, satisfaction with the supervision, satisfaction with the promotion opportunities When the employees with a lack of job satisfaction they will be quitting the job. On the other hand, if the employees have a high job satisfaction, the organization will be fewer labor turnovers.

Tourism is one of the worlds largest industries and one of its fastest growing economic sectors. It has a multitude of impacts, both positive and negative, on people’s lives and on the environment.

“Sustainable tourism development guidelines and management practices are applicable to all forms of tourism in all types of destinations, including mass tourism and the various niche tourism segments. Sustainability principles refer to the environmental, economic, and socio-cultural aspects of tourism development, and a suitable balance must be established between these three dimensions to guarantee its long-term sustainability.

Thus, sustainable tourism should:

Make optimal use of environmental resources that constitute a key element in tourism development, maintaining essential ecological processes and helping to conserve natural heritage and biodiversity.

Respect the socio-cultural authenticity of host communities, conserve their built and living cultural heritage and traditional values, and contribute to inter-cultural understanding and tolerance.

Ensure viable, long-term economic operations, providing socio-economic benefits to all stakeholders that are fairly distributed, including stable employment and income-earning opportunities and social services to host communities, and contributing to poverty alleviation.

SustainableHeader.jpg

About India:

Sustainable tourism supports travel that is ecologically maintainable in the long term, promotes indigenous cultures and works with locals to see that the tourism industry benefits their villages and towns directly. Not all tourism in India is sustainable, and certain tourist hot spots like Goa have been damaged by irresponsible tourism and development. Three ways to engage in responsible tourism in India are village home stays, wildlife ecotourism and tribal tourism.

Village Home Stays

Staying in a local home with an Indian family assures that your accommodation money goes straight to your hosts rather than to a large corporation. Your host families not only provide you with a place to stay, they also often introduce you to other locals who can serve as guides, give you yoga lessons, teach you how to cook local cuisine or prime you on the area’s indigenous language and customs.

Wildlife Ecotourism

India is home to dozens of national parks and hundreds of wildlife and bird sanctuaries. You can promote sustainable tourism by staying in eco-friendly lodges and hiring ecotourism operators to guide you through the parks. Choose companies that hire local guides and give a percentage of proceeds back to the park or to surrounding villages. Stay at smaller, locally run lodges and guesthouses that use local produce and strive to cut down on waste and their impact on the environment.

Tribal & Cultural Tourism

Another way to practice sustainable travel is to sign up for tribal and cultural tours that have eco-friendly practices and promote local heritage. Rajasthan’s deserts, Orissa’s steamy jungles and Northeast India’s mountainous areas are all good destinations for these types of tours. Some tour companies, like Marwar Eco-Cultural Tours in Rajasthan, double as NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and promote community-development projects in the villages on their travel itineraries. Booking tours near your destination with smaller companies can give you a better chance of supporting local workers and communities with your travel money. Conversely, watching cultural shows at exclusive hotels may send only a trickle of that money back to the performers’ home villages. Sustainable Travel International (STI), a US-based organization, lists and endorses sustainable travel companies around the world. As of 2011, STI had listed 26 companies based in or working in India.

Objectives :

The Ecotourism Society of India is dedicated to the promotion of sustainable development in tourism and to responsible best practices in and among the tourism fraternity. All funds/income generated shall be utilized towards the promotion of the aims and objectives of the Society as follows:

Tabulate eco sensitive areas where tourism will have an impact on the social, cultural and natural environment.

Make strategy and efforts to ensure long-term (perpetual) sustenance of the environment.

Work with empowered bodies to establish carrying capacity and sustainable tourism practices which include conservation of nature and wildlife, and allow local communities to benefit from tourism.

Tourists and visitors numbers and tourism practices must allow nature to re-generate itself.

To work with government bodies to develop policies and code of conduct for promotion of sustainable tourism, and help implement the same.

To work towards certification of tourism service providers.

To act as watchdog for excessive consumption of natural resources and any negative impact in the tourism sector.

To support research in tourism environment related areas.

Work with Service Providers to enhance quality of their product and services to a level so they can be sustainable and eco-friendly.

Encourage use of appropriate local practices, materials, art, craft, architecture, food.

Encourage minimal conspicuous consumption and prevent excessive consumption of energy.

Encourage energy saving practices, water harvesting, use of solar and other natural energy sources.

Encourage good waste management practices especially non-bio degradable materials.

Encourage low pollution-generating practices minimize carbon footprint.

Organise training and other activities to create awareness on ecotourism, sustainable and responsible tourism.

To collaborate with like-minded bodies and implement ecotourism objectives in India and abroad.

To continually identify new ecotourism destinations, strengthen ecotourism and make India a preferred ecotourism destination.

To showcase and promote the best of authentic Indian traditions through premium hospitality destinations

Ensure holistic development by preserving cultural diversity and through eco-tourism

Harmonizing with surroundings and enhancing the quality of life by harnessing local creativity.

What Indian government doing to sustain the tourism:

Many eco-friendly resorts (initially) spread across India to cover all tourist seasons

Focusing 4-5 day packages

Less than 100 km from prominent tourist spots, close to traditional villages

Local architecture (Mud houses etc.) with basic modern amenities and necessities (W/C, Purified Water, optional A/C, power outlets, emergency phones, discouraging mobiles & internet), no plastic zones, alternate energy, rainwater harvesting

Managers recruited centrally, local villages form the employee base

Local cuisine, entertainment, arts & crafts

Complementary nature walks and tours

Company owned sales offices, exclusive online/telephone booking, promotion through social networking sites and liaising with government

Sales personnel for corporate marketing

Offering vocational training to villagers in off-season (hospitality, horticulture, cooking, crafts etc.)

Steps to sustain tourism:

Ratification of the Sustainable Tourism Criteria for India and Indicators for tour operators and the accommodation sector by all industry associations and downstreamed by them to all categories of their membership for applicability. The Ministry’s sanction may be re-worded accordingly.

Implementation of the Sustainable Tourism Criteria for India and Indicators for tour operators and the accommodation sector may be done on voluntary basis.

Ministry of Tourism, Government of India would convene regional sensitization workshops for all industry associations and their memberships & other stakeholders for Sustainable Tourism Criteria for India and Indicators, together with State Tourism Departments, other Implementing Partners and Focal Points.

Simultaneously, the Ministry will facilitate creation of governance coefficients for effective assessment of implementation of all Sustainable Tourism Criteria for India and Indicators. Action will also be initiated to create Sustainable Tourism Criteria for India and Indicators not yet devised for sectors such as tourism transport, destination management etc.

Similarly, sustainable tourism focus would also be professionally imparted to all NGO/Implementing Partners and to all local communities/institutions as they do not have a tourism background. This is necessary to meet visitor requirements and value chain enhancement for competitive advantage. This tourism focus should be an essential component of each site’s workplan.

The tourism industry being a principal stakeholder, will be brought on board from project inception at all sites, to ensure local community and NGO/Implementing Partners’ clarity on visitor satisfaction and to professionally formulate the tourism product to reach target markets in India and overseas.

Entry point strategy for sites’ back and forward convergence as well as governance should be mandated, to take cognizance of other schemes/yojanas at each site, to avoid duplication of workplan components and to optimise fund utilisation.

Central and state tourism funds may be made conditional on workplan allocation and compliance for Waste Management, Hygiene and Sanitation as pre-requisites for local communities’ health and visitor satisfaction. Ministry’s sanction may be re-worded accordingly.

A computerised Management Information System may be developed for effective reporting and must be regularly complied with by all NGO/Implementing Partners and Focal Points.

Use of local materials, styles and skills must be adhered to through advisory support of a panel of architects specialized in the vernacular idiom.

Success benchmarks should be widely disseminated, for higher yields and to strengthen livelihoods.

Continual technological updating is necessary with budgetary allocation.

In particular, energy conservation as a catalytic intervention to address climate change concerns may be incorporated in capacity building. 16. Since the States have legislative capability for tourism, they should proceed sensitively especially with regard to the ecological footprint.

Organizations complying with Sustainable Tourism Criteria for India, may receive incentives from the Ministry of Tourism, Government of India such as eligibility under the Market Development Assistance Scheme and weightage in application for National Tourism Awards.

Sustainable Tourism Criteria uih.jpg

Revenue Estimates (INR)

Year

Planned Capacity

Occupancy

Number Occupancy

Average cost per room night

Price of a Package

Package Demand

Sale of Handicrafts

Total Revenue

In-season

120 days

Off-season

240 Days

In-season

Off-season

In season

Off Season

Average price per person day

In Season

Off Season

2010-11

400

25%

20%

12000

19200

6000

4000

1000

4800

7680

400000

161,680,000

2011-12

400

30%

20%

14400

19200

6000

4000

1000

5760

7680

400000

177,040,000

2012-13

600

30%

20%

21600

28800

6000

4000

1500

8640

11520

600000

275,640,000

2013-14

600

40%

30%

28800

43200

8000

6000

1500

17280

25920

960000

555,360,000

2014-15

600

50%

35%

36000

50400

8000

6000

1500

21600

30240

960000

669,120,000

Costs & Profit Estimates

Year

Land

Construction

Depreciation

Employees

Raw material

Handicrafts

Utilities

2009-10

60,000,000
40,000,000

2010-11

10,000,000
10,000,000
25,920,000
200,000

15,552,000

2011-12

20,000,000
10,000,000
11,500,000
25,920,000
200,000

15,552,000

2012-13

12,000,000
13,225,000
38,880,000
300,000

23,328,000

2013-14

12,000,000
15,208,750
51,840,000
480,000

31,104,000

2014-15

12,000,000
17,490,063
51,840,000
480,000

31,104,000

Profit Estimates

Year

Maintenance

+ Renovation

Promotion

Vocational Training

Total Cost

Operating profit

Cost of Capital

Profit Before Tax

2009-10

10,000,000
(10,000,000)

2010-11

5,184,000
1,000,000
250,000
68,106,000
93,574,000
10,000,000
83,574,000

2011-12

5,184,000
1,000,000
250,000
69,606,000
107,434,000
12,000,000
95,434,000

2012-13

9,331,200
1,000,000
250,000
98,314,200
177,325,800
12,000,000
165,325,800

2013-14

12,441,600
700,000
250,000
124,024,350
431,335,650
12,000,000
419,335,650

2014-15

12,441,600
700,000
250,000
126,305,663
542,814,338
12,000,000
530,814,338
Methodology:

The present study is fundamental in purpose and adopts a descriptive-analytic method. Documentation and questionnaire method have been used in order to formulate the indicators. The documentation method concerns reviewing the documents related to indicators of tourism sustainable development and analyzing their content. In order to formulate and operationalize the indicators and indices, the experts and public’s opinions were used in the questionnaire method.

The methodology of my assignment was purely based on personal observation.

Nature Of Data : Questionnaire method

1. How often do you travel outstation?

a. Once in a Year

b. Once in 6Months

c. Once in 3Months

d. Every Month

e. Every Week

Tabular answer:

1

A

40%

B

30%

C

15%

D

10%

E

5%

2. How do you Plan your Trip?

By yourself .

Through a Travel Agent.

Tabular answer:

2

A

25%

B

75%

3. Do you believe you understand the concept of sustainable tourism?

very familiar

somewhat familiar

unfamiliar

Tabular answer:

3)

A

25%

B

40%

C

35%

4. Do you believe natural resource protection and tourism can be compatible?

strongly agree

agree

don’t know

disagree

strongly disagree

Tabular answer:

4

A

45%

B

35%

C

12%

D

8%

E

0%

5. Do you believe protection of local heritage and tourism can be compatible?

strongly agree

agree

don’t know

disagree

strongly disagree

Tabular answer:

5

A

55%

B

40%

C

5%

D

0%

E

0%

6. Do you believe that well-managed attractions and destinations for tourist , maintained in their natural state, are important to attracting tourism?

strongly agree

agree

don’t know

disagree

strongly disagree

Tabular answer:

6

A

50%

B

40%

C

7%

D

0%

E

3%

7. Do you believe the community would benefit from developing a sustainable tourism framework?

strongly agree

agree

don’t know

disagree

strongly disagree

Tabular answer:

7

A

35%

B

35%

C

15%

D

8%

E

7%

8. Do you believe there is a demand for sustainable tourism in and around India?

strongly agree

agree

don’t know

disagree

strongly disagree

Tabular answer:

8

A

25%

B

30%

C

10%

D

25%

E

10%

9. If you disagree with #8, do you believe a demand for sustainable tourism could be developed in future of our India?

strongly agree

agree

don’t know

disagree

strongly disagree

Tabular answer:

9

A

55%

B

35%

C

10%

D

0%

E

0%

Analyzing and Interpreting Data:

Data analysis and interpretation is the process of assigning meaning to the collected information and determining the conclusions, significance, and implications of the findings. The steps involved in data analysis are a function of the type of information collected, however, returning to the purpose of the assessment and the assessment questions will provide a structure for the organization of the data and a focus for the analysis.

Approach to problem solving:

The implementation of Sustainable Tourism Criteria for India (STCI will progress on the basis of:

Workshops to advocate sustainability by the Ministry of Tourism, Government of India for all stakeholders across the regions of the country.

Extensive range of incentives for establishments complying with STCI, specially focusing on international market access through the Ministry’s Market Development Assistance scheme and also operational advantage concerning energy, water and other input requirements as feasible.

Ministry of Tourism, Government of India support to proposals from all tourism sector associations for skill development as in ‘Hunar Se Rozgar’ for unskilled, low-skilled and, semi-skilled and craftsperson categories.

MSME tourism service providers to be specially supported after meeting eligibility and STCI compliance conditions.

Certification through innovative use of existing mechanisms, there being to need for appointing consultants or a project monitoring unit.

Training of Trainers for Sustainable Tourism through institutional arrangements.

School and college curricula to incorporate sustainable tourism.

Advance calendar of participatory activities displayed on the Ministry’s website.

Capacity building in industry and the Government by identifying institutions for developing a pool of trainers, training of trainers, etc.

Evolving governance coefficients, using contemporary technology, for incorporation in the rating / approval mechanism to enable realistic monitoring and evaluation of sustainable tourism implementation by all tourism industry constituents.

Research study:

Tourism is an increasingly important area of economic activity in all countries, and as such, should have a commensurate level of statistical development. However, there is more work to be done in the area of compilation of basic tourism statistics to better serve the needs of economic policy makers in governments, industry managers and business community and, at the same time provide a solid foundation for the nation accounts in general and for Tourist Satellite Accounting (TSA) in particular.

The challenge of any research in sustainable tourism is not only how to measure or assess the achievement of sustainability, but also how to implement such. A current trend in both practice and research is to consider the conduct of ecotourism as a means to achieve the concepts of sustainable tourism and the principles of sustainability. This thesis proposes that one of the avenues that ecotourism may contribute to the principles of sustainability is through the interpretation delivered as an integral component of this type of tourism. An inductive qualitative methodological approach is presented and a model of effective interpretation has been developed.

Effective destination management and strategic planning needs to be based on relevant and up-to-date data and information. Destination managers need access to data and information on visitor markets, environmental trends, product supply and availability, resources, opportunities and challenges and potential risks. Destinations that have established research and data collection systems to support decision-making are better able to plan effectively and adapt to changing market conditions.

Recommendation and suggestion:

Should contribute to a balanced and healthy economy by generating tourism-related jobs, revenues, and taxes . . .

Should protect and enhance a destination’s socio-cultural, historical, natural and built resources . . .

Should enhance the enjoyment and well-being of both residents and visitors.

destn2_environ.jpg

23han2u.jpg

Conclusion:

I began with a reference to the need to develop specific recommendations for the continuation and development of the sustainable tourism program. I hope that my remarks have suggested to you some ideas in this regard both with regard to sustainable cultural tourism development and with regard to the promotion of effective local community management of cultural resources. I cannot presume to advise you on the future of sustainable tourism, but I can suggest three general areas of action that might be appropriate in regard to sustainable tourism development.

There is a need to elaborate regional, national and local guidelines for undertaking cultural impact assessments; such assessments should be required by law prior to the approval of each (tourism) development activity.

There is a need to undertake national inventories, including surveys and maps, of all immovable physical cultural heritage and sites-and to determine their visitor carrying capacity-with a view to their long-term protection within the framework of the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention, and other appropriate international, national, local and customary conservation instruments.

There is a need to develop, where they do not already exist, instructional modules for teaching regional, national and, especially, local heritage in the formal school system. With special reference to tourism development, there is a need for teaching school-leavers in non-formal situations with the particular aim of training and licensing local heritage expert guides and resource persons.

There are substantial opportunities for the promotion of sustainable tourism in India. However, the national and respective state policy and planning frameworks need to be aligned for this.

Introduction

There has been a considerable rise in the trend of the Wellness Industry mainly in Asia-Pacific. As Destination Spas are developing in the industry, it seems it is still rather vague as to what the future holds for this particular sector. The rising awareness of people towards personal health and growth is creating a demand for a service role that is currently evolving to cater to the demands of this progressing market trend. This study will investigate possible outcomes for destinations spas, Mandala Spa, in the designated geographical area.

Background

The globalization of wellness products such as Spas are increasing and evolving, whereas the philosophies and traditions of the eastern culture are penetrating the western context and vise versa. These spas are growing by incorporating physical, emotional and spiritual activities coupled with the pop psychology that mixes more esoteric practices to raise the level of mental wellness. (Smith and Puczko, 2008)

Wellness is defined as ‘The multidimensional state of being “well”, where inner and outer worlds are in harmony: a heightened state of consciousness enabling you to be fully present in the moment and respond authentically to any situation from the “deep inner well of your being”. Wellness is an ever-evolving journey to a heightened awakening of the consciousness and working towards a fitter state in regards to the physical, mental and emotional sense of wellbeing, thus helping an individual to further experience life to its fullest with the greatest longevity. (Bodecker and Cohen, 2008)

Figure 1: The Expanded Wellness Model

Source: Mueller and Kaufmann 2001 p.6

Overview of the Wellness Industry

A considerable amount of visitors going to modern day health and wellness centers are mostly not aware of the historical and cultural backgrounds of the treatments they experience. It would be not so far fetched to say that these visitors have not realized that the Ayurvedic practices from India date back as far as 5000 BC, or that the current make-up brands that women are using these days hold similar cosmetic traits to those used my the Egyptian women in 3000 BC. The earliest recorded documentation of Chinese medicinal methods date back to 1000 BC, however in Western societies Chinese medical methods are regarded as exotic and somewhat new in their perception. According to a study made by the Spa Research Fellowship, the earliest reference to so called magical healing waters is 1700 BC and as the classic physician and philosopher of the Hellenistic age, Hippocrates, once said that “aˆ¦water is still, after all, the best.” (Health & Wellness Tourism)

There is an increasing awareness of the healing properties of water, whether it be thermal, sea or mineral water. Civilizations such as the Greeks and Romans understood the various health related aspects of water treatments and thus were quite focused on fitness and cleanliness through such practices. On the other hand, other ancient civilizations from The Middle East and Asia and other indigenous people around the world were already aware of the health benefits of other practices like herbal medicines, yoga, massage, meditation and other related spiritual practices, for centuries before the cultivation of health related practices in Europe. Although by Western standards, the quality of life in many parts of the world are seemingly low or of poor quality in comparison to Western societies, India and Africa can be cited as two better examples. These people living in such poor standards have developed their own ways of maintaining their wellbeing, although such conditions of deprivation favor the triumph of illness over wellness. These practices of preserving health and wellbeing are continuing to become more and more popular among day spa operators and subsequently the visitors of these days spas are growing interests keen enough to want them to visit the origins or homes of these practices such as Yoga and Thai massage. (Health & Wellness Tourism)

The term Spa, is an adapted acronym for “Solus Per Aqua”, it can be translated as health through water. (Leavy and Bergel, 2002)

According to Associate Professor Rujirutana Madhachitara, PhD of Penn State University in her paper, Opening Up a Services Market – The Thai Spa Industry, “From what we learn in the classroom and witness in real business life, market usually do not grow as explosively as health spas have done in Thailand. Hotels and resorts along with entrepreneurs have recognized the potential of spa development in Asia, it is even arguable to an extent that recent trend of spas has impacted the face of the Hospitality in the region.”

Intelligent Spas came up with the Spa Benchmark program across the major Asia Pacific markets and summarized the findings in the table below (Garrow, 2007)

Table 1: Asia Pacific Spa Industry overview

Malaysia – Since the year 2002, Malaysia’s spa growth has increased by 200% and continues to foretell increased growth.

Indonesia – Is home to the larger spas in regards to indoor space and more than half of them are destination spas, within the region it is also second most affordable next to the Philippines.

Philippines – Is the smallest in terms of market size but regardless it also possesses on average, the most numerous amount of treatment rooms, studies show that there is also strong potential for growth in this sector over the coming years.

Singapore – relatively, the country has a mature market but is still predicted to grow at 11% annually over the upcoming years. There is a considerable amount of day spas of which half are said to be salon type oriented spas.

Taiwan – Over 81% of Taiwan’s 300 spa facilities were day spas, a large group of their spas use group brand names, whilst spa franchises are very common. Growth rate is said to be slow in the coming years.

Table 2: Asia-Pacific Global Spa study

The Asia-Pacific spa industry is the quickest growing region on a global basis, however it is yet relatively young. A larger proportion of spas are preset in emerging markets while resort/hotels spas are currently leading development. Typically, destinations spas are regarded as spa resorts. Growing but yet underdeveloped health resorts in a sense. In comparison to Europe, spa revenues in the Asia-Pacific are 35% lower and 19% lower on a global average, however hotel spas are only 3.75% to 5.8% lower respectively. Whilst in terms of staffing, hotel spas are at an average of 27 employees per establishment and 17 per spa. Intelligent Spa’s Global Benchmark Report, May 2009, states that the treatment room occupancy in the Asia-Pacific is 37% higher in comparison to other regions, 45% of total revenue accounts for payroll, and with an average treatment rate of US$77 it is the lowest economically among all regions. (Samantha Foster)

The term Destination Spa holds a particular standard of luxury for spa-goers, as they were places where the rich and famous would go to slim down. These days destination spas offer more than just a luxurious way to get slim fast, they offer a variety of products that cater to the overall wellness of their customers. Such services offered are healthier diet alternatives, lifestyle lectures, yoga seminars and more traditional methods of energy attunement to find your own sense of inner and outer balance. (Leavy and Bergel 2002) Mandala Spa brands itself as a destination spa incorporating all the fore mentioned services and more, in 2005 they won the prestigious Asia Spa Award for “best destination spa of the year” and “spa treatment of the year”. Since then they have continued to win awards in 2006, 2007, and 2009. Since its inauguration in 2001, Mandala Spa has touched the lives of many people and has grown from a four-villa Day Spa to a full fledged Wellness Resort and Destination Spa. (http://www.mandalaspa.com)

Aims

The author will conduct an in-depth research on what the future holds for Destination Spas in Asia Pacific, focusing on a developing boutique Destination Spa brand, Mandala Spa as a prime reference.

Objectives

To review literature about the Wellness Industry with emphasis on Destination Spas.

To investigate the trends and variables influencing the development of the Wellness Industry with focus on the Destination Spa sector.

To understand the strategies that Mandala Spa is using for its success and how they will use these for future development or expansion;

and

To recommend any findings to Mandala Spa and the Asia Pacific Spa and Wellness Coalition for the overall benefit of the industry and for future research;

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

The Concept of Wellness Tourism

According to (Verschuren, 2004) Wellness tourism is very different from health tourism as wellness tourism is considered a unique product within the health tourism segment thus it is not a category in itself but a sub category of health tourism.

Figure 1

According to (Kaspar 1996), health tourism is “the sum of all the relationships and phenomena resulting from a change of location and residence by people in order to promote, stabilize and, as appropriate, restore physical, mental and social well-being while using health services and for whom the place where they are staying is neither their principle nor permanent place of residence or work”.

By definition of (Mueller and Kaufmann 2000), following (Kaspar1996), wellness tourism can be the sum of all the relationships and the phenomena resulting from a change of location and residence by people whose main motive is to preserve or promote their health. They stay in hotels that are specialized in providing the individual care with the appropriate personal know-how. To further the statement these guests require and expect certain service packages that are comprehensive in nature, such packages may include physical fitness, meditations, dietary advise, beauty care and education.

According to The International Spa Association (ISPA) spas are defined as “entities devoted to enhancing overall well-being through a variety of professional services that encourage the renewal of mind, body and spirit” (ISPA, 2006)

A comprehensive categorization of spas has been produced by the International Spa Association is listed below:

Club Spa –

Day Spa –

Spa Hotel –

Holistic Spa –

Medical Spa –

Bath –

Resort Spa –

Sport Spa –

Structured Spa –

Definition of a Destination Spa

There is no universally accepted definition of destination spas, rather the following academics present these definitions:

Destination spas predecessors were referred to as “fat farms” due to their somewhat rigorous detoxification and weight loss programmes. These “fat farms” were perceived as the to-be places for communities high societies, yet most of these establishments were not deemed a pleasant holiday experience as most of them were ran similar to boot camps in a sense, where their guests would undertake restricted diets or fasting seminars where the promised results of weight loss would be achieved, however in no manner pleasant. Few of these “fat farms” would feature beauty treatments, relaxation or meditation programmes and even less provided in education in terms of how to maintain their lost weight, thus guests would eventually gain the weight back. The destination spa of today offer more than just weight loss programmes but are now geared towards more meaningful exercise programmes, education on lifestyle, wellness seminars, consultancy on diet and cleansing, and some offer medical tests or evaluations. (The Spa Encyclopedia)

“Destination spas are built with the primary purpose of providing spa/wellness activities for guests” as compared to resort/hotel spas who’s primary purpose is to sell their rooms while the spa is an augmenting facility, the purpose of destination spas are the exact opposite of this. (Gibson 2008)

Destination Spas are a place where visitors go for short retreats/wellness programmes that are somewhat life changing or produce a high impact on the guest’s lifestyle. (Spa bodywork: a guide for massage therapists)

Asia Pacific Wellness Traditions

The wellness traditions of Asia follow a more holistic approach to health and wellbeing, treating the mind, body and spirit as one. Their way of healing is by finding the essence of the problem and supporting the body in healing itself therefore boosting the body’s natural immunity against illness and disease. Therefore the approach through natural healing, in Asia, is rooted in spirituality and tradition rather than on a basis of natural assets.

In Japan the traditional bathing establishments of “onsens”, which are Japanese hot springs, are commonly visited by locals in seek of meditation or relaxation and has grown in popularity among the tourists. Reiki and Shiatsu are two of the most prevalent wellness therapies from the Japanese culture and are currently very common treatments provided by western spas.

The legacy of India’s historic culture has existed before that of Ancient Egypt as even scholars regard “Ayurveda” (the science of life) as one of the oldest healing systems in the world. It is still commonly the first form of traditional healing in Nepal, India and Sri Lanka.

The traditional forms of Chinese medicine were focused on an individuals overall state through a variety of therapies, such as “Chi” (the overall flow of life force or energy of a person), “Shen” (the persons mind that is responsible for their mental abilities and consciousness), and “Jing” (The governing essence of a persons vitality). Traditional Chinese medicine, similar to Indian Ayurveda, leans towards the aspects of preventive and holistic approaches towards health in regards to physical movement, spirituality, diet and emotional wellbeing. A myriad of therapies are offered, some of the most popular to mention are Tai Chi, Qi Gong, herbal medicines, and acupuncture which focus on the flow of energy throughout the body.

Thailand is currently said to be the leading country in spa development within Asia, featuring a wide array of services, products, aesthetics and centres. The basic principles of Wat Pho traditional Thai massage and the Lana traditions of Northern Thailand are what constitute the concepts of Thai spas. The Temple of the Reclining Buddha, Wat Pho, located in the capital city of Bangkok by the Grand Palace, is where traditional Thai massage was born. During the era before the temple was built, the area was a site for the practice of traditional Thai medicine that has its relational origins from “Ayurveda”.

Malaysia has a set of unique spa programmes and ambiences through the incorporation of village or kampung traditions along with the wellness traditions practiced in the royal courts. Pressure point and long stroke massage techniques which are the basis of “Urut”, the traditional Malay massage, which is the main feature of the services offered along with traditional post-natal care in women’s health programmes. The foundation of these therapies are based on causative theory building on the organizing principles of cold and hot, damp and dry and of the natural elements air, fire, water and earth, derived from links to “Ayurveda”.

Indonesia’s mainstay of promoting wellness and beauty comes from Jamu herbalism, traditionally it lies in the center of managing the populations healthcare. The spiritual approaches to wellness, along with traditional massage techniques and fresh herbal ingredients, are highly incorporated in Balinese and Indonesian spas.

Vietnam, regarded now as the ‘new Thailand’ amongst south east Asian investment circles due to its promising economy and influx of new beach, golf and health resort developments. The main medicinal tradition of the country is referred to as “Thuoc Nam” of which is based more on traditional folk knowledge. A Buddhist monk and scholar, Tue Tinh, developed “Thuoc Nam” into a national system. He consolidated all the local medicinal knowledge from Vietnam and established clinics within monasteries along with herbal gardens coupled with educating the public on the herbal home medicine. (Dung and Bodeker 2001)

The Philippines, being an archipelago, has its traditional medicinal techniques deeply rooted in the multitude of ethnics groups found on its thousand of islands. Its traditional massage practice is known as “Hilot” and is just as diverse in techniques, practices and tradition as it varies from region to region within the country. It is however being standardized, and thus growing ever more popular among the spa programmes in the Philippines. (Marana and Tan 2006)

Key Theories on Spas

Compare and contrast an approximate of 3 key theories here, identify who your subject matter experts are through seeing who are the names who are always cited in the various journals and books you have on Spa. Support with some models, I think you have one model in your Chapter II already!

Figure 1. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Schutte and Ciarlante’s Asian Equivalent Model. Adapted from (Athena H. N. Mak, Kevin K. F. Wong and Richard C. Y. Chang)

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the Asian equivalent model

Tourist motivation embraces psychological as well as physiological facets because travel is expected to satisfy different levels of needs such as psychological (e.g. intrinsic, personal and interpersonal rewards) and physiological needs (e.g. food, shelter, safety, health and fitness) (Witt and Wright, 1992). Maslow’s (1970) hierarchy of needs is one of the most popular theories of motivation used by researchers to study tourist motivation (Iso- Ahola, 1980). Maslow proposes that human needs as motivators form a five-level hierarchy comprising of physiological, safety, love/ belonging, esteem and self-actualisation needs. He further states that the lower-level needs should be satisfied first before an individual could move up to higher-level ones in the hierarchy. Mill and Morrison (1985) cite that motivation is a phenomenon that takes place when an individual seeks to satisfy a need, and suggest a correlation between Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and tourist motivation.

Maslow’s model is based on Western culture, so Schutte and Ciarlante (1998) have questioned whether self-actualisation (a personally directed need) is existent among Asian consumers. They contend that Asian countries predominately have a collectivist culture (Hofstede, 1980), so the idea that a personally directed need is at the highest level of needs would neither be readily accepted nor regarded positively in the Asian culture. Instead, socially directed needs seem to be more apposite in such cultural context. Schutte and Ciarlante thus put forth an Asian equivalent model, one that eliminates the personally directed self- actualisation need and emphasizes the intricacies and importance of socially directed needs, namely, affiliation, admiration and status.

Based on the research conducted by (Athena H. N. Mak, Kevin K. F. Wong and Richard C. Y. Chang) Their study identified the motivating factors for Hong Kong spa-goers seeking spa experience when they travel. Their perceptions of spa, as well as their socio-demographic characteristics, were analysed. In addition, an instrument to measure motivation in the spa tourism domain was developed. Factor analysis results show that ‘relaxation and relief’, ‘escape’, ‘self-reward and indulgence’, and ‘health and beauty’ are important underlying motivating factors for spa-goers, as shown in the study. The result contrasts interestingly with general European spa-goers’ perception that spa experience is largely for curative or therapeutic purposes (Miller, 1996; Douglas, 2001), and American spa-goers’ perception that spa experience is a means of self-reward (Kaspar, 1990; ISPA, 2006). For the Hong Kong context, it is actually an integration of self-reward and health, together with relaxation and escape motivations. This distinctive combination of motivating factors reflects the unique underlying needs of Hong Kong spa-goers.

The demand for spa is anticipated to grow continuously (ISPA, 2006), and the opportunities associated with spa are many and varied. However, despite the bright outlook for the Asian spa market, it is imperative for the spa industry to maximise the potential for this niche market segment outlook for the Asian spa market, it is imperative for the spa industry to maximise the potential for this niche market segment.

Current Situation of Mandala Spa

Here you do a write up discussing the current situation of Mandala Spa as a destination spa in the Asia Pacific region.

What is the key to Mandalas Success?

“You have to understand, that when you analyze wellnessaˆ¦ and a commitment to wellness and the wellbeing of other people, you realize very quickly that taking care of other people or being a good care taker for people, a very essential Christian quality, this is not something you do as a job like flipping hamburgersaˆ¦ it is something that has to be developed inside of a person as part of their personality, inside of their heart, so Karen Reina and I realized very quickly that if you want to be sincere in the wellness industry by taking care of other people one way or the other. It could be in the spa industry, the hotel industry or that might simply be in the nursing or physical therapy industry, the most important quality is the love and compassion and ability to have positive relationships with the guests. We decided that this is one of the most essential qualities a place can have, this is what we have to focus our service on, the rest is really technical training, skill training, attitude refinement, the way your presenting yourself with etiquette training, but what makes us very different from all other aspects of the hospitality industry is that when your working really close with people, when your touching them literary with your hands and fingers, when your all over their skinaˆ¦ YOU CANT FAKE IT! If your not real, people will realize it the latest at that point, when somebody’s hands are all over them, that’s when they realize if that service is real or fake, they are just pretending to give me a loving and caring service and just see it as a job. This is what really is the very essence of mandala spa, and this is what makes us different from many other places to start out withaˆ¦ our outlook was not based on a well organized spread sheet full of figures, our first challenge was and still is always, how can you install a culture and a commitment to the essence of hospitality in our staff, a corporate culture as it is calledaˆ¦ this is the same challenge others in the same field are experiencing now in hospitality, where they say that cutting edge is where the guest is loved or feels loved, what better hospitality can you give other than true love and true care? No matter on which level, and this is what our people and guests come back for. So when people ask what was their best holiday experience, it is often the very small relationships they had with their host, it is all about love, care and respect, the rest is really just dressing up. You very quickly realize that when you think that way, well its different that hamburger flipping in a way that you have to teach that way of thinking, you have to communicate that, you have to install that as a part of corporate culture.. that we want to do things with care, that we want to do things to maintain or better the environment, that we are caring for our employees as people and not just by looking at the annual growth rate of the company, caring by making an effort to communicate with them, by trying to provide personal growth opportunities for them, no matter if its through Yoga or personal talks or through participation in our social responsibility programs like planting trees, improving the environment, and they are proud of that, they should feel proud of being gentle, of being caring, of being compassionate. These are al the values we are trying to install within our corporate culture, not just the training to start out with and technical perfection, quality of touch, I am doing that myself. But what really brings everything through and what brings everything together is really when your heart is open and your heart is in it, and this is a big part of Mandalas secret, we’re trying really to maintain that corporate culture that is true to itself, that walks the talk. Wellness and wellbeing is not a five to nine job for Mandala Spa, it is a way of lie for Mandala Spa. Conclusively, a lot of people working with us or working with me are not there just for the job or the rewards or the growth opportunities on a proffesional career level, they are simply there because they love the way of life that they can live during eight hours of their prime time.

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY
Research Paradigm and Design

The Research Paradigm used in this dissertation is that of intepretivism in which is a comprehension of the differences between humans as social actors. The social actors in this case refer to interview respondents. Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2007) presented an argument that the business world is too intricate to be at the disposition of theories and definite `laws` in which rich insights may be lost in the process.

In line with this paradigm, the author maintains an empathetic stance and attempting to understand the social world from the point of view from the research subjects. As each situation is unique and stands alone, all these are a function of a specified set of individuals and circumstances brought together at a particular time.

The epistemology of this paradigm is on subjective meanings and social phenomena with a focus into an in depth study on the details of destination spas in the Asia Pacific, the background reality and motivating actions. It will have a subjective axiology due to the research being value bound and the author being inseparable from the research.

An inductive approach is used here in which the author theorizes that the wellness industry is a sub category of the health industry health tourism and from recent trends it is predicted that the health industry is beginning to adapt aspects of the wellness industry as a more informed clientele demand for an integration of wellness and nutrition into healthcare. This proposed theory is to be backed up with collected interview data for testing of validity.

Qualitative Study
Data Collection Development

Open ended questions are structured or at least semi – structured. It is important that the author guides the interview and steer it back on topic should digression occur. Nonetheless, for the purpose of the B.A (Hons) dissertation, structured interviews should be used.

If you use interviews but did not manage to meet the person face – to – face, attach a copy of email correspondence in appendix. Or save MSN conversations into rich text format.

Sampling
Data Collection
Data Analysis
Ethics
CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
Introduction
Profile of Participants

How many of them

Number of contacts (overall sampling frame)

How many returns? (% of responses) DO NOTE THAT FOR ONLINE SURVEYS, THE ACTUAL QUANTITY IS NOT EASILY DERIVED AND IS MAINLY AN ESTIMATE.

Give evidence of screening (How many were null? Even if person answers all strongly agree, it is null!)

“Proper steps supersede absolute numbers.”

Report the final, n = 19 (%)

Who are the participants? (Use your background questions to assist you.) For qualitative interviews, you’ve been in contact with the person. Describe their qualification to prove that they are the appropriate person to individual on the subject.

Background of Participants
Analysis of qualitative data

Reiterate that an inductive approach was used and that it is an exploratory paper

You have a choice here of analyzing your data using a condensation, grouping or ordering process.