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One of Hong Kongs important incomes is from tourism. In 2010, the annual number of inbound tourists has 30 million. Mainland Chinese visitors accounted for 22.7 million, followed by the visitors from Taiwan, accounting for 2.2 million people; Hong Kong is one of the most popular tourist places. Why the tourists like to travel Hong Kong? In this project we will analysis Mainland Chinese this group of tourist in Hong Kong. And we will analysis what reasons attract the tourist. We will analysis some products is it enough for tourists?

Introduction of Hong Kong
History

Hong Kong the full name is the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. It is located in the Pearl River estuary, the South China Sea on the Hong Kong Island, the Kowloon Peninsula, connected to the mainland China, and the New Territories.

Under the principle of ‘One Country, Two Systems’, Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China on 1 July 1997.

Climate

Hong Kong has a sub-tropical climate with distinct seasons. Hong Kong Spring is on March to May. The temperature and humidity are rising. Evenings can be cool and average temperature is

Summer is on June to August. It is very hot, humid and sunny, with occasional showers and thunderstorms. The temperature can exceed 31°C and high humidity levels can make it feel even hotter. In summer time, the average temperature can have 26a„?- 31a„?. The tourists can enjoy the sunshine and swimming in Repulse Bay Beach. Then it is autumn.

Autumn is on September to November. There are pleasant breezes, plenty of sunshine and comfortable temperatures. Many people regard these as the best months of the year to visit Hong Kong. The tourists can go hiking in Lamma Island. In autumn the average temperature is

Winter is from December to February. It is quite cool, dry and cloudy, with occasional cold fronts. The temperature can drop below 10°C in urban areas. The tourist can go to Temple Street to eat Pot Rice. The average temperature is 12a„? -20 a„?.

Attraction

In Hong Kong, the attraction has two types. It is a natural and man-made attraction. First we will introduce Tai O. Tai O is located in the west of Lantau Island, New Territories, the existence in Hong Kong’s most famous fishing village. Tai O is a natural attraction, Near Tai O there are lots of the growth of mangroves, visitors can enjoy the natural beauty of the local. Also the tourist can see the hut in Tai O. This is a Hong Kong early fishing village, and it is the homes of the fishermen.

Hong Kong Disneyland is a man-made attraction. It is located Tsuen Wan, Hong Kong Lantau Island. Hong Kong Disneyland was officially opened on September 12, 2005. Also there have hotels too. There have six themes. For example, Fantasyland, Tomorrow land, Toy Story land etc. This park can attract the family to travel. The tourists can go there by rail MTR Disneyland Resort Line from Sunny Bay Station and Disneyland Resort Station.

Analysis of Mainland Chinese

The increasing and growth number of Chinese mainland visitors to Hong Kong. Last year, it has 5,550,000 of mainland individual visitors. Mainland visitors go to Hong Kong from China, generally about 25-44 years old. The visitors will stay around 3-4 days; over half of the visitor’s will spend on shopping. And they have a higher average education and income.

Now, the Mainland visitors go to Hong Kong visit is very easy. Because the Hong Kong Government has provided the “Signed a multi-line “, they can visit Hong Kong still the holidays. First, mainland visitors visit Hong Kong main purpose is shopping, For example: they will buy an electronic products, preferred clothes, jewelry, beauty cosmetics and health products. It is because Hong Kong have most international brand, and have confidence guarantee.

Ad Hoc Quota Trial Scheme for Cross Boundary Private Cars is means a self-driving tour of China and Hong Kong, Guangdong and Hong Kong traveling by car, is the implementation of a pilot scheme by the Hong Kong Government and the Guangdong provincial government plans to allow cross-border traveling vehicles in Hong Kong and Guangdong Province. But this plan stops in March 2012.

Tourism products in Hong Kong
Transportation

Hong Kong provided a wide range of transportation to cater the transport demands so Hong Kong’s transportation network is highly developed. Over 90% of daily travels (11 million) are on public transport, the highest such percentage in the world. Our target consumers could go everywhere that they like.

Payment can be made using the Octopus card, a stored value system introduced by the Mass Transit Railway (MTR), which is widely accepted on railways, buses and ferries, and accepted like cash at other outlets go to the urban city.

Mass Transit Railway is the most convenient way to understand how to go the place that we want to visit. There are all together ten lines in the MTR system, with a total of 83 railway stations and 68 light rail stops. It is utmost comfortable to go to the Hong Kong International Airport into the city center or rural place like Tai Po and Yuen Long and other famous attraction like the Hong Kong Disneyland.

Bus services have a long history in Hong Kong. They could take the bus to go everywhere. There are also a variety of non-franchised public buses services, including feeder bus services to railway stations operated by the railway companies, and residents’ services for residential estates (particularly those in the New Territories).

Taxi is the most relax transportation in Hong Kong as it is just carry yourself and your family. Taxi fares are charged according to the taximeter; however, additional charges on the fare table may apply, such as road tolls and luggage fees. Urban taxis are the most expensive, while Lantau taxis are the cheapest. The standard of service among different kinds of taxis is mostly the same.

Attractions

Hong Kong is frequently described as a place where “East meets west”, reflecting the culture’s mix of the territory’s Chinese roots with influences from its time as a British colony. Hong Kong had many attractions for our target consumers. We had classified into 2 parts: natural and man-made attraction.

Man-made attraction

For the sightseeing, we provide the visitor visit Avenue of Stars which with commemorative plaques, celebrity handprints, descriptive milestones, movie memorabilia, a life-size statue of kung fu action hero Bruce Lee and a bronze rendering of popular cartoon character McDull and also there is the perfect vantage point to catch the A Symphony of Lights multimedia show.

After visit Avenue of Stars, if they want to shopping, they could go to Times Square which is the One-stop shop and eat paradise and highly cater their required of services. Causeway Bay is one of Hong Kong’s most popular shopping areas and Times Square is its biggest mall. It has around 230 shops, including fashion, sportswear, furniture, electronics, toys, two department stores and around 17 restaurants offering food from all over the world.

They could visit Ocean Park which offers affordable marine animal education and entertainment and is a private organization for commercial purposes. The park divided into 2 parts: The waterfront and Summit. The waterfront had Amazing Asia Animals, Ocean Express Waterfront Station, Aqua City, Whiskers Harbor and Cable Car Plaza. For the Summit, there are Summit cable car station, ocean express summit station, marine world, polar adventure, adventure land, Thrill Mountain and rainforest. They could spend a whole day to have a look on Hong Kong and play with their friends, family or relatives.

Nature attraction

Hong Kong Global Geopark of China is the famous place for the travelers to get in touch with the history of nature. They could take a tour to view covering an area of 50 square kilometers; the Geopark includes the Sai Kung Volcanic Rock Region and the Northeast New Territories Sedimentary Rock Region, which, together, feature eight scenic areas containing Hong Kong’s major exotic landforms.

Finally, they could go to Cheung Chau to view The Cheung Chau Bun Festival as it is the best way to feel the traditional mood in Hong Kong. Every year, the people of Cheung Chau get busy making papier-mache effigies of deities, preparing costumes, baking buns and building a bamboo tower. They’re preparing for the thousands of people that will soon descend upon their tiny island for what Time.com deemed one of the world’s Top 10 Quirky Local Festivals.

It is an easy way to find that Hong Kong provided a wide range of transportation and attraction to cater the rich mainland Chinese people.

Accommodation

Since there are more than 50,000 rooms available in Hong Kong. Most accommodation places are linked by the public transport system to ensure all attractions are close together. We use hotel ratings in order to divider their quality, such ratings are very useful for tourists to choose their accommodation places.

In Hong Kong, there have five types of hotels. There are five-star hotels, four-star hotels, three-star hotels, boutique hotel and budget hotel. We think the Mainland visitors may consider on those two types hotels, because they need the quality of the hotels.

For a five-star hotel, it always offers most luxurious premises, as well as swimming pool and sport and exercise facilities. For example, The Peninsula, Kowloon, Hong Kong, offers the ultimate in luxury accommodations with the most spacious hotel rooms and suites in Hong Kong. Each one of the guest rooms equipped with advanced technology for the convenience of hotel guests and is comfortable and stylish. However, its room rate range from $5000 to $16000.

For a four-star hotel, it may lack of certain facility like 24-hour room service or individual phones or showers in bathroom, but overall it is a larger and comfortable hotel accompanied with many basic amenities. This hotel is located in Causeway Bay Hotel Hong Kong. The hotel provides the easiest walking distance between Causeway Bay MTR subway stations and The Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, which is one of the tourist attractions and business areas that can be accessed within 10 minutes drive.

Catering services

Since Hong Kong is a city which Chinese and western culture combined, it is also famous for both type of food. Chinese Cuisine is the most famous type of food in Hong Kong. Since Western food is already adapted to local tastes, it is a good place for homesick travelers who have had enough of Chinese food. For some richer visitors, they can follow the Michelin guide to find some Western restaurants with excellent menu and service.

We think the Mainland visitors may try some Hong Kong local food, so we have some ideas for the visitors.

Dim Sum is one of the famous menus of Cantonese food; it dominates in food style of breakfast since Cantonese people tend to avoid fried foods early in the day. Dim Sum comes in countless variations with a huge price range from $8 to more than $100 per order. Common items include steamed shrimp dumplings, pork dumplings, barbecued pork buns, and Hong Kong egg tarts.

The other famous Cantonese food is Chinese Barbecue, it is known as “Siu Mei”, restaurants usually use steamed chicken as these barbecued meats. Those meats are roasted on spits over an open fire or in a rotisserie oven. Chinese barbecue restaurants usually have highly flexible menus that allow you to pair your roast meats with rice, noodles or rice noodles. Combo plates enable solo diners to sample several meats in one meal. Rice with roasted pork “Char Siu”, roasted duck, all are common dishes of that.

For the western style of food, there are numerous selections in Hong Kong. Italian, French, German, Mediterranean, Mexican and American all feature strongly. Given Hong Kong’s cosmopolitan population and passion for dining trends, foreign travelers would not be hard to find out their home type of food.

For the famous places of Western food in Hong Kong, Cepage is sure one of them, it serve French cuisine, influenced by Eastern type of cooking style and are served in the chic. The restaurant’s name is French for ‘wine blend’, an allusion to its impressive wine list of over 2,000 bottles, its recommended dish are Steamed Tasmanian Salmon, Aromatized with Diced Vegetables and Oriental Sauce.

Ming Court is the other place; it has raked in rave reviews from the city’s most respected food connoisseurs. Its executive chef applies his 30 years of experience to ensure that every dish bears his signature style of delicate presentation and exquisite taste. Braised E-Fu Noodles with Fresh Abalone Slices and Prawn are its recommended dishes.

Suggestions for the Hong Kong Tourism Industry

In order to develop the tourism industry, there are some suggestions provided for different sectors.

For Hospitality industry, when the peak tourist season was coming, the hotel room and staff always not enough to supply. Therefore, they should build more hotel or other types of accommodation in Hong Kong. Also, hotel can organize a large-scale job fairs to recruit the talents and allocate the manpower efficiently, such as Disneyland and Ocean Park. Disneyland and Ocean Park is one of the popular attractions in Hong Kong, most of the tourists visiting there, so it should build more hotels in there.

Mystery Customer Service Association published the “2010 Global smile report, shows that Hong Kong smile index is only 53 and ranking in third last. The company should provide training course and teaching the staff how to serve the customers, it can help to build up the good image of tourism.

For Hong Kong Tourism Board, because travelers become more and more, the tourist facilities are insufficient to cope with the large number of travelers, they should develop more attractions, such as Disneyland, can build more mechanical rides.

It also can strengthen efforts to publicize; they should do more advertising in other foreign countries and attract foreigner interest. Moreover, Hong Kong Tourism Board needs to organize more large-scale events for tourists, such as Tourism Festival, Winter Festival. This type of events is one of characteristically in Hong Kong.

Recommendations to Government

There are many recommendations for the Government of Hong Kong that are in favor of the Tourism Development.

First of all, it is strongly recommended to the HK government that the 2nd Cruise Terminal at Kai Tak, which is now under building progress, should be completed as soon as possible as it can be very helpful to the tourism industry in a way that it can create efficiency for the cruise customers as there will be more space to park and more ports for the cruise ships.

Secondly, the HK government should have more and more promotions and advertisements overseas to increase the number of the inbound tourists and the advertisements should be promoting the cultural and the leisure activities that can be done in HK such as a mix culture of HK and not only focus on Mainland Chinese market.

And the HK government is also recommended that it should put more efforts on the HK Airport to make more spacious and to reclaim more land for development of the runways which in return will be one of the contributing factors for the development of the tourism industry of HK. It is because this will be a reason for the efficiency of the customers that are both in bounding and out bounding as the airport will be able to cater more and more flights and will provide more space to airlines.

Conclusions

All in all, Hong Kong has a wide range of facilities and products to cater to this object – China rich. Provide multiple choices and quality in basic necessities, the economy status of China began to raise, the message of the people the crescendo ability, in line with the visa policy with China, Hong Kong an advantage compared to other cities. So for the Chinese rich people, Hong Kong is a choice.

Every year millions of people around the world travel either for business, vacation or a combination of both. Tourism is the biggest industry in the world and is continually growing (lecture 1). By the end of the 20th Century total global tourism (international and domestic) has been estimated to be worth at around U.S $3.5 trillion. Tourism has been widely accepted as growth industry and is expected to grow at an average rate of 4% per annum (sharpley and telfer). Both developed and developing nations all around the globe try to take advantage of this fact and in order to achieve greater economic growth and in the case of developing nations to achieve a higher standard of living as well. This makes the tourism industry a very competitive one, with nations trying to attract as many tourists as possible and reap the benefits.

One way for countries to capture these benefits associated with tourism is to host different events. Getz (2007) identified and categorized them into different scales of events. These range from local and regional events like the Nottingham Music Festival and the European Youth Olympic Festival respectively to periodic hallmark events like the Formula One Grand Prix. The biggest category however is that of the Mega Events which include the Olympic Games and the World Cup. These events are of high tourist demand and have a high value for the host city in terms of economic, environmental, social, cultural and political impacts. It is important for the government of the hosting country as well as the hosting city to use policies to get as much positive effects as possible from these impacts whilst decreasing the negative ones.

Roche (1994) defined mega events as short term events with long term consequences for the cities that stage them. He claims that if a host city is successful in programming the events correctly, a new or renewed image will be projected which would bring long lasting economic benefits in terms of tourism, investment and business. Moreover, he claims that with this new or renewed image the host city is able to become a center of capital and labor, production and exchange in the national and global economy (Roche, 1994). Therefore, it can be argued that the economic aspect of the Olympic Games is the most significant one and the economic legacies left behind by such events can change and reshape entire cities.

In order to gain a better understanding of the economic impacts of mega events, and more specifically of the Olympic Games, these impacts must be separated in accordance to whether they happen before, during or after the event (Li S. & Blake). An analysis will follow that will explain these different stages in terms of the Olympics and the relevant economic impacts as well as the policies the government can adopt to gain the maximum positive outcomes of the event.

The pre-game period is a time of planning and deadlines, investments both private and public and construction. Moreover, once the city wins the bidding process the news of this fact are echoed all around the world. This may tempt tourists to visit the country prior to the event. The period during the Games has certain economic impacts that come from the tourists and the revenues the event brings and it is a way to show the world the change that the city underwent through the media exposure that surrounds the Games. The most important period is after the Games however, since it is when the results will start to take effect. This is the aim of the host cities, to capture the long term economic effects or the economic legacy the games create. The economic legacy involves the extra tourists that will want to visit the host city; businesses may be attracted to relocate there; the establishment of the city as a business hub and generally the increased economic growth to the host city as well as the whole economy of the country.

First of all, one of the characteristics of the Olympic Games is the amount of money it attracts that is subsequently invested in them during the pre-game period. These funds come from the public and private sector and are spent on the construction of sport venues, tourism facilities and infrastructure (Sakai, 2006). These funds are different from the organizational costs the Olympic Organizing Committee has. The organizational costs relate to items not usable after the Games whereas the investments mentioned above will continue to serve the city in the future. The Barcelona Olympics of 1992 had total organizational costs of 1.364 billion U.S Dollars ($) and investments amounting to $8.012 billion (Poynter, 2006).

By looking at this from an economics point of view, investments are part of the circular flow of income, it is an injection, and as such bring economic growth and job creation and has long term effects (Sloman, ). Barcelona for example, focused 61.5% of these investments for construction work which includes transport infrastructure, housing, offices and business premises, telecommunication and services, hotels, sports facilities and environmental infrastructure. This is a clear indicator of Barcelonaaa‚¬a„?s restructuring effort (Brunet, 2005).

Furthermore, the construction effort that is being funded will bring increased employment in the city, decreasing unemployment and as a result increase the standard of living of its local citizens. In Barcelona, unemployment rates fell from 18.4% in 1986 to 9.6% in 1992 (Brunet, 2005). If the standard of living is raised, there will be great social effects (a decrease in crime due to the rise of employment, people would want to live in better conditions and will be able to afford them as well as many more). These in turn can bring greater economic impacts because tourists visiting the city will be able to see the change and difference and the probability of experiencing an enjoyable stay will increase substantially. This might affect them to consider visiting the city again, during the games or after, and they may spread their experiences through word of mouth, indirectly advertising the city.

These benefits however all depend on how the government decides to invest the money. Barcelona invested heavily in infrastructure $8.012 billion and the benefits can still be seen today, whereas Sydney only spent $3.03 billion (Poynter, 2006). In addition to this, it is important to include the opportunity costs associated with the building of Olympic Venues. According to Owen (2005), these investments must not be considered as benefits for the economy but rather as costs. This is because opportunity costs are very high since the money spent on Olympic venues could have been spent on other public needs like health and education which also leads to long term economic growth (Li, Blake). Taking the example of Barcelona again, the spending associated with Olympic venue construction (9.1%) is insignificant compared with the 61.5% allocated for other infrastructure. As stated above, investment in infrastructure is an injection which brings long term economic benefits and Barcelona invested heavily in that area. This may be one of the reasons why Barcelona has had steady economic growth the twelve years after the games.

To investigate and understand various factors affecting the sales and occupancy levels in the hotel industry with a perspective to the Marriott Hotel, Hyderabad, India

Marriott Hyderabad, India is one of the many hotels within the world’s prestigious hotel consortium. Marriott Group plc, the luxury five star hotel Hyderabad Marriott Hotel & Convention Centre offers a cool haven of relaxation with 282 rooms in the middle of one of India’s newest…yet oldest emerging cities. Overlooking the famous Lake, the Hyderabad Marriott Hotel & Convention Centre. Apart from that it also offers 15 meeting rooms too. Hyderabad Marriott Hotel’s sales and marketing department consisting of a small team led by vibrant director of marketing, who is continuously looking for new inputs and solutions to reflect true sales forecast as well as monitor and update sales and marketing materials. Keeping this in mind the author planned to undertake this research activity of to investigate and understand various factors affecting the sales and occupancy levels in the hotel and in this research it is purely from the Marriott Hotel, Hyderabad perspective.

Section 3: Research Aim

To research on various trends in the Hyderabad hotel supply as well as to measure monthly wise room occupancy levels in the Marriott Hotel, Hyderabad.

To research on various factors that influences the decision making among the guest while selecting a hotel to stay.

To investigate and understand various factors affecting the sales and occupancy levels in the hotel with a perspective to the Marriott Hotel, Hyderabad.

To formulate marketing strategies to improve the market share of Marriott Hotel, Hyderabad

To submit valuable and practical recommendations to the sales and marketing dept of the Marriott Hotel, Hyderabad.

Section 4: Literature review

For this dissertation topic and also for the initial research activity various literatures have been reviewed and are also used to developed research questions for measuring factors affecting the sales and occupancy levels in the hotel. The literature review spanned the body of journals, abstracts, relevant book sections, and references from articles from various works of other authors who have done some work on marketing in hotels and tourism sector. Various books and articles were again looked upon for the guidance regarding the tourism industry. Below are the few sources to which the study will be based upon.

Meidan(1984) in his article “The Marketing of Tourism” presents the applications of marketing management in the tourism industry. The article discusses the various factors affecting the tourism market and its major sectors: (i) travel agencies and tour operators; (ii) hotel and catering; and (iii) transport. Any meaningful analysis of tourism marketing, should be based on: (a) market segmentation; (b) tourism marketing mix; and (c) marketing strategies. As the market for tourism services and products is dynamic and accompanied by rapid changes in the environment due to increased competition, technological changes and inflation.

Hotels tend to rely on two types of business. One is transient and the other is group (Kimes, 1999). The group sales comes with the help of booking taken from various travel management companies like Thomas Cook, SITA where as transient guest are the guest who book for their rooms independently or they come directly without any reservation and takes a room. Most of the hotels lower their room prices and give the half of their room inventories to the travel management companies and tour operators as they provide them with consistent business all throughout the year. Bell (2002) states that gone are the days when business travelers used to make their decisions about which hotel to use. Now it is replaced by the, in-house travel planners are making that decision for them.

There is an interesting viewpoint to the factors that influence hotels overall performance outcome. Ottenbacher, M., Shaw, V., & Lockwood, A. (2005). An Investigation of the Factors Affecting Innovation Performance in Chain and Independent Hotels. Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism, 6(3/4), 113-128 states that the factors which impact on the performance of hotels depend on the organisational relationship of hotels-chain affiliation or independent operation. As Marriott Hyderabad is an international chain, it has got worldwide distribution network as well as online reservation system. The study’s results suggest that market attractiveness, process management, market responsiveness and empowerment predict the success within chain affiliated hotels. The author also states that independent hotels can also reap success if they are empowered enough as well as having market attractiveness which is also linked to effective marketing communication, employee commitment, behaviour based evaluation, training of employees and marketing synergy.

A study conducted by Higley, J. (2006). Charting a course: GM survey offers inside glimpse of hotel industry. Hotel & Motel Management, 221(19), 36-40 reflects the stability that the industry is experiencing globally. Most hotels responded that they expect increase in average daily rate by 5 percent in 2007. The article also presents charts and graphs in various factors affecting the industry including salaries of employees, location of hotels, upgrading of technology, hotel safety and hotel operation. It is not a surprise that the study found out that the housekeeping, front desk, sales and accounting departments also played critical role in ensuring guest satisfaction.

Hotel industry comes under service based industry and Gronroos (2000) states the main Characteristics of a service based industry are that it is Intangible, Heterogeneous, Production, distribution & consumption are simultaneous process, Core value produced in buyer – seller interactions, Customers participate in the production process, Cannot be kept in stock, No transfer of ownership. This the issue here is that the guest rooms, conference and meeting facilities are all perishable commodity and if they are unsold for a particular day, then the revenue which is lost for that particular day is lost forever. That is the main reason why the sales and marketing department of hotels are always under considerable pressure to achieve their targets with all means.

According to Montana university (2004) the main factors that can affect the hotel sales are;

Peak Season-the season with the highest demand for whatever is provided: and for Marriott Hyderabad, they tend to classify the peak season from October to march. Off Season-the season with lowest demand and for Marriott Hyderabad, they tend to classify the off season from April to September. The other factors are Economic Recession- when the economy of a country or place slows and does poorly, Economic Expansion- when the economy of a country of place grows and does well, Globalization-is the process in which economies of different nations become interconnected. Apart from the above Weather, Political Conditions like war going on in a country or terrorism threat, unstable governments, policy changes, economic conditions like people with little money are not going to spend it on luxury items, Highly mixed cultures (globalization): really diverse also play an important role in a countries tourism industry (Montana university, 2009). Zheng, G (2004) in his book “Management science application in tourism and hospitality” states that poor service quality can also affect the occupancy level of a hotel.

Whitla et al., (2007) states that that global strategy is most influenced by market factors, other drivers having much less influence. Cost drivers are constrained by limited economies of scale and standardization of opportunities. Globalization is most marked in the thrust for a broad geographic presence in key overseas markets, the pursuit of global branding, positioning and uniform service standards. At the same time, customers expect “responsive” policies in areas such as facilities and services provided.

Hospitality ebusiness strategies (2008) states that due to the nature of online travel, consumers’ buying habits and the way search engines index and present content on the Web all influences the product market. Thus there are many online revenue opportunities at the property-level that derive from local audiences and markets. These opportunities fall outside the scope and “bandwidth” of the major hotel brands’ Internet marketing efforts, Local events that generate overnight stays like county fairs, festivals, sports events, concerts and performances, Local group and social event planning. The hotel should also make their marketing presence felt through internet search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN as well as online yellow pages and directories, links and sponsorships on directories and portals, email marketing and sponsorship opportunities as well as local feeder market. After reviewing these literatures the author feels that there is a wide scope for this research based project especially in the tourism sector. To take home a point there are not many research done on the tourism sector and thus it will be a challenging as well as very intriguing task by itself which generates considerable interest among the organisations as well as in the theoretical practitioners.

According to the British laws a hotel is a place where a “benefited” traveler can receive food and shelter provided he is in a position to for it and is in a fit condition to receive.

Hotels have a very long history, but not as we know today, way back in the 6th century BC when the first inn in and around the city of London began to develop. The first catered to travelers and provided them with a mere roof to stay under. This condition of the inns prevailed for a long time, until the industrial revolution in England, which brought about new ideas and progress in the business at inn keeping.

The invention of the steam engine made traveling even more prominent. Which had to more and more people traveling not only for business but also for leisure reasons. This lead to the actual development of the hotel industry as we know it today.

Hotel today not only cater to the basic needs of the guest like food and shelter provide much more than that, like personalized services etc.

Hotels today are a “Home away from home”.

Hotel can be classified into different categories or classes, based on their operational criteria. For example the type of accommodation they provide, location of the property, type of services provided, facilities given and the clientele they cater to can help categories hotels today.

The market segmentation is economy hotel, mid market hotel, suite hotels, first class hotel, deluxe hotel, casino hotels, resort hotel and resident hotel.

Source:http://www.scribd.com/doc/6170286/Introduction-to-the-Hotel-Industry

Hospitality industry offers a variety of service including food service and accommodation and has different organizations. One of the most common sectors of hospitality industries is hotel and followed by restaurants. Hotel and restaurants have commonalities but differs in many ways they serve and the quality service that they offer.

The organisational sturcture of a hotel

Two main divisions in any hotel. The first is operational which contains the following departments :

Food and Beverage division

Accommodation

House keeping

Security

Functional division contains the following

hR Mgt

Markeying

Finance & A/c

Dicuss each department’s roles

Scale and scope of hospitality:

Firstly, there are four basic types of the hotel ownership such as the franchise, privately owned and operated, leased and managed, on the other hand restaurant can be franchised and privately owned only. The franchise operation is privately owned but the owner pays for the franchise fee and followed by the royalty which is paid monthly and according to the contract same as the restaurants. The privately owned and operated hotel has company partnership which that may have investors or others with a financial interest in the hotel, however, in the restaurant industry it has one sole or partner ownership who run the business. Leased hotels are owned by individual or company but only lease the establishment. And lastly, the managed hotel is privately owned but has an agreement with another hotel brand to run the hotel operations.

Source:http://www.ehow.com/about_5598328_types-hotel-ownership.html#ixzzOfDhyE1W

Assessment of hospitality related orgs: ( judgement, evaluate)

According to People 1st State of the Nation Report 2009, it is roughly 31% of high turnover in terms of labor in the industry and the employers are spending GBP 414 million on recruiting and improving new staff in 2008/09.

Secondly, in diversity perspective in terms of products and services such as food, drinks, accommodation, conferences and banqueting, leisure facilities, levels of services and customer service varies on what kind of hotel and restaurant are. This means the target that they are targeting differs the quality that they are offering. For instance, in 5-star hotel you will see that the food and service are quite posh and branded, the facilities are expensive which exceeds on your expectations, thus, you are delighted of the food and service they offer compared to the 2-star hotel which is much cheaper. These are the things that we are considering regarding the factors that makes it diverse in service . Another thing is the culture of a certain country that they offer different meals and different kinds of meat according to the norms that they are believing in like the Halal food in Muslim country which the people do not eat pork. It is bizarre to give them this meat (pork) because it creates chaos and conflict to you when you set up a business in Muslim country.

The organizational side of the hotel and restaurant can be divided into operational and functional. The operational is more on food preparation, food and services, accommodation service and front of house services while the functional is more on human resources, finance, marketing, research and development, security and maintenance. In operational point of view in the hotel are much sophisticate and posh and meticulous than the restaurant perspective. The hotel offers international food much more compared to restaurant which is much limited. Hotels caters all according to customers need. In terms of employees such as the waiter and receptionist, the hotel are hiring much more people and mostly who have a degree with personality and experience while the restaurant need few employees regardless of a degree , personality and experience to a certain degree. In functional, the hotel have human resources and high security and maintenance primarily because it is much bigger company and enormous responsibility and caters different nationality with regard the employee and customers.

The following are the organisations which are related to these industries:

I want to do this! What’s This?

People 1st is the sector skills council for hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism.

They are working to transform skills in the sector, particularly in the areas of management and leadership, customer service and craft skills. They are committed to ensuring that public funds support the industry to develop only those qualifications and programmes that meet the needs of employers.

The British Hospitality Association has been representing the hotel, restaurant and catering industry for 100 years.

The Association exists to ensure that the views of the British hospitality industry are represented in a forceful, coherent and co-ordinated way to government and policy makers in the UK and internationally, in order that its members’ businesses can flourish.

The Institute is delighted to release a new suite of five online learning modules which are freely available to all. The modules are tailored to meet the needs of hospitality and tourism students and professionals. They also support learning for our own Hospitality Management Qualifications.

These organizations helps everyone what are the current trend and development in hospitality industry. It keeps us update and be aware about the opportunities in the market. Moreover, it enhances our knowledge and we have questions we can check it out anytime we want to. On top of that, it helps the hospitality industry what are the things they need to improve which quite fruitful to all.

Task 2

The hotel and restaurants have commonalities in terms of functional and operational side of hospitality management but they have differences in other things. The hotel functional side are the human resources, finance, marketing, research and development, security and maintenance where the restaurant varies whether the restaurants are fast food chain, fine dining restaurants or vending machine. In fast food chain like McDonalds has human resources, finance, marketing ,research and development, security and maintenance however fine dining restaurants do have but others do not have. In operational points of view in the hotel and restaurants like food preparation , food and beverage services, accommodation services and front of house services have same legislative law regarding the health and safety ,environmental law and other laws. The way they do quality service differs in the way they deal the customers and their target market as the hotel restaurants are more meticulous and customer oriented than the restaurants in the market.

Hotels have star rating according to their quality and status and much more posh compared to restaurants. The hotels now offers more careers than the restaurants from a wide variety of jobs to choose from. They can apply in management, event organisation, restaurant and bar work as well as operational roles which includes the finance, human resources and marketing. On the other hand, careers in restaurants include management and chef work which is the most difficult to look for purely because of lacking the required skills and experience but in the larger restaurants opportunities for business managers, finance managers and operational staff are existing. In conferences and meetings and events are massive business that mostly involves in the hotel which accounts of 60% according to the British Hospitality Association Centres trends and statistic 2008.

Many occupations in the hospitality industries are offering full time, part time and casual and from agency. The full time has 40 hours a week normally but can exceed depending on the availability of the employee whilst in part time offers 20 hours only. The casual are just on call employees but have a limited benefits compared to full time and part time job. On the other hand, if they run out of members of staff they might call from agency to cover up for those who make an absent or those situations that needs more staff . Part-time job are mostly students and they are hired according to their availability especially in the hotel and fast food chain restaurant. The part-time job salary is roughly 5.82 and the full time is much higher depending on how much longer they are in the company. It varies from person to person and it depends on the size of the company and the amount of the responsibility involved and sometimes , packages can include profit-related. Restaurants employ more than 526,000 full time and part time staff accounting 82% in the UK. In the hotel the full time are approximately 72% in terms of employability. In the UK there are over 46,000 hotels and guest houses and the hotel industry remains a vital role in the economy having an annual turnover of roughly 40,000 pounds according to trends and statistics in 2008 British Hospitality Association.

In terms of salaries, the trainee hotel manager earns from 12,000 pounds to 19,000 and the more experience hotel manager gets 16,000 to 22,000 while the restaurant manager salary range from 16,000 to 20,000 pounds.

As far as structure is concerned, hotels and restaurants are different in many ways such as the hierarchy ,teams, organisations structures number of employees , career progression , staff characteristic , flexibility and interpersonal skills. The hotels have general manager that look the company as a whole or have a big picture of it. It is break down into department where they are specific on their task like restaurant manager has a responsibility to manage the people working in the restaurant such as the waiter, receptionist and the back of the hotel like the chef. On the other hand, the restaurant is much simple to operate and few people are working here so the restaurant manager are much more relax and specific on what they are doing in the said establishment. The progression of career in the hotel is much better than the restaurant for the reason that if you are working in the hotel it is much easier for you to be hired in higher position in the restaurant since you have the background working in the hotel. In addition, hotel staff can still have the options to apply in the other hotels and restaurants such as the supervisor after being a waiter before. This is what we call career advancement after having intensive training and qualification given by the hotel apart from the experienced gained in the hotel. Since working in the hotel has diverse nationality , the personal growth and confidence become an asset and as time goes it develops which makes you a flexible type of person, thus, having a good interpersonal skills which the employer is looking for.

Having said that, the hotel is still has plenty of advantages than the restaurant, although restaurant has pros in many things. But of course, it depends on the person as well if how determined and persevered he is in achieving his goals and be promoted in the company.

Qualifications in the hotel and restaurant industries can be apprenticeships, national vocational qualification(NVQ), vocationally related qualification(VRQ) and degree as well. The apprenticeships are nationally designed for young people in age bracket of 16-24 which has two levels like the apprenticeship and the advanced apprenticeships and consist of an NVQ and three key skills such as the application of number, communication and IT. The NVQ is developed by National Occupational Standards which focus on job responsibilities within the scope of the industry which is complied in a portfolio evidence. The vocationally related qualification (VRQ) sometimes called as technical course of study usually 1-5 days. These qualification have levels from level 1-3 , A Level 2 NVQ is equivalent to 5 GCSE’s grade A to C, and A Level 3 NVQ is equivalent to 2 A Levels.

travel and tourism, lodging, assemble and event management, restaurant and managed serviceaˆ¦ Walker 2009. On the whole, these components have interrelated nature because they support each other, together aim at a common target: best customer service.

The outstanding characteristics of hospitality and tourism industry are: long working hours and people have to work in shifts. The most important feature of this sector is that it focuses heavily on customers’ satisfaction but it is also intangible and perishable aˆ¦ (Walker, 2009).

As a result, in order to be successful in this highly competitive industry, managers should consider several factors to ensure the success for their hotels, such as: customers focus, understanding of the role of the guest – contact employees; weave a service culture into education and training system (Walker, 2009).

On the other hand, the severity of the market and the economy crisis also encouraged hotel creating the alliance and association to be more successful. For example, Global Hotel Alliance (GHA) is a collection of 15 upscale and luxury regional hotel brands from across the world. Choose from 300 hotels, palaces and resorts in 52 countries around the world, each one reflecting the distinctive culture and traditions of their locations (Walker, 2009). They can gain more profits and saving by sharing the promotions and making chain services between members.

I think in the normal condition, when the social, economic and political environment is stable, hotels tend to compete with each other to expand their markets as well as to generate more revenue. However, when the external environment encounters any changes, such as the recent economic crisis, hotels might want to cooperate to help each other overcome troubles.

.

In the future, hoteliers have to deal with several unprecedented issues such as short booking window or develop mobile booking, which never happened in the past (Hotels, 2011). There are more and more new technologies applied in hospitality and tourism to increase productivity and optimize the strategy. The hi-tech equipment will also attract the Y generation who rely much on those devices daily.

Exercise 1

The image Umbrella might symbolize for the square of flat and the speed of opening umbrella. As shown above, Hospitality Industry is a wide segment, which contains many relevant sub – majors. It is even said that under the umbrella of travel and tourism, countless professions are necessary to meet the needs and wants of people away from home (Walker 2009).

All of these majors one by one continually provide customers with necessary services when they are away from home. For instance, people might need a car to travel (Travel and Tourism major’s task), then they might want to book a room at 4 star hotel to sleep (Lodging service). After that customers want to visit a park (Recreation service) and finally they book a table at their hotel to have dinner (Restaurant service).

I think in the future, with the development of technology, people will know more about their options and they might have new desire. Thus there will be more professions under the umbrella of hospitality and tourism and they may attach more closely through electronic devices to each other.

Exercise 2
VIETNAM
Figure 1.The number of tourists from 2008 – 2010 in Vietnam

(Source: General statistics Office of Vietnam)

In the graph, the data of outbound customers in Vietnam was not shown for several reasons. The number of tourist growth significant from 2008 to 2010. There is a slight decrease in inbound data in 2009 around 1.5 millions visitors while the figure of domestic rapidly raised more than 3 millions visitors per year.

In fact, only the data on international visitors to Vietnam are published monthly, and data on domestic and total revenue from tourism is often only reported in the six months of the annual meeting of the industry.

Deputy General Director of the General Statistics Office said Tran Thi Hang, program surveys, national statistics, the new unit every 2-3 years she expenditure survey of international visitors to Vietnam, domestic tourists foreign and domestic travel once.(Chile, 2012). Lacking information might prevent the authorities from making policy plan as well as prediction about the long term and short-term development of tourism and the development of market. As a result, the government might not control the domestic tourism and outbound like taxing, foreign exchange, support the customer’s right, responsibilities of travel agents, hotels aˆ¦.

AUSTRALIA

Figure 1. The number of tourists from 2008 – 2010 in Australia

(Sources: Tourism Research Australia, 2012; Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2011; Overseas Arrivals and Departures, 2012)

As can be seen, the tourism market of Australia was stable with slight decreases. The total number of tourists in 2008 was 81,495,000 visitors while there were 79,793,000 visitors in 2010. Meanwhile, the number of Vietnam tourism market rose dramatically over a period of 3 years.

In 2008 and 2009, the tourism sector of Australia was influenced slightly by the economy crisis. However, the data of inbound and domestic customers in Vietnam kept increasing steadily. From my perspective, during the difficult time of economy, people want to redirect their destinations to developing countries to save money.

Table .1 Compare the Employment in tourism by sectors

Vietnam (2010)
Australia (2010)

Direct labour

434, 240

513,900

Accommodation and food services

207,600

232,400

Travel agency and transport

65,800

92,500

Indirect labour

955,350

393,400

Other services

160,840

189,000

Total

1,389,600

907,300

(Source: General Statistics Office of Vietnam, 2011 and Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2011; Tourism Research Australia, 2012)

As can be seen, the total number of people working in Hospitality segment in Vietnam is much higher than the number of Australia (around 1,4 million and 900 thousand respectively). However, the number of direct labour of Vietnam is lower than Australia’s (434 thousand and 513 thousand). On the other hand, Vietnam has more people contribute indirectly to hospitality industry than Australia has (about 955 thousand and 393 thousand).

In my opinion, Vietnamese labour force is much abundant than that of Australia and this matter might lead to both strong points and drawbacks. First of all, as for the advantages, hospitality industry might have cheap labour cost, which save them a lot of expense. However, the labour force in Vietnam is not equal in quality and easy to be replaced.

TOPIC 2 – CURRENT ISSUES FOR THE TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY
A brief history Four Season Hotel

From a small hotel opened in Toronto, Canada, Four Season Corporation becomes a great international hotel group, which provides the most luxurious and satisfactory services to customers. In this exercise, I would like to outline the development and expansion of Four Season globally.

Canada

In 1961 the first Four Seasons hotel opened at Toronto, Canada by Issy Sharp

England

In 1970, Inn on the Park London (later renamed Four Seasons Hotel London) opened.

USA

In 1976, the Four Seasons officially enter the American market

Maui

In 1990, Four Seasons launched its first tropical resort, in Maui.

Asia

In 1992 Four Seasons started their expansion to Asia with the first hotel opened in Tokyo.

In 2002 Four Seasons entered Chinese market with the hotel in Shanghai.

In May 2008, Four Seasons marked its entry into the Indian market Middle East

In 2000, launched the first hotel in the Middle East (Four Seasons Cairo).There followed a prominent extension in the region.

Four Season Hotel today

As shown above, Four Seasons step by step expand its operation and influences to the international hospitality industry. Nowadays, Four Seasons exist in almost continental and one of the most potential markets is Asia since Asian market is developing and it is going to be the biggest market by 2020 (Amadeus report November 2012) < Hotels 2020: Beyond Segmentation, Report by Amadeus, 2010>.

Evaluation

Currently, with 88 hotels and resorts in 35 countries, Four Seasons has strong reputation, which provides high – level services delivered by well -trained staff. I think that one of the reasons make Four Seasons become distinctive among competitors is the responsibility to bring new experience to customers. For example, Four Seasons is going to introduce the first Around-The-World by Private Jet tour trip, a brand new, unique service to customers (Four Seasons Corporate Newsletter A – September 28, 2012).

Four Seasons Hotel group has huge impacts to the global business world in terms of innovative service and technological progress. For example, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts has been ranked number one in Digital IQ Index: Hotels report for the appliance of digital platform (Four Seasons Corporate Newsletter B – September 28, 2012).

The main global challenges

Speaking of the global strategies, I believe that proving the “memorable experiences for guests and quality relationships with employees and business partners” (According to Michael D. Johnson, the Cornell Hospitality Hotel School’s dean) and following its living values are two of the major strategies that Four Seasons apply. The living values include: supporting sustainability, building communities and advancing cancer research.

TOPIC 3 – OWNERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT STRUCTURES AND THE ACCOMMODATION SECTOR
Discussion questions
The different hotel ownership options

Hotel ownership options

Advantages

Disadvantages

Owned by a single entity or group that has hired a hotel management company to operate the property

– A qualified and experienced manager operates the properties.

– Hotel owners and management companies might conflict.

– Lower benefit for owners.

A hotel chain

– Existing good reputation, operation manners, staff training.

– Hotel chain has the same standard quality of services and products.

– Require huge initial resources

– The different hotel in chain might compete with each other.

– A major change in hotel chains need a lot of money and time.

A franchise

– The products and services have already been developed and have reputation.

– The franchisee used the logo, slogan, marketing and financial assistance of the franchisor to start the business, old market, a network of loyal and low-priced supplies.

– The cost opening a franchise need a lot of money for brand, signage,aˆ¦ If your franchise decides to go through a major change. A franchisee may be required to upgrade facilities and signage, all at your expense.

– Reputation: Name recognition is one of the biggest advantages in purchasing a franchise. If the brand’s reputation suffers for any reason, however, the franchisees also suffer from poor consumer perception.

– Limited growth potential: a franchisee cannot franchise an operation and must look instead to purchasing additional franchises.

City Hotels in Sydney: Shangri-La Hotel, Four Seasons Hotel, Sheraton, InterContinentalaˆ¦.

Resort Hotels in Sydney: Old Sydney Park royal, Parramatta Apartments, Park Lodge Hotel, Renaissance Sydney Hotel, Waldorf Apartment Hotel, Waldorf East Sydney, Woolloomooloo Waters Hotelaˆ¦

Pricing differences for accommodation packages

– The price for Residential Hotels’ accommodation package includes:

+ Room service, maid service, laundry facilities.

+ Cooking facilities, especially for children.

– The price for All Suite Hotels’ accommodation package includes:

+ Room service, maid service, laundry facilities.

+ Separate bedroom and living areas and full kitchen

+ Housekeeping service

+ Food and beverage services are available through room service.

– The price for Resort Hotels’ accommodation package includes:

+ Accommodation with full experiments.

+ Full facilities such as massage and salon treatment, swimming pool, scuba diving, climbing mountainsaˆ¦

+ Food and beverage service or restaurants with many of choices.

– City Center Hotels:

+ Room service, maid service, breakfast.

+ Food and beverage service in restaurants

– Airport Hotels:

+ Room service, maid service, breakfast.

– Motels:

+ Accommodation with full furniture.

– Transient Hotels:

+ Room service, maid service, breakfast.

– Bed and Breakfast.

+ Room service, breakfast.

The typical guest mix of two types hotel

The city centre hotels have certain advantages like:

+ Convenient locations

+ A variety of accommodation rooms

+ Food and beverage outlets depending on demand and customers

+ Facilities like gift shops, swimming pools, spa and sauna aˆ¦

+ Convention facilities such as conference rooms, convention equipment

The customers of city centre hotels:

+ Corporate individuals

+ The senior corporate groups

+ Leisure customers

+ Convention and/or association groups

+ Tour groups

+ Government and military travellers

+ Regional getaway or weekend travellers.

The city centre hotels have some advantages like:

+ Rooms with full amenities

+ Providing room service, maid service, laundry facilities

+ Full equipped with cooking facilities and recreational facilities for children

Residential hotels’ guest mix might include:

+ Long-term stay guests: military or government employees

+ Leisure travellers or back packers

Compare cruise ships and resort hotels

There are many similarities of cruise ships and resort hotels that make people think cruise is floating resort. Both cruise ships and resort hotels aim at customers who want enjoy a long period holiday. Their infrastructures of cruise ships and resort hotels are the combination of different buildings and facilities inside their areas, such as rooms, restaurants, swimming pool, spa and sauna area, entertains areaaˆ¦ Both cruise ships and resort hotels activities rely on climate and season

However, there are many differences between these two kinds of hotels and compare with their expectation to choose the most suitable one for them.

Firstly, the experience between cruise ships and resort hotels is so different. The cruise liner is a passenger ship used for pleasure voyages. An advantage to choosing a cruise line is the unique experience of sailing from island to island(Banks, n.d ). The view from a private balcony on a cruise ship is enough to make anyone feel like a world traveller. Cruise ship spends most of its time on the ocean, customers can entertain many activities which is provided free facilities. It is available both day and night and is generally more engaging than the entertainment that is offered at an all-inclusive resort (Banks, n.d ). The customers can sleep the night away while they are traveling to the next destination, leaving they refreshed to embark on a new adventure(Banks, n.d ). One disadvantage to choosing an all-inclusive resort is that customer will only see one destination(Banks, n.d ). The entertainment at an all-inclusive resort is also usually less diverse than a cruise ship(Banks, n.d ). However, experience of resort might be the favourable climate and wide range of recreational activities(Banks, n.d ). Resort hotels are often located at comfortable climate regions such as beaches, hills or mountains(Banks, n.d ).

Consequently, cruise ships and resort aim at different groups of customers, who have different demand in terms of, experience, services

Case study:

The case study presents the strategy of Royal Hotel about a renovation program. This hotel had a loyal clientele and ranked as a top of the line property.

Hotel do not want to take the risk of losing customers to competitors then managers decided to remain open and keep in operation any rooms or portions of the hotel which did not have to be shut down for construction. Those problems is the cause that the customers complaint about ongoing construction in public areas and hallways, along with the attendant dust, confusion, and noise.

In this situation, some necessary solutions should be given including:

– Isolating construction areas from the rest of the building by signs, advertising background in order to separate the working areas of builders from areas for customers.

– Minimizing the impact of noise, dust, and construction materials.

– Increasing organizational activities, events to disperse the attention of customers from the repairing areas.

– Increasing promotion and other benefits for customers who were affected by the refurbishment.

The conditions needed for the solution include the promotional programs and the budget for negotiation with customers in particular situations. Besides, the renovation program should be speeded up to reduce noise and affects to customers.

TOPIC 4 – ROOMS DIVISION – AN OVERVIEW FROM A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
Reading

This article proposes a resort classification system which provide definition stating minimum qualifications for a resort and proposes a classification system based on range and scope of amenities (Brey 2011). However, there are many categorizing resorts made by national governments

About the definition, Focusing on resorts as real estate developments, a definition by Schmitz et al. (2008) requires three primary characteristics: inclusion in master-planned real estate developments, proximity or easy access to significant amenities, and lodging(Brey 2011). In an effort to standardize a diverse group of resorts, the Organization of American States (OAS) placed minimum structural and supplementary requirements to unite individual rating systems throughout the Caribbean (Caribbean Innkeeper 2007). While these clarification activities have successfully served a specific purpose, they lack industry-wide application

As for classification, the first category, destination resort, serve as the primary motivation to visit a destination and have characteristically high levels of service(Brey 2011). Next, intermediate resort, typically located in a rural location, provides a range of activities and amenities that is not as comprehensive as what is found at destination resorts. Lastly, specialized resort, can be found in any location and provide a focused experience around one signature amenity or anchor attribute. We can see the important role of classification its helps the managers can control, evaluate and and make strategy plan for their resort.

The online travel agents bring to the hotel many benefits and drawbacks, they are also important distribution channel to make hotel’s inventory available to global audience. Hospitality providers want to use technology to distribute their inventory directly, it is impossible to deny the role of online travel agent currently. Many hotel bookings are implemented through online travel agents and online tools.

As for advantages, the relationship between hotels and the online travel agents called “LOVE”. Online intermediaries have evolved to cover different models, reach different market. Hotels and online travel agent need each other, hotel need agent to drive demand and agent need hotels to offer services. Both sides need each other, both hotels and the online travel agents develop and rely on each other to develop. However, hotels loss the power to contribute by themselves, they must share more commissions to pay for agent then fewer profitability. That is the reason why hotels “HATE” the online travel agents.

The love – hate relationship seems to be most intense between large hotel group and large online travel agents. Since the large hotel create a monopoly amongst online agents. In general, online travel agents and intermediaries are now essential part of the industry and as for the hotel, an absolute necessity.

Revenue management and sales staff have close relation with each other because they together make decisions regarding rate, accept group business and forecast. However, they can foster better coordination to minimize the misunderstanding and understand thoroughly the other’s main tasks. We understand in some ways that revenue management team include sales and revenue management personnel.

One way to improve group revenue management functions is to expand the collabouration of sales and revenue management personnel, particularly in pricing (Cross, Higbie, and Cross 2009) and forecasting (Milla and Shoemaker 2008).

Revenue management team are responsible for: Whether to accept a group offer and forecast room block utilization to ensure that rooms will be filled or released for sale to transient guests.

Although having the frequency of formal meetings, the two respondent groups are still having certain informal meetings. With regard to formal meetings, the highest mentioned frequencies were daily or one or two times per week. The informal meeting to help communication between the revenue management and sales functions better.

Case Study:

The case study describes the new position for Morgan Black in the Coug Inn. The Cougar- Inn is in a remote location near local university, with 150-room full-service property with several medium-sized conference rooms. After observing, Morgan Black found out some problems of the front desk: the check-in process which still in the traditional process and the poor communication between housekeeping and the font desk. Morgan wants to use the automated property management system, however the front desk manager do not think it is worth money

In my opinion, Morgan should consider a number of issues like employee habit, the ability to budget for the system and the adaptation of employees to work with systems. The proposed check-in time of the font desk Morgan need to determine whether the front desk clerks really need more time to arrange check-in. Which the crunch time which because of the reservation process or complex reservation form or poor communication between the parts such as front desk, reservation and housekeeping by the language or the process?

Morgan should present the solutions for the communication issue between housekeeping and the font desk. There is the needed aware of communication between each department. The international language must be English for business and the hotel should have training English and automated property management system. The manager of housekeeping should have rules to encourage staff using English in work. On the other hand, using automated property management system will help to minimize the mistake in communication; the transmitted information will be more accurate. In the easier way, Morgan should hire new employee who can use international business English in workplace.

The final decision requires the participation of the corporate office, the font desk, reservation and housekeeping. The corporate office will control the budgets, who will decide where the money comes and which is worth for investment. The font desk are the staff for a long time and the corporate office needs to give their ideas and advice before any methods are implemented. The housekeeping must concern for understanding their role in new property management system.

Topic 5 – Food and Beverage
The two basic types of beer and three Australian common brands

Beer is generally categorized into types according to the type of yeast used during fermentation. Ales are beers that use top-fermenting yeast, while lagers are those that use bottom-fermenting yeast. The choice of yeast provides the beer different characteristics, which can alter the look and taste of the brew (Richard, 2007 )

The two types of beer are also different in other ways. For instance, ales are fermented in a warmer temperature, which is why it takes a shorter amount of time to ferment. On the other hand, lagers are fermented in moderate temperatures. The warm fermentation temperature also gives ales a nutty or fruity taste.

Ale
Lager

Thousands of years old

Relatively new

Fermented warm

Fermented cold

Top fermentation

Bottom fermentation

Yeast – Saccharomyces cervisiae

Yeast – Saccharomyces Uvarum

Quick brew cycle – as little as 7 days

Longer brew cycle – up to several months

Usually brewed between 59 – 77 degrees F

Usually brewed between 40 and 55 degrees F

Strong, assertive, and more robust in taste

Smoother, crisper, and more subtle in taste and aroma

Served not too cool, usually 50-55 degrees F, 10-14 degrees C, sometimes called “cellar temperature”.

Served cold, usually 40-45 degrees F, 4-7 degrees C.

Table 5.1 The differences between Ale and Lager

(Source: Richard, 2007 ‘What is the difference between an ale and a lager?’)

The two major beer producers

Carlton & United Breweries (CUB) is one of the most iconic beer companies in Australia with our history going back to 1824(Carlton & United Breweries ,n.d,) In 2011, we demerged from our wine arm and became part of the SABMiller group, the second largest brewer in the world. This has allowed us to return to our heritage and core strength as a brewer(Carlton & United Breweries ,n.d,) CUB alcohol beverage sales team services over 17,000 customers across the on-premise and off-premise channels and our national brewing, logistics and sales network delivers to over 20,000 customers including hotels, clubs, liquor stores, restaurants and bars(Carlton & United Breweries ,n.d,)

Victoria Bitter (VB) has long been Australia’s favourite beer, and is specially brewed to deliver full flavour when ice cold, making it the ideal beer for the Australian climate(Carlton & United Breweries ,n.d,) VB is a full flavoured, full strength beer at 4.9%; the gentle fruitiness of the aroma compliments the sweet maltiness in the mouth which in turn balances perfectly with the clean hop bitterness of the finish(Carlton & United Breweries ,n.d,);

Crown Lager is Australia’s premium lager beer(Carlton & United Breweries ,n.d,) It has a creamy fruitiness with a rich, malty mid-palate, bal­anced with the crisp, clean finish of Pride of Ringwood hops(Carlton & United Breweries ,n.d,) Brewed from the finest malt and hops, using CUB’s original and unique strain of brewing yeast, extended storage softens, and rounds out, the flavours produced during fermentation, ALC/VOL: 4.9%(Carlton & United Breweries ,n.d,)

Carlton Draught is a traditional, full-strength lager that is crisp on the mid-palate with a good malt character and smooth full-bodied flavour(Carlton & United Breweries ,n.d,) Clean hop bitterness gives the brew a slightly dry finish. Synonymous with the origins of the brewery itself, Carlton Draught is renowned for tasting as fresh as it did the day it was brewed. And it’s that kind of consistency in taste that’s been important to Australians for generations. ALC/VOL: 4.6%(Carlton & United Breweries ,n.d,)

Miller Genuine Draft is the original easy drinking beer – cold filtered four times for a crisp, smooth and refreshing taste. MGD contains no additives or preservatives. ALC/VOL: 4.7%(Carlton & United Breweries ,n.d,)

Lion is a beverage company that operates in Australia and New Zealand and produces and markets a range of beer, wine, RTDs and spirits(Lion, n.d)

Tooheys New is the classic, easy-drinking Australian lager brewed with no artificial additives and no preservatives(Lion, n.d). Its lightly hopped, malty character delivers the perfect balance of bitter and sweet beer flavours

XXXX GOLD is a refreshing mid-strength beer that continues the great tradition of FOUREX brewing heritage, by being brewed with the finest Australian malt, barley and unique golden cluster hops. XXXX GOLD has a balanced, smooth flavour and body, complimented by mild bitterness and a trace of sweetness from the extra malt.(Lion, n.d)

Hahn premium beer is only as good as its ingredients. That’s why our pioneering team scoured the globe to assemble three special hops, one of which is grown in Germany on the Hersbruck Hills, north of Munich. It’s that unwillingness to settle for anything but the best that makes Hahn Premium.(Lion, n.d)

James Squire is produced by the Malt Shovel Brewery in Sydney. The beer is named after the convict brewer James Squire, who is claimed to have created Australia’s first commercial brewery.The brewery has won various awards including: Champion Australasian Brewery, 2000 and 2003 (Australian International Beer Awards),[14] and Best Bohemian-Style Pilsener, 2008 (World Beer Cup)(Lion, n.d)

The boutique breweries

Boutique breweries :A small brewery, generally producing fewer than 10,000 barrels of beer and ale a year and frequently selling its products on the premises. Also called microbrewery.

Three Australian boutique beers include:

Carlton and United Breweries owned by Foster’s Group – Main Beers: VB, Crown Lager, Carlton Draught, Pure Blonde and Reschs Pilsener

Tooheys owned by Lion Nathan – Main Beers: Tooheys New, Tooheys Old and Tooheys Extra Dry

Castlemaine Perkins owned by Lion Nathan – Main Beers: XXXX Bitter, XXXX Gold, XXXX Light, XXXX Summer Bright Lager

The most popular overseas beers

Heineken is a pale lager beer with 5% alcohol by volume produced by the Dutch brewing company Heineken International.

Aroma: A slight bit of sweet graininess and no hop aroma. As the beer warms up there is more of a malt character present. Again, unlike the almost undrinkable bottle version, the can has the aroma of a nice to style lager.

Appearance: Just like it should be, a light gold colour and crystal clear. Head retention is white and does not persist.

Flavour: Nice and dry, but crisp. There is a definite yeast character that seems to work well with the slight hop bitterness. No hop flavour to speak of. No dactyl, and there is a definite carbonic bite from the carbonation.

Overall: A very drinkable beer that benefits from being packaged in a light and oxygen free can.

Modelo Especial: It is an American lager produced by the produced by Grupo Modelo in 1925

Aroma: Light struck, of course. Other than the skunk, some bready, thin malt profile. Sweet mildly bitter grains, corn.

Appearance: Pale yellow. High clarify. Lots of rising bubbles. No lacing.

Flavour: Better than the aroma. Mild malt sweetness, corn and maybe rice. Some bitter bite at the end

Overall Impression: Very easy to drink, bland and insubstantial

San Miguel Pale Pilsen: produced by San Miguel Corporation from Philippines

Aroma: aroma of malt sweetness, bit of citrus with

Companies using revenue management have reported an increase in revenue of 2-5 and in the golf industry these increases can be substantial (Pehlchen, 2003).

As we learned in class, Revenue Management is a technique to maximize revenue through allocating the right capacity to the right consumers at the right price by using different information systems and pricing strategies. Therefore mangers need to know the total worth of their customers. Here, customers have to be segmented into different groups and hotels and resorts need to know which types of customers they currently attract and more important which ones are creating most revenue and therefore who they would like to target in the future.

When looking at Revenue Management, hotels and resorts in the golf industry have to look at different rates they would like to set for different market segments, discounts they offer and when to offer them and to which extend they are planning to overbook and therefore might need to walk their guests. Furthermore, if they know how the client’s price elasticity is, they could for example know whether a raise in prices will increase revenue or decrease due to the loss of demand.

The hotels and resorts have to be aware that demand can be controlled, directed and influenced for example with promotions or requiring a minimum length of stay. Herewith revenue can be increased potentially. By forecasting demand, maximum revenue can be made. Here, managers have to look at demand generators like events, the pace bookings are done as well as historical data.

Today, clients have become more used to revenue management due to the fact that more and more industries have started to implement different rates and packages according to forecasted demand. Only shortly after the airline industry introduced yield management in the 1980s, hotels followed the trend. Today, due to better information systems and more practice, hotels and resorts have become more and more effective with an increasing number of departments following the trend with generally great success.

In the following it will be analyzed why the golf industry is suitable for Revenue Management, by looking at the hotel rooms, restaurants, function space as well as the golf course separately. It will be evaluated why each segment is suitable for revenue management, how demand based pricing is used and the duration of the clients can be controlled, which rate fences are commonly used and implemented and how Revenue Management may be implemented in the analyzed area.

The Golf Industry
Why is the Golf industry suitable for Revenue Management?

Research has shown that revenue management is most effective when the operation has the following characteristics:

Perishable inventory – refers to a product or service that loses its value if it is not used by a given date or time, e.g. unused hotel rooms

Variable demand and relatively fixed capacity – demand varies and can be influenced and directed while the capacity stays the same

Advanced sales – due to reservations being done in advance, demand can be forecasted and prices adjusted

Multiple pricing structure – being able to divide the market into different segments, different prices can be set to attract certain segments at a certain time

Very low marginal costs – fixed costs are high, variable costs relatively low. Therefore selling an additional unit comes with relatively low costs

(Yield Management and the Golf Industry, n.d.)

How to introduce rate fences

The hospitality industry started introducing price fences to give the consumers a perceived feeling of fairness by offering discounted prices which come with certain rules and regulations. These rules and regulations have to be logical, transparent and fixed, often by targeting customers from a certain market segment. These rate fences can be either physical, e.g. considering the view of a room or furnishing of a function space or non-physical, considering e.g. the time of consumption.

Management can divide the market into different segments with special rates which can be according to demand offered or closed. It is psychologically better for businesses to introduce price differences as discounts rather than adding a surcharge during high demand times (Kimes & Wirtz, Has Revenue Management become acceptable?, 2003).

Implementation

Gathering information on customers is very important. By offering for example loyalty programs most hotels and golf courses can require clients to hand out their personal data which will then be used to promote special offers.

Management also needs to know the local culture. In some countries for example demand based pricing is viewed as rather fair while in others, clients are not so tolerant. For example in Sweden, it is viewed as fair to apply different prices during lunch and dinner periods, while in Singapore clients perceive it as unfair.

How to make sure policies are viewed as fair

Today, most U.S. golfers view most golf course revenue management practices as relatively fair and in general consumers increasingly accept differential pricing policies (Kimes & Wirtz, Has Revenue Management become acceptable?, 2003). According to Kimes, perceived fairness has been found to be a key factor to maintain customer satisfaction, loyalty and long term profitability.

Though consumers view a different price for the same product at a different time often as unfair, managers should either attach lower prices to restrictions or offer additional perceived value to higher prices.

Hotel Rooms

Fixed duration, variable pricing

Why are hotel rooms suitable for Revenue Management

With a fixed capacity in number of rooms, a perishable inventory and time variable demand due to the time of the year and different demand on different days of the week rooms are very suitable for revenue management. The cost structure of a high amount of fixed costs and a low amount of variable costs support the use of revenue management. Being able to manage both capacity and the price by analyzing their RevPAR, hotel rooms are the most suitable area of all discussed in this paper.

Demand based pricing

Today, managers of hotels are very effective when forecasting their demand for a specific night. Clients have become very used to the practice of varying prices in hotels and therefore nearly all hotels and resorts in the world put a great amount of work into analyzing their clientele to see which maximum rate they can charge for on a specific night.

Duration control

Before the client arrives, the hotel already knows relatively certain how long the guest will stay with them. Therefore only during the reservation procedure, hotels can

increase or decrease the duration of the clients stay. By applying early departure fee or minimum lengths of stay requirement, hotels can influence the duration of a stay.

Rate fences

Physical fences of the hotel rooms could be the view, size and furnishing of a room whereas non-physical fences would be the length of the stay, flexibility, time of purchase or the size of business provided.

To avoid that prices are viewed as not fair, hotels often set their rack rate very high and barely let any customer pay this rate. But therefore when clients perceive a price as too high, the hotel could show them their rack rate to make the client feel like they got a discount to increase guest satisfaction.

Implementation

First, data has to be collected on the room rate each segment is willing to pay as well as demand variety and booking patterns.

Then, demand has to be forecasted by using historical data in combination with assumptions on effects of new events or trends

When determine pricing and lengths of stay controls the effect that changes of prices have on the occupancy need to be calculated.

Last, employees have to be trained and changes have to be communicated with the clients, preferably by using the properties website.

Restaurant

Fixed pricing, variable duration

Why are restaurants suitable for Revenue Management?

Restaurants are perfect for Revenue management because they satisfy all required criteria. On one hand they have a fixed capacity due to the number of seats available in the restaurant, the kitchen size, the staffing levels as well as the menu design. Also, they have a perishable inventory where seat hours are sold, so if a seat is not sold during a particular time, revenue is lost.

Third of all, restaurants work with time-variable demand. Demand varies between different times of a day, days of the week as well as seasons. Some ways how to manage demand would be for example promotions, vouchers or special offers that are only available at certain times e.g. early bird specials. Flexibility in pricing as well as the possibility to segment customers allows revenue management to be applicable in restaurants.

Demand based pricing

Demand based pricing is not as much used in restaurants as in the rooms division. Even though special lunch menus, Christmas and New Years Eve menus as well as special promotions and vouchers offered in low season can be offered, most prices in a menu are fixed and change rarely.

Duration control
It is very difficult to predict the duration of a client`s stay in a restaurant. The management in restaurants will on one hand have to try to control and if possible minimize the duration of a meal especially in hot periods. The reduction of variations is especially important if they are not due to the clients but operations.
Especially when looking at the time between the arrival and the seating of a client, the restaurant can minimize the duration of a client`s stay. With an increase in staffing or improvement of operations and communication the seating process can be fastened. The menu design can also play a big part in duration control. If the design is very complicated, clients will take longer to decide what to choose
Rate fences

Generally, only few rate fences are found in restaurants. The restaurant could, for example, introduce a certain price for a separate “VIP” room or discounts for groups with a certain number as well as when the reservation was done. Commonly, special discounts for certain market segments are found. For example clients working for a certain company or with a special membership could get a discount on their meals.

Implementation

The steps to implement duration control and demand based pricing in restaurants are as follows:

When establishing a baseline different information needs to be collected. This information can be taken from various sources and then needs to be analyzed.

When trying to understand the causes, the management needs to find out which factors affected the RevPASH as well as the duration. This can be done through the use of service blueprints or for example fishbone diagrams.

The third step in implementing duration control in a restaurant and reduction in variability of service step duration would be the development of a strategy.

When implementing the new strategy, it is vital that the new standards and procedures are communicated to the employees as well as to the clients.

In the end, the results of the new strategy have to be monitored. This is vital for the motivation of employees as well as for possible corrective actions that might need to be taken.

Function Space

Fixed duration, variable pricing

Why is function space suitable for Revenue Management?

Unfortunately, Revenue Management has not yet been systematically applied in hotel`s function spaces, even though they are very suitable. All requirements are fulfilled when looking for example at a relatively fixed capacity, variable demand, customers that can be segmented, different customer`s price sensitivity or perishable inventory. Other than hotel rooms for example, function spaces charge a fixed price for their rooms with a relatively predictable duration.

Demand based pricing

Hotels still have difficulties in forecasting demand for function spaces because it is very complex due to the fact that it often also affects the sales of the Room and Food and Beverage Division. In general, hotels and resorts in the golf industry work with the formula that the expected contribution of a group needs to be higher than the displacement of other clients who would create higher total revenue. It always needs to be considered that function space revenue management is effected by the demand and current reservations of the Room and Food and Beverage Division

Duration control

Function Spaces have various different ways to control the rather predictable duration of a conference or meeting. By asking for pre-payment or a deposit, the possibility of no-shows, late shows or short shows are minimized. They also guarantee that the hotel rooms booked are picked up and not left early with loss of revenue by setting early departure fees or room prepayments.

In regard to duration control of the hotels operation, the turnaround time is an important factor to maximize revenue. Here, the balance between minimizing labor cost and turnaround time has to be evaluated.

Rate fences

Function Spaces are very suitable for the implementation of rate fences, which can be either physical or non-physical. Examples for physical rate fences could be for example higher prices for high-tech rooms or rooms with day light. Non-physical rate fences could be reduced rates for repeat customers, groups that have booked over the internet or that booked on a certain day of the week or in season with general low demand.

Golf Course

Fixed price, unpredictable duration

Golf courses have only in the past few years started applying revenue management. Due to the industry boom in the 1990s, revenue was high enough that such a system was not seen as requirement. But with the current decrease of demand, more and more golf courses turn to revenue management to know exactly when to offer reduced rates and rate fences to maximize total revenue. As more and more golf courses introduce revenue management, properties that fail to participate will find themselves in the long run in a competitive disadvantage.

“Time is money when it comes to golf.

You can`t get as many rounds in on a tough course”

(Tiger, Licata, & Howard, n.d.)

Why are golf courses suitable for Revenue Management?

Golf courses have a relatively clear definition of their fixed capacity, predictable demand and perishable inventory (time a hole is available), flexible cost and pricing structure, variable demand and therefore apply for the use of revenue management.

The relatively fixed capacity, for example, can be measure by the golf courses size, number of holes as well as the hours of operation. In summer season revenue can therefore be increased due to more daylight hours (Kimes, 2000).

In the golf industry management needs to consider that tee times are perishable. Through managing their revenue by calculating the RevPATT, management integrates the duration of a golf round into their pricing revenue management.

Demand based pricing

Golf courses often fear unsatisfied clients when applying demand based pricing because they are scared to lose m customers. The problem in this area is that clients are jet not used to revenue management in golf courses specially with changing prices. Therefore golf courses have to slowly apply demand based prices by introducing lower rates for example when weather is bad.

Also, they have a relatively high average of clients who reserve before coming to play.

Golf courses could use overbooking as a revenue management tool but generally it is not practiced, but according to Kimes (Kimes, 2000) rely on walk in clients to generate non-guaranteed revenue. Kimes also states that golf courses can successfully overbook if their forecast on cancellations, no-shows and walk in customers is accurate. “The displacement may be based on time of arrival, perceived importance or frequency of use” (Kimes, 2000).

Duration control

The goal of duration control of golf courses is to reduce the tee time interval.

Courses can reduce on one hand the uncertainty of when customers arrive as well as the variability of the length of a round. First, operators need to know how long players usually take to complete one round and how much these may vary to the average calculated.

To reduce the actual time clients spend on the golf course, there are several different strategies management can put into place to reduce the duration. Most courses use for example Marshalls to regulate the flow of play by reminding slow players to speed up.

Offering separate playing times for beginners and advanced players due to the different time which the two groups need to complete one round is a good way to not only reduce duration but also to increase guest satisfaction because advanced players do not have to wait for beginners. Reduced cart fee during busy times is another solution, but if too few golf carts are available, duration can increase.

Using peer pressure by posting play time to reduce duration is common use for example in Singapore (Kimes, 2000) while in some countries this practice might upset humiliated and non-competitive customers

Rate fences

Golf courses have the possibility to apply various different physical as well as non-physical rate fences. Physical rate fences could be for example the size of the party or whether golf carts are used. Non-physical rate fences could be the lead time in which the reservation is done and if it is guaranteed, if the client was a walk-in or on which day of the week, time of the day or in which season the customer booked. Members or corporate businesses could agree on a special rate as well.

Conclusion

Hotels and resorts in the golf industry use revenue management to skillfully optimize their total revenue. For consumers, fair price equals a positive price-value relationship. Why prices change due to demand is for managers often difficult to communicate but today clients understand that prices go up when demand is high and therefore the practice of revenue management is accepted by an increasing number of consumers. We have seen that there are some areas that have more problems than others to implement revenue management due to the different market segments they target as well as how used clients are to prices changing.

Today, an industry trend is found towards the use of revenue management in all areas analyzed and therefore one can only recommend to any manager in the golf industry to take a closer look at revenue management and start considering its use. At least the numerous success stories related to revenue management in the hospitality industry should be reason enough.

Resort is normally known as a place where people go together for a vocation, relaxation or recreation with their families or friends. Therefore, most of the resorts are settled along the seaside, on the mountains, near scenery areas or the places with abundant of natural resources. Because the purpose of any resort is to provide an experience that can make people escape from their busy and hectic lives to spend some time with their friends and families. The resorts in the past do not provide a lot but the beautiful environment and some of the recreation services. The target customers of the resort were only people who are in a holiday. Nowadays, in order to attract more customers, the concepts of resorts have been changed. They not only provide creational facilities and services, but also business facilities and service such as MICE facilities and service. Therefore businessmen are included in one of the target customers of resorts.

My emphasis on this paper is about the integrated resort. The concept of an Integrated Resort is a huge complex of famous branded shops, high-class restaurants, convention centre, gaming centre, spectacular shows, interesting attractions and luxury hotels all in one destination (Mti, 2012). Relatively speaking, there are two successful integrated resorts launched in Singapore, they are Marina Bay Sand and Resort World Sentosa. There is no doubt that the integrated resorts will bring benefits but disadvantages.

Since the tourism and hospitality industry is one of the biggest industries in Singapore, it is very important to develop it and remain its competitiveness. According to the speech made by prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (2005) stated that ” Three major developments caused us to re-examine our position: We are losing ground in tourism. Cities all round the world are reinventing themselves, and we are not considering a casino, but an IR – an integrated resort. The IRs will have all kinds of Amenitiesaˆ¦ The great majority will not be there to gambleaˆ¦ but within this large development and slew of activities, there is one small but essential part which offers gaming and which help make the entire project financially viable”.

In 1823, legalized gambling in was a colony of Singapore, but experiments led to gambling addiction and crime increased, gambling is for three years again.

Since then, the operation of the legal gambling in Singapore has been limited to the government management of Singapore lottery, pool Singapore turf club racing. However, in a council meeting in April 2005 and day, lee hsien loong, Singapore prime minister announced that the cabinet decided to develop two casinos and related hotels and shopping center in the south shore and sentosa.

The government says, the purpose of the project is to improve the Singapore tourism has face fierce competition from other destinations, especially from surrounding area near Bangkok and Hong Kong after, is also regarded as casinos, plan in Singapore. Even closer to home area, Malaysia for a long time have a legal casino and theme park in genting, this proves that Singapore visitors welcome. The irs in Singapore can be expected to create around 35000 jobs directly and indirectly. In addition to the casino, the irs will have other facilities including hotels, restaurants, shopping and conference center, theatres, museums and theme park. The industry is expected to the investment of us $7.1 billion in the integrated resort, which means that there are $3.5 billion in Marina bay, 3.6 billion dollars in the Resort World (Sohu, 2012).

The plan is to build a casino by considerable debate in Singapore. Some organizations, such as those who belong to the Muslim and Christian community and social workers, publicly expressed their dissatisfaction casinos. Puts forward the worry about the negative social influence of the casino gambling, reason to worry about casino gambling, can encourage more increases the risk of compulsive gambling. Rights groups think, casinos and may result in undesirable activities often and gambling, including money laundering, usurer even organized crime. Lee admit faults have comprehensive resort and public express concerns. He promised to have security measures to limit the social influence of the casino gambling. He said he would have limited the casino entrance of local residents, such as, family members sponsor casino may prevent him or her into and gambling. Li announced a steep admission s $100 each entry or s $2000 a year and a system for all singaporeans except the. In addition, the casino would not be permitted to extend credit the local population.

In April 2005, Singapore prime minister lee hsien loong in congress announced that it will cost 5 billion Singapore dollars in domestic construction of two world casino resorts, thereby improve the square national image and promote tourism. Actually build casino in Singapore or caused a lot of controversy, Singapore cabinet agreed to encourage national discuss the casino plan, citizen in succession in the media, web site, office and home are in this discussion, polls show support and opposition opinion mixed. Lee hsien loong more means, the government cabinet ministers have differences of opinion.

Although the Singapore have to bet on horses, lottery and sports gambling activities, but critics say, and other forms of gambling is different, 24-hour casino will bring more pathological gamblers, break the family, and will affect the image of Singapore. Lee hsien loong in congress stressed that Singapore is not only build the casino, but to build a comprehensive resort, casino part accounts for only of the whole project less than 5% of the space. The integrated resort include hotels, restaurants, shopping center, the drama center, conference center, amusement parks and museums.

In 2010, Singapore’s two Integrated Resorts – Marina Bay Sands (MBS) and Resort World Sentosa (RWS) had been opened. These two well-known integrated resorts not only provide the catering and recreation services, but also offer more than 33,500sqm of MICE space and over 4,000 hotel rooms. These two Integrated Resorts have been bringing a positive impact to Singapore’s economy. According to a report, it is stated that the intergrated resorts boosted the development of the tourism sector in Singapore. Along with the recovery of the world’s economy and changed demands’ concepts of the new tourism offerings, there were 13.2 million visitor arrivals and 22.3 billion in Trourism Receipts in 2011 (Mti, 2012). These two integrated resorts also brought lots of benefits to the sociaty. There are more than 40,000 jobs supported by the Integrated Resorts throughout the economy inluding retail sector, F&B sector and transportation sector. About 22,000 employees, mostly locals, are hired by the integrated resorts.

Only in those countries or cities where are allowed to do gambling business accures the Integrated Resorts. Besides, it is because the gambling business that the countries and cities could be well off. For examples: the well-known gambling crowned city Las Vegas, special administrative region Macau in China, and the Philippenes are all famouse because of gambling. In this paper, I will concentrate on the Integrated Resort – MGM – development in Macau.

Macau is in a special location, it is under the rule by China but it is in the location where has been garenteed by Chaptain Deng that one nation, two systems. It used to be ruled by Portugal and was famouse for the gambling industry. When people informed Macau, some of the well-known gambling Integrated Resorts will be mentioned. Although it was regained by China and the gambling is illegal in China, Macau is the special place continuing its flourishing gambling business and is more prosperity these days. The reason is that there is a huge number of people from mainland China are able to go inside Maocao to enjoy the Integrated Resorts. According to the report in China Daily, the data showed that the Macao casino industry 2012 income year-on-year rise 13.5% to a record $38 billion, so as to further consolidate the as the world’s largest gaming market position ( Chinadaily, 2012). Due to the influence of China’s economic slowdown, add rich mainland China gamblers for fear the government corruption blow and have convergence, macau last year’s gambling revenue growth rate is 42% in 2011 to slow sharply (China Daily). According to statistics, from mainland China who gamble for the macau gaming industry contributed two-thirds of the income. However, analysts pointed out that the mainland China middle class gamblers the increase of the number of the offset the decline of the number of gamblers.

The main operators have casino Las Vegas sands group (LVS), WYNN resorts (WYNN) and MGM (MGM).

MGM Integrated Resort in Macau offers a wide range of choice of gambling, accommodations, food and beverage services, meeting and banquets facilities and receation facilities like swimming pool, Gym and branded retail stors and some happnies events for customers to enjoy with their friends and businessmen to do their business safetly. MGM Integrated Rsorts offers a focused, unrestrained and creativity life style.

There are vairious reasons for choosing this resort. First of all, it is sited abouve that MGM is one of the main operators in Macau, which means that MGM has a long history of development in Macau. It is an old brand and has lots of loyalty customers and has a big influence all around the world especialy for gambling industry. MGM this brand was firstly known as a film company, it created lots of famouse film such as 007 Series. However, after the Second World War, MGM film company had three fatal blow. 1, in May of 1948, the United States Supreme Court according to the antitrust law to make decision for large companies to stop illegal monopoly, the production company just production, give up issue and the cinema business management. Like MGM such set production, distribution, screening of a big company, the main revenue was cut off. 2, the 1950 s, television began pouring into a family, take nearly half of the film audience. 3, due to the board of directors suspicions, MGM’s largest contributor meyer, in 1951 was forced to leave the company. In 1957, MGM for 30 years of earnings situation is broken. In 1970, MGM had been purchased by United States Gambling King and began its gambling business. Macao elegantly-appointed (MGM Macau in April 2010, 23 says Macau elegantly-appointed mirage) located in the new port new reclamation area, the building is 154 meters high, high 35 layer, as a five-star casino hotel, with a total construction area of 200 square feet, belongs to the commercial trade in the region, south; South Taipa, one in the west, lake, north depends on Wynn Macau. MGM Macau is the first in macau casino hotel project, Macao’s six gambling card (three main board and three board) in the last one gambling card company formally inaugurated flagship casino hotel, also marks the macau gaming industry official into six points of the situation. Macao eMGM brought by the bet fasten belong to Macao lottery co., LTD on the card board.

Macao MGM is the whole project investment of more than USD $1.25 billion, in the middle of 2005 for reclamation, fill and building engineering; In December 2007 and opening day ( Chinadaily, 2012).

The second reason to choose MGM resort is because the MGM Mirage is going to make a further development in Macau. The MGM casino operators (MGM MIRAGE) and its joint venture partners Mr. He Chaoqiong (Pansy Ho) plan for further development of business in macau, in a circumference fill on the land to build a super luxury hotel and casino. At the moment this land on many construction projects are in full swing. The joint venture company’s first project Macau MGM mirage (MGM Grand Macau) has opened on Tuesday. Located in the downtown MGM Mirage including a casino and 600 suites hotel, a total investment of 1.25 billion us dollars ( Wsj, 2012). MGM chief executive Mr. Terry Lanni said, at present the company is a joint venture with the government of Macao in Cotai development of the second project negotiations, Cotai distance crowded the city a few kilometres away, at present also become an increasingly important source of gaming hub ( Wsj, 2012). Two of the joint venture company called MGM Mirage super defense (MGM Grand Paradise Ltd.). Even the enrichment said, the company plans to open a Cotai boutique hotel and casino in Las Vegas Sands, scale than rival company (Las Vegas Sands Corp.) in August this year Cotai opened “Venetian” (Venetian), but will be more unique and chic. Venetian has 3000 suites and 700 zhang gambling table. MGM mirage super defense has determined the location, and submit to the government department for construction planning. Even the enrichment said, the company will get in land within one year after the start. “this project still need to get government approval. We have entered the early planning.”, said by MGM partner HeChaoQiong who is Macao Gambling King’s daughter. There are three American company held in Macao casino business license, the MGM casino is the last of a business. Las Vegas Sands, the company set up the very large scale the Sands casino (Sands) and later Venetian. Last year, Wynn vacation (Wynn Resorts Ltd.) high-end Macau Wynn resort hotel (Wynn Macau) announced that opening. The Macao special administrative region is China’s only a legal gambling places. Even the enrichment said, he expects the MGM mirage guest there will be 85% to 90% from mainland China, these people can directly go to the macau, also can borrow tao Hong Kong ( Wsj, 2012). Some people worry that the new open casinos and hotels may supply exceeds demand, even the enrichment to disagree, he thought that as long as China’s economy continues to grow, Macao will have plenty of tourists. Cotai and several other casino and hotel also under construction. Even the enrichment said, “China produced every day a lot of millionaire is a very good sign” (Wsj, 2012). But he also pointed out that, once the Chinese government’s decision to limit inlander to Macao tourism, will seriously affect the operation.

MGM Macau contributes Macau’s gambling industry, which can improve the local infrustructure. It is reported that a bridge is being built across the Pearl River estuary to connect Hong Kong, Zhuhai and Macao and it will be completed in 2016, which can make people from mainland China access Macao much easier ( Chinadaily, 2012).

Beside, MGM Macao provided thousands of jobs for local and migrants from other cities and immigrants from other countries with a well paid salary. The data on the report from Chinadaily showed that by the end of 2011, over 50,000 local residents of Macao’s 345,000 working population were working in the gaming and related sector, like hotel and restaurants inside the casinos (Chinadaily, 2012). A twenty years old Macao resident said that even he did not study at a university, he can be able to make almost 17,000 patacats a month after doing the dealer in MGM casino for only two years.

Moreover, the gambling operators like MGM Mirage contribute a lot in Macao’s economy. The booming gaming industry accounts for over sixty perscent of the city’s gross domestic in 2012, and which even pays nearly nighty percent of the total taxes that the local government collects every year ( Chinadaily, 2012).

At the end of the report, I am going to write about the sustainable development of Integrated Resorts. The sustainalble development could be practice in each aspects of the integrated resort. For the hotel, Compared to other integrated resort properties, the MGM and the integrated resorts in Singapore have notable best practices in their guest rooms. However, for the sustainability practice to be monitored and assessed well there should be an appraisal framework using a standard unit. For the food and beverage, IR needs to include information about the source of their food supply including the list of their chains of supplier, the items purchased, food preparation processes and its by products, and the means of recycling implemented in the department together with their accomplishments in the area. For the convention, Marina Bay Sands and Convention Centre has notable green meeting and convention program that allows choices of standard environmentally sound services. They have additional methods of services to create a more socially and environmentally planned events. However, referring to what was revealed from their webpage and short publication, there is no case study of which services they supported exactly and how they accomplished the objectives of the project. To add, there is a need to establish the tracking and monitoring system utilized and to develop a standard sustainability measurement framework with a standard unit. For the Entertainment Department of IR, there’s no information available regarding their sustainability effort in particular, the staging of shows and exhibits such as the Phantom of the Opera and The Blue Man Group. For the casino, Even though The MGM was granted LEED certification, the Casino was not included in this (Chinadaily, 2012). For a long term perspective, if MGM wants to imply that it’s gaming area is where everybody can enjoy. There is a need to improve its environmental condition. The casino part is a tricky area to discuss with smoking not banned within its vicinity. However, in the other department, namely the health and working environment area, it is pushing the issue regarding this matter since it is also a concern of health.

Indian Aviation Industry is one of the fastest growing airline industries in the world. The history of Indian Aviation Industry started in December 1912 with its first domestic air route between Karachi and Delhi. It was opened by the Indian Air Services in collaboration with the UK based Imperial Airways as an extension of London-Karachi flight of the Imperial Airways. Tata Sons Ltd., the first Indian airline, started a regular airmail service between Karachi and Madras three years later without any backing from the Indian government.

During the period of independence, 9 air transport companies were carrying both air cargo and passengers in the Indian Territory. In 1948, the Indian Government and Air India set up a joint sector company, Air India International to further strengthen the Aviation Industry of India. As part of nationalization in 1953 of Indian Airlines (IA) brought the domestic civil aviation sector under the purview of Indian Government. Later till the mid 1990’s government-owned airlines dominated Indian aviation industry. When the government adopted the Open-sky policy in 1990 and other liberalization policies the Indian Aviation Indian made underwent a rapid and dramatic transformation.

By the year 2000 several private airlines have entered into the aviation business in succession and many more were about to enter into the arena. Indian aviation industry today is dominated by private airlines and low-cost carriers like Deccan Airlines, GoAir, and SpiceJet, etc. And Indian Airlines, the giant of Indian air travel industry, gradually lost its market share to these private airlines. According to the report of CAPA, these budget carriers are likely to double their market share by 2010 — one of the highest in the world.

Brief Introduction

Indian Aviation Industry has been one of the fastest-growing aviation industries in the world with private airlines accounting for more than 75 % of the sector of the domestic aviation market. With a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18 % and 454 airports and airstrips in place in the country, of which 16 are designated as international airports, it has been stated that the aviation sector will witness revival by 2011.

In 2009 with increase in traffic movement and increase in revenues by almost US$ 21.4 million, the Airports Authority of India seems set to accrue better margins in 2009-10, as per the latest estimates released by the Ministry of Civil Aviation.

This is being primarily attributed because of the increase in the share of revenue from Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) and Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL). Passengers carried by Indian domestic airlines from January-February 2010 stood at 8,056,000 as against 6,761,000 in the corresponding period of 2009-a growth of 19.2 %, according to a report released by the Ministry of Civil Aviation.

Today Hyderabad International Airport has been ranked amongst the world’s top five in the annual Airport Service Quality (ASQ) passenger survey along with airports at Seoul, Singapore, Hong Kong and Beijing. This airport in Hyderabad is managed by a public-private joint venture consisting of the GMR Group, Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad and both the State Government of Andhra Pradesh and the Airports Authority of India (AAI).

The Indian aviation sector can be broadly divided into the following main categories:

Scheduled air transport service includes domestic and international airlines.

Non-scheduled air transport service consists of charter operators and air taxi operators.

Air cargo service, which includes air transportation of cargo and mail.

Scheduled air transport service: It is an air transport service undertaken between two or more places and operated according to a published timetable. It includes:

Domestic airlines, which provide scheduled flights within India and to select international destinations. Air Deccan, Spice Jet, Kingfisher Airline and IndiGo are some of the domestic players in the industry.

International airlines operate from scheduled international air services to and from India.

Non-scheduled air transport service: It is an air transport service other than the scheduled one and may be on charter basis and/or non-scheduled basis. The operator is not permitted to publish time schedule and issue tickets to passengers.

Air cargo services: It is an air transportation of cargo and mail. It may be on scheduled or non-scheduled basis. These operations are to destinations within India. For operation outside India, the operator has to take specific permission of Directorate General of Civil Aviation demonstrating his capacity for conducting such an operation.

PRODUCT PROFILE

The objective of the aviation industry is to provide better service to their customers. So service is the primary product of the industry.

This project will accomplish to provide better the service quality to the passengers. These Flying services of the Indian airlines are divided into three stages-(pre-fight, in-fight, Post-fight services) and I found that the passengers of the Indian airlines has satisfied with service quality of Indian airlines. The aim of the company to provide the better services quality to passengers and the management in particular is very much responsible for this. Through passengers of the airlines the management is getting proper information about the services which are providing at pre-fight, in-fight, post-fight. And to find out the areas where the company needs to improve to service quality of the airlines.

From this study, Indian airlines have come to know about the passengers has satisfied with services.

From this study the passenger perceptions of service quality of airlines.

To assess the level of satisfaction of passengers on exiting passengers facilities provided by airlines.

To provide an effective marketing scheme to passengers.

This information is a good guide to management as it brings out the strengths of the company and the areas where the company needs to improve the service quality.

SERVICE QUALITY

The concept of services quality its importance has grown in recent years for years for two main reasons. Firstly, we are starting to understand the total concept of service more and are now better able to define what is meant by quality of service. Secondly, researchers are determining ways that service quality can actually be quantified or measured.

Measuring service quality gives marketers a tangible tool to use when developing strategies for marketing services.

The concept of Quality is very important to marketers because quality drives the development of all marketing strategies. This means that quality must also be a major focus of all marketing strategies for service.

The service quality can be measured on the following five dimensions:

Reliability: The ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately.

Tangibles: The appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel and communication materials.

Responsive- : The willingness to help passengers and provide promptness service.

Assurance: The knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to convey trust and confidence.

Empathy : The caring, individualized attention provided to the passenger.

SERVICE QUALITY MODEL

Effective services marketing is a complex undertaking involving many different skills and tasks. Executives of services organizations have long been confused about how to complicated topic in an organized manner. This text was designed around one approach: viewing service in a structured, integrated way called service quality model.

The gaps model position the key concepts, strategies and decisions in services marketing in a manner that begins with the passenger and builds the organization’s tasks around what is needed to close the gap between passenger expectation and perceptions.

The central focus of the gaps model is the passenger gap, the difference between passenger expectation and perceptions. Firms need to close this gap-between what passengers expect and receive-in order to satisfy their passenger and build long-term relationships with them. To close this all-important passenger gap, the model suggests that four other gaps-the provider gaps-need to be closed.

The following four provider gaps, shown below the horizontal line in fig. are the underlying causes behind the passenger gap:

Gap 1: Between management perception and passenger’s expect
Gap 2: Between Passenger-driven service design and standards and Company perceptions of passenger expectation
Gap 3: Between service delivery and external communications
Gap 4: Between perceived service and expected service
Gap5: Between Service delivery and Passenger-driven service design and standards.
PASSENGER EXPECTATION OF SERVICE QUALITY

Passenger expectations are beliefs about service delivery that function as standards or reference points against which is judged. Because passenger compare their perceptions of performance with these reference points when evaluating service quality, thorough knowledge about passenger expectations is critical to service marketers. Knowing what passenger expects is the first and possibly most critical step in delivering quality service. Being wrong about what passenger want can mean losing a passenger’s business when another company hits the target exactly. Being wrong can also mean expending money, time, and other resources on things that don’t count to the passenger. Being wrong can even mean not surviving in a fiercely competitive market.

Among the aspect of expectation that need to be explored and understood for successful services marketing are the following:

What types of expectation standards do passengers hold about services?

What factors most influence the formation of these expectations?

What role do these factors play in changing expectations?

How can a service company meet or exceed passenger expectations?

Objectives are to:

Recognize that passengers hold different types of expectation for service performance.

The sources of passenger expectations of service, including those that are controllable and uncontrollable by marketers.

Acknowledge that the types and sources of expectations are similar for end passengers and business passengers, for pure service and product-related service, for experienced passengers and inexperienced passengers.

Delineate the most important current issues surrounding passenger expectations.

PLAYERS IN THE INDUSTRY

At present, there is decent number of players compared to the one man army scenario prior to 1990’s. They are as follows:

I. Air India

The history of Air India is the History of Indian Aviation. It is one of the oldest and the largest airline of India. Air-India was founded by J.R.D. Tata in July 1912 as Tata Airlines. Founded as a small, private, domestic carrier in 1932, Air-India is now owned by government. It operates only on International routes and has negligible presence in the domestic traffic.

II. Indian Airlines

Indian and Air India were born with nationalization of Air Transport in 1953 by way of Air Corporation Act, 1953. Indian Airlines emerged as a merger of 8 domestic carriers. It caters mainly to domestic routes and in some nearest nations.

The two national carriers have enjoyed sole monopoly in the air transport segment over a long period of time as private carriers were debarred from entering the segment under the Air Corporation Act, 1953. The private players like Jet, Sahara and others were made to enter the segment only after the New Economic Policy, 1991 came into existence. Another major turning point has come in the history of the Air Industry when Air India was granted permission from the GOI (Government of India) to merge with Indian Airlines, the two national carriers of India. This Mega Merger marked the first marriage in the Indian skies which was followed by other mergers. The name of the new airline remained Air India, since it is known worldwide.

III. Jet Airways

In May 1974 Jet air (Private) Limited was founded. In 1991, as part of the ongoing diversification programme of his business activities, Naresh Goyal (founder of Jet Airways) took advantage of the opening of the Indian economy and the enunciation of the Open Skies Policy by the GOI, to set up the company for the operation of scheduled air services on domestic sectors in India. It started its International Operations in the year 2004 and carries more than 7 million passengers per annum. In May 2007, Jet Airways took 100% stake in Air Sahara.

IV. Air Sahara

Like Jet, Sahara also began its operations in the year 1993 after the domestic Air Market was opened by the GOI in 1990’s. It is owned by the diversified Sahara India Parivar group. Now Air Sahara is being taken over by Jet Airways and it is being renamed as “Jet Lite”. Jet has intensions of converting Air Sahara in sync with LCC model to reach every segment of air travelers.

V. Air Deccan

India’s first budget carrier arrived in the Air Industry in the year 2003. It is headed by Captain Gopinath, Air Deccan redefined the accessibility to the Indian Skies with new model and concept in the aviation sector. It injected competitive spirits into the system and gave common man wings by reducing airfares which matched the first Class Railway Fares. The third wedding in skies was marked when Vijay Mallya of Kingfisher Airlines picked up 26 % stake in Air Deccan.

Air Deccan is the Nano of the Airline sector; what Tata – Nano plans to do to the automobile industry (converting two wheelers into four wheelers) Air Deccan has done to Aviation industry (shifting people from rail travel to travel by air). Presently, there is a new segment of travelers; the leisure customers. Yet another segment is introduced and that is the first time travelers.

Air Deccan introduced the concept of dynamic pricing which means selling at a higher price during high season (tourist season) and selling cheap during the off-seasons. Therefore, everyday the price would change depending upon the kind of competition and also the load factor. Also it introduced various schemes and programmers.

VI. Kingfisher

The King Fisher initiated its operations in May, 2005. It is a major Indian luxury airline operating an extensive network to 34 destinations, with plans for regional and long-haul international services. Kingfisher Airlines, through one of its holding company UB holdings Ltd has acquired 26% stake in the budget airline Air Deccan.

VII. GoAir

GoAir is an Indian low-cost airline based in Mumbai. It was established in June 2004, the airline started its operations in October 2005 with a fleet of 20 leased Airbus A320 aircraft.

VIII. Indigo

IndiGo Airlines commenced its operations in 2006 and went on to swiftly establish itself as one of the premier budget airlines in the country. IndiGo Airways soon added IndiGo flights and destinations to its network. The unimpeachable services and timely performances of IndiGo flights added to the popularity of the airline.

IX. SpiceJet

SpiceJet, a rebirth of ModiLuft marked its entry in service by offering fares priced at Rs.99 for the first 99 days since its inception in 2005. The carrier is giving tough competition to Railways.

MARKET SHARE

India’s domestic aviation market expansion has been the strongest in the world – tripling in the past five years, according to IATA’s report.

India is currently the ninth largest aviation market in the world, according to a RNCOS report “Indian Aerospace Industry Analysis”. The Government’s open sky policy has attracted many foreign players to enter the market and the industry is growing in terms of both players and the number of aircrafts. Given the strong market fundamentals, it is expected that the civil aviation market will register a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 16 per cent during 2010-2013.

India’s domestic air traffic grew at a rate, which is the second highest after Brazil, according to global figures for June 2011, compiled by IATA. The country’s domestic traffic grew by 14 percent in the same period as against Brazil’s 15.1 percent.

Indian airlines reported a continuous growth trend and a strong domestic passenger growth rate of 22.3 percent in July 2011. Passenger traffic has grown at 18 per cent year on year (y-o-y) basis and the year2010 closed at 90 million passengers both domestic and international. India is the fastest growing aviation market and expected to be within 4-5 big aviation markets by 2020 and 3rd in terms of domestic market after US and China.

In July 2011, airlines in India handled 5 million domestic passengers, according to data released by the DGCA on September 12, 2011, marking the 11th consecutive month of double-digit growth. India’s domestic market has witnessed passenger growth for 26 consecutive months now. In July 2011, India’s airlines handled 1.3 million international passengers, an increase of 8.5 per cent y-o-y, according to DGCA.

Passengers carried by domestic airlines during Jan-Aug 2011 were 39.63 million as against 33.41 million during the corresponding period of previous year thereby registering a growth of 18.6 per cent, according to data released by DGCA.

India is expected to cross the 450 million mark of domestic passengers by 2020. During the last two decades from a fleet of only about 100, the scheduled operators now have reached 435 aircrafts connecting the nation and the world.

Private carriers are anticipated to post a combined profit of US$ 350-US$ 400 million for the fiscal years2011-12, as reported by CAPA India, in its 2011-12 – Aviation Industry outlook. Domestic capacity is also projected to grow by 12-14 per cent for the assessment period.

Market share of key players in the Indian aviation sector

Name of the players

Market Share

Kingfisher Airlines and Kingfisher Red (previously Air Deccan)

28 %

Jet Airways and JetLite (previously Air Sahara)

25 %

Air India and Indian (previously Indian Airlines)

16 %

IndiGo

14 %

SpiceJet

12 %

GoAir

3 %
DISTRIBUTION CHANNEL IN THE AVIATION INDUSTRY

Distribution is the process of making a product or service available for use or consumption by a consumer or business user, using direct means, or using indirect means with intermediaries.

Airline Reservation System is one of the intermediaries of the distribution channel in the aviation industry. An airline reservation system is part of the so-called passenger service systems (PSS), which are applications supporting the direct contact with the passenger.

Airline reservations systems contain airline schedules, fare tariffs, passenger reservations and ticket records. An airline’s direct distribution works within their own reservation system, as well as pushing out information to the GDS. A second type of direct distribution channel is consumers who use the internet or mobile applications to make their own reservations. Travel agencies and other indirect distribution channels access the same GDS as those accessed by the airlines’ reservation systems, and all messaging is transmitted by a standardized messaging system that functions on two types of messaging that transmit on SITA’s HLN [high level network]. These message types are called Type B [TTY] for remarks-like communications and Type A [EDIFACT] for secured information. Message construction standards are set by IATA and ICAO, are global, and apply to more than air transportation. Since airline reservation systems are business critical applications, and their functionally quite complex, the operation of an in-house airline reservation system is relatively expensive.

Prior to deregulation, airlines owned their own reservation systems with travel agents subscribing to them. Today, the GDS are run by independent companies with airlines and travel agencies as major subscribers.

As of February 2009, there are only three major GDS providers in the market space: Amadeus, Travel port (the merged World span and Galileo systems), Sabre and Shares. There is one major Regional GDS, Abacus, serving the Asian marketplace and a number of regional players serving single countries, including Travel sky (China), Infini and Axess (both Japan) and Topas (South Korea).

Inventory management

An airline’s inventory contains all flights with their available seats. The inventory of an airline is generally divided into service classes (e.g. first, business or economy class) and up to 26 booking classes, for which different prices and booking conditions apply.

Inventory data is imported and maintained through a schedule distribution system over standardized interfaces. One of the core functions of the inventory management is the inventory control. Inventory control steers how many seats are available in the different booking classes, by opening and closing individual booking classes for sale. In combination with the fares and booking conditions stored in the Fare Quote System the price for each sold seat is determined.

In most cases inventory control has a real time interface to an airline’s Yield management system to support a permanent optimization of the offered booking classes in response to changes in demand or pricing strategies of a competitor.

Availability display and reservation (PNR)

Users access an airline’s inventory through an availability display. It contains all offered flights for a particular city-pair with their available seats in the different booking classes. This display contains flights which are operated by the airline itself as well as code share flights which are operated in co-operation with another airline. If the city pair is not one on which the airline offers service it may display a connection using its own flights or display the flights of other airlines.

The availability of seats of other airlines is updated through standard industry interfaces. Depending on the type of co-operation it supports access to the last seat (last seat availability) in real-time. Reservations for individual passengers or groups are stored in a so-called passenger name record (PNR). Among other data, the PNR contains personal information such as name, contact information or special services requests (SSRs) e.g. for a vegetarian meal, as well as the flights (segments) and issued tickets. Some reservation systems also allow storing customer data in profiles to avoid data re-entry each time a new reservation is made for a known passenger. In addition most systems have interfaces to CRM systems or customer loyalty applications (aka frequent traveler systems).

Before a flight departs the so-called passenger name list (PNL) is handed over to the departure control system that is used to check-in passengers and baggage. Reservation data such as the number of booked passengers and special service requests is also transferred to flight operations systems, crew management and catering systems. Once a flight has departed the reservation system is updated with a list of the checked-in passengers (e.g. passengers who had a reservation but did not check in (no shows) and passengers who checked in, but didn’t have a reservation (go shows)). Finally data needed for revenue accounting and reporting is handed over to administrative systems.

Fare quote and ticketing

The Fares data store contains fare tariffs, rule sets, routing maps, class of service tables, and some tax information that construct the price – “the fare”. Rules like booking conditions (e.g. minimum stay, advance purchase, etc.) are tailored differently between different city pairs or zones, and assigned a class of service corresponding to its appropriate inventory bucket. Inventory control can also be manipulated manually through the availability feeds, dynamically controlling how many seats are offered for a particular price by opening and closing particular classes.

The role of the ticketing complex is to issue and store electronic ticket records and the very small number of paper tickets that are still issued. Miscellaneous charges order (MCO) is still a paper document; IATA has working groups defining the replacement document the electronic multipurpose document (EMD) as at 2010. The electronic ticket information is stored in a database containing the data that historically was printed on a paper ticket including items such as the ticket number, the fare and tax components of the ticket price or exchange rate information. In the past airlines issued paper tickets; since 2008 IATA has been supporting a resolution to move to 100% electronic ticketing. So far, the industry has not been able to comply due to various technological and international limitations. The industry is at 98% electronic ticket issuance today although electronic processing for MCOs was not available in time for the IATA mandate.

KEY ISSUES & CURRENT TRENDS

India is set to experience a transformational growth profile.

The challenges are becoming much greater as the size of the industry increases.

2000aˆ?2010: Indian aviation had to cope with an additional 84m pax,at times, this truly stretched the system;

2010aˆ?2020: Indian aviation may have to handle an incremental 300aˆ?320m pax;

In absolute terms the challenge ahead will dwarf recent history.

Long term planning in line with a clear vision is imperative. We require imagination, strong commitment, a clear and robust regulatory framework and capital.

Is Indian aviation ready to meet this challenge?

How do we create the appropriate framework for the long term?

What kind of regulation do we want -government as regulator or independent regulator?

Independent regulation requires that government does not have stakes in airlines/airports.

Is the industry ready for complete deregulation as in the UK/EU?

Do we want rapid or gradual change?

After reaching agreement on these issues, the roadmap for regulation must be documented.

CAPA believes that India has a cleanaˆ?sheet opportunity to create an effective new frame work, that supports industry viability and is focused on security, safety, skills and sustainability.

Key Success Factors for the Next Decade

1. National Agenda: A long term, structured national plan (as part of a broader transportation plan) with an appropriate policy framework is necessary to attract capital.

2. Regulator: A modern, unified, professional regulator, with enhanced expertise.

3. PSUs: Air India and the AAI need to be gradually privatized, while corporatization of air navigation services is essential.

4. HR & Training: World class education & training infrastructure is essential for safe and efficient aviation.

5. Safety: Implementation of safety systems and culture which are comprehensive, enforced and collaborative.

6. Liberalisation: Market access should be liberalized but there must be a level playing field for Indian operators.

7. Taxation: A less punitive fiscal regime -particularly sales tax on fuel -which recognizes that airlines must be viable, is imperative.

8. Investment: Private sector capital should be encouraged in airport development.

9. Profile: Enhanced profile and recognition of aviation within government. And state governments must be educated on the role that aviation plays economic competitiveness

10. Vision: Ministry to concentrate on policy and providing strategic leadership.

PEST ANALYSIS
OVERVIEW:

Air travel has grown in the past decade. Travel grew strongly for both Leisure and business purposes. India will have nearly 800 to 1000 airplanes by2023, it was estimated by Airbus. In spite of growth between 30 to 50 per cent in Indian aviation industry, losses of approximately 2200 core is estimated for the current year.

During 1991-1992, Modiluft, East West and Damania went bankrupt. Air Sahara and Jet Airways survived along with government own Indian Airlines because they had the capability to bear losses. Globalization and privatization had a major impact on aviation industry. Indian aviation industry was deregulated by the government in 1990s. As a result now 14 airlines are operating today in Indian sky. Now, collaboration with international organization and foreign direct investment are welcome to improve infrastructure and technology. Today people who cannot afford high prices of Full Service Carriers (FSC) can travel by Low Cost Carriers (LCC) or budget airlines. Air Deccan was India’s first LCC started in 2003. It flies to several metro and non-metro destinations. All airlines have three major fixed costs i.e. fuel costs, financing or aircraft lease and labour cost. But LCC costs are 10 to 15per cent lower than FSC. This is because of three reasons. Firstly, saving on distribution cost as passenger’s book tickets on the internet. Secondly, no frills are offered on board. Thirdly, to accommodate additional seats, catering and cabin crew space in these aircraft has been used. So these aircraft have 40 seats more than the FSC.

INDUSTRY ANALYTICS:

PEST analysis of any industry sector investigates the important factors that are affecting the industry and influencing the companies operating in that sector. PEST is an acronym for political, economic, social and technological analysis. Political factors include government policies relating to the industry, tax policies, laws and regulations, trade restrictions and tariffs etc. The economic factors relate to changes in the wider economy such as economic growth, interest rates, exchange rates and inflation rate, etc. Social factors often look at the cultural aspects and include health consciousness, population growth rate, age distribution, changes in tastes and buying patterns, etc. The technological factors relate to the application of new inventions and ideas such as R&D activity, automation, technology incentives and the rate of technological change. The PEST Analysis is a perfect tool for managers and policy makers; helping them in analyzing the forces that are driving their industry and how these factors will influence their businesses and the whole industry in general. Our product also presents a brief profile of the industry comprising of current market, competition in it and future prospects of that sector.

POLITICAL FACTORS:

In India, one can never over-look the political factors which influence each and every industry existing in the country. Like it or not, the political interference has to be present everywhere. Given below are a few of the political factors with respect to the airline industry:

1. The airline industry is very susceptible to changes in the political environment as it has a great bearing on the travel habits of its customers. An unstable political environment causes uncertainty in the minds of the air travelers, regarding traveling to a particular country.

2. Overall India’s recent political environment has been largely unstable due to international events & continued tension with Pakistan.

3. The govern

Every organization depends on a combination of resources and services needed to support the core business processes. Make sure that the support is available in the right way. Quality and the right price are the responsibility of facilities management. In essence, took facilities management, and organizations will have the freedom to do what they do best.

Operators to take care of the rest. In practice, it has proved difficult to facilities management amplification. British Institute of Facilities Management and the integration of multi-disciplinary ” known developments in the built environment and its effects on individuals and work management.

International Management Facility Association offers a similar view: “a career that includes various disciplines, functions and integrated environment built to ensure that people, processes and technology space.”

A little of the new European standards adopted by the facilities management projects facilities management statement more complex, and to maintain and improve the coordinated operation of the main activities of the organization “efficiency and supply management.

Activities and responsibilities and the United Kingdom sector skills council, which hosts more than facilities management is a simple preference in reference to support the integration is necessary for a successful performance. In part, these definitions reserves the right to manage a relatively new idea. Only in the last ten years, most organizations have started to think in terms of strategic importance.

Accommodation

In modern times, and how to spend their holidays has undergone a significant change. People want to get a good time with family and friends, at the same time exploring the various tourist attractions all over the world. As a result, the tourism industry saw unprecedented growth in all parts of the world, and this in turn has led to a tremendous growth in the hotel and accommodation facilities.

Comfortable hotels and accommodation facilities play an important role in the circulation of any other tourist destination. If a person who is far from home, and get the same enjoyment enjoy the services and facilities in the house, then he is obliged to stick place. On the other hand if the tourist ends in place of hotels and accommodation facilities are not satisfactory, you probably would never return to that place.

Perhaps for this reason, hotels and accommodation facilities available at various tourist sites, the focus has shifted to provide maximum comfort to tourists at a reasonable price. It is also vital to provide comfortable accommodation for people from diverse economic backgrounds. While the five-star hotels are able to meet the needs of visitors rich average small and medium sized enterprises and establish homes available for use by the middle class traveller.

Review blogs are also of vital importance that all the information about hotels and accommodation facilities available in the private tourism is available to Page 1

people quite easily. For this there is no better choice than the Internet, because most of the information gain tour of hotels and accommodation facilities through this medium only. Completion of other form s booklets contain information about hotels and accommodation facilities available in the train and bus stations.

The information must be provided to the tourists to be detailed and accurate. It can also must contain information regarding renting rooms, types of rooms, catering services, check out, and the selection and drop facilities etc. information about tourist sites additional important in providing both on the web and brochures, to promote not only but also in hotel in a tourist spot.

Types of accommodations

Accommodation is a necessary component in the development of tourism within any destination that seeks to serve visitors other than day trippers. The quality of different of accommodation available will both reflect and influence the range of visitors to a location. There are many types of accommodations which range from hotels, guest houses, bed and breakfasts to farm house accommodation, inns and campus accommodation. Hotels are undoubtedly the most significant and visible sub-sector within accommodation or lodging. Most of these hotels are usually located in the capital city and spread to other major cities. Four star hotels are usually very expensive due to their nature and facilities provided. Some time their facilities and services rendered are quite many and sophisticated compared to other smaller types of accommodation.

Demand

Demand is wants and needs that are profitable for human consumption and services. It can be affordable to the person paying for the products or services. For example, most people demand a mobile phone for the purpose of receiving calls and sending text messages not caring about other functions. They are interested in the satisfaction the phone gives them. Demand is the ability and willingness to purchase or pay for goods or services at a given time and at a particular price. The power to purchase means that the person likes the item enough and wants to buy it. This is usually what people think when they encounter the concept of demand. In this sense, the person who wants to make the purchase must be willing to pay the price of the items

Comparison between hotels

Comparisons between three (four star) different accommodation service and facilities.

Ramada Hotel Dover

Sing ledge lane, Dover

CT16 3EL

Wrightington Hotel

Moss Lane, Wrightington

WN6 9PB

Holiday Inn Express Cambridge

15-17 Coldhams Park, Norman Way

Cambridge

CB1 3LH

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1. Ramada Hotel Dover

Singledge lane, Dover

CT16 3EL

The Ramada hotel Dover is a four star hotel in quiet garden location along side the A2, between Dover and Canterbury. The Ramada hotel is offering highest quality of facilities and accommodations which include a mini gym. Our convenient location allows you a good connection to the Dover Ferry and Cruise Terminals, Town Centre, Dover Castle, and the world Famous white Cliffs, all with in reach in five minutes on the car. You will find the Euro tunnel terminal just a further five to ten minutes.

Hotel Accommodation.

Ramada Hotel is providing the highest quality accommodation and facilities including The Olive Tree Restaurant, Octagon Bar, Costa Coffee Lounge, Mini Gym and Free WiFi throughout hotel. Double, twin, family, executive and accessible room are available in the Ramada hotel.

Asian Wedding.

The Ramada hotel is a perfect for an Asian wedding you can be certain that you will receive the highest standard of service and the best value for money with out compromise.

Service

Ramada Hotel is providing meeting and conference rooms. Ideal for meeting, training courses, private dinners and conferences. Free WiFi access in throughout the hotel, En-suite with bath and power shower, Direct Dial Phone, Flat screen TV, Hair dryer, Iron &Ironing Board, Air Conditioning, Room safes. Ramada hotel is offering a wheelchair accessible room.

Price

Room form A?62 per night.

Offers.

1 or 2 night break in Ramada that includes over night bed & breakfast accommodation in a family room for 2 adults and 2 children.

A?115.00 night

2 night in Ramada, one night and breakfast on both morning free.

A?149.00 per package.

3. Honeymoon Package

All free includes. Executive room, full English breakfast for two, basket of flowers, chocolates, bottle of mineral water and soft drinks mini bar.

A?175.00 per couple per night.

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2. Wrightington Hotel

Moss Lane, Wrightington

WN6 9PB

Accommodation at Wrightingtion

Wrightingtion is offering a selection of luxurious rooms for business or leisure guest.

Club Range

Club Triple room.

Club triple room is popular family room with a double and single bed. Perfect for those family breaks. Club triple room is decorating to a high level to make your stay enjoyable and comfortable.

Free terrestrial TV

Ensuite bath and shower

Ironing centre

Double glazing

Club double room

Club double room are quiet, comfortable stay at affordable price. The club double room is decorated to high level that will make your stay.

Ensuite bath and shower

Free terrestrial TV

Tea and coffee making facilities

Ironing centre

Club Twin Room

Club twin room are comfortable stay at affordable price. Club twin room has everything you need. The club twin room is decorated to high levels that make you stay.

Ensuite bath and shower

Free terrestrial TV

Tea and coffee making facilities

Ironing centre

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Deluxe Rooms 1.Deluxe Double Room

The deluxe double is offering a Queen size bed with a view of our garden and courtyard or the rural countryside of Wrightington.

Ensuite bath and shower

Air conditioning

Free sky TV and free view

Ironing centre

Tea and coffee making facilities

Safe deposit box

2. Deluxe Twin Room

These rooms offer perfect break away for friends.

Ensuite bath and shower

Air conditioning

Free sky TV and free view

Ironing centre

Tea and coffee making facilities

Safe deposit box

C. a. The Maddox Suite

The Maddox suite is offering lounge with flat screen TV and mine bar and best rooms with your friends. The separate bedroom has a king size bed and flat screen TV.

b. The Platinum Room

The platinum room are decorated to the highest standard and to compliment this regal look the room offers.

Both facilities

Ensuite bath and power shower

Air conditioning

Free sky TV and free view

Ironing centre

Complimentary toiletries

Tea and coffee making facilities

Safe deposit box

Conference & Banqueting Facilities

Wrightington hotel is the ideal meeting point for conference and business events. Wrightington hotel is providing the largest accommodation for up 200 people.

Flipchart, stand and markers

LCD screen TV

Ice water and cordial

Delegate conference pad and pencil

Dial out telephone

Delegate place card

PA system

Free parking

Services

Banqueting, hair salon, beauty spa,

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3. Holiday Inn Express Cambridge

15-17 Coldhams Park, Norman Way

Cambridge

CB1 3LH

Cambridge is a beautiful city in United Kingdom and the Holiday Inn Express is a ideal choice for comfort location, about all value. More the 100 rooms are modern and contemporary with all your need to make your break as relaxing as possible. Holiday Inn Express is just 20 minutes from Stansted Air port and a 50 minutes train ride from central London. Holiday Inn Express is best for business meeting. Holiday Inn Express has a number of good value rates to suit businesses looking to hire meeting rooms with packages that can include conference lunches. Holiday Inn Express are provide right price with free hot breakfast, free parking and free WiFi in public areas.

Hotel Accommodation

Holiday Inn Express is offers affordable facilities for customer in a good location to the city. We are provide to a non smoking modern and comfortable rooms. Guests are choose double, twins, family and also the wheelchair accessible to the rooms. In family rooms are accommodate two adult and two children in a double bed and sofa bed. Holiday Inn Express is provided ever thing for relaxing break. The gusts are enjoy free breakfast in our lounge and help them selves to the wide rang of goodies selves in a buffet style.

Other Facilities in rooms

Free breakfast

En- suite with power shower

Air conditioning

Tea and coffee making facilities

32 inch flat screen TV with free view

Individually controlled heating

Iron and ironing board

Free parking

Free WiFi in public areas

Room service 24 hour

Meeting and conference facilities

Holiday Inn Express is a great location for meeting and conference. Holiday Inn Express is just 20 minutes from Stansted air port and 50 minutes train ride from central London. Holiday Inn Express is provide three meeting rooms.

Projection screens

Papers

White board

Multimedia

Internet available (charges apply)

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Air condition

Free breakfast

Special offers

Holiday inn Express is offering 20% off when you book the advance. Our rates include a complimentary breakfast buffet with items. When you are booking advance, full payment are required.

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British Airways plc (BA) is the flag carrier airline of the United Kingdom. BA headquarters is located in Waterside close to its major hub at London Heathrow Airport and based on fleet size, international flights and international destinations is the largest airline in the UK. Its other hub is the London Gatwick Airport. British Airways has terminated all straight overseas flights from UK airports with the exception of Heathrow, Gatwick and London City Airport. BA’s UK passengers originating at non-London airports would have to connect through London or make use of different airlines with direct services.

The British Airways Group was formed on 1 September 1974 due to nationalization by the Labor Government as at then. British Airways was created from a couple of airlines which were, BOAC and BEA, Cambrian Airways from Cardiff and Northeast Airlines from Newcastle upon Tyne. In the 1974 all four companies were disbanded to materialize into British Airways. British Airways was privatized in February 1987 after over 13 years as part of the privatization plan by the Conformist Government as at then. The airline quickly expanded with the acquisition of British Caledonian (BCAL) in 1987 and Gatwick-based carrier Dan-Air in 1992.

British Airways is a founding member of the One world airline alliance along with four other airlines – American Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Qantas and the now obsolete Canadian Airlines. The alliance has ever since developed to become the third leading airline alliance, with only SkyTeam and Star Alliance being larger.

By 30 July 2008, British Airways and Spanish airline

Iberia made a pronouncement of a merger plan that would lead to the two airlines joining forces in an all-stock transaction while retaining their separate brands similar to KLM and Air France in their merger agreement. On 12 November 2009, British Airways established that it had arrived at a preliminary agreement to merge with Iberia airline. The merger between British Airways and Iberia would bring about the world’s third-largest airline in terms of annual revenue and the second largest airline group in Europe. The agreement was confirmed on 8 April 2010, and by the end of the year should be completed.

British Airways presently hold a 13.5% stake in Iberia but will obtain ownership of 55% of the new combined group, which would be known as “International Airlines Group”, with Iberia’s shareholders obtaining the lasting 45% of the corporation. The merged entity will operate 419 aircraft, convey up to 62 million passengers yearly and serve a little over 200 destinations. It is expected that the merger will create 400 million Euros of savings annually for the airlines. The Headquarters would be situated in London.

Table 1.1 British airways fleet

(Source: airfleet.net 2010)

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Figure 1: Image of British airways aircraft

(Source: bized.co.uk 1996-2910)

2.0 E-BUSINESS MODELS USED BY BRITISH AIRWAYS

Firstly before the discussion on the business models of British Airways, there has to be an understanding on what e-business model is all about.

E-business could be said to be as a derivative from terms such

as e-mail and e-commerce, which is conducting of business activities on the internet, not just buying and selling but giving customer service and cooperating with business associate.

In another definition of E-business, it is the application of information communication technologies in support of all the activities of business. (Beydon-Davies 2004).

So therefore e-business model could be said to be the technological plan implemented by a company online to generate revenue and make a profit from operations, which includes the components and functions of the business, as well as the revenue it spawns and expenses it incurs.

2.1 Infomediary Model

Information about customers and other trends they go about them are carefully analyzed by British Airways, that is they know their customers very well, and what they want as well, so there are a lot of information that could be gotten there. This model is also used for the information of all other partners and airlines that they work with. They help customers understand the kind of hotels that would suit them for their travel plans and how they could go about getting the best possible information. This model has been a source of revenue for a while now for British Airline and it has helped them gain a very good competitive edge in the airline industry.

2.2 Direct Model

British Airways makes use of the direct model, whereby they are directly doing business transactions with their customers, thereby cutting off any form of intermediary that is agents, they do this because these agents do exploit the customers to dissatisfaction which might bring about distrust of the customers

the airline, so therefore the y practice the direct model system of e-business model so as to keep up their competitive advantage and attractiveness to airline industry and society at large respectively.

British airways have certain revenue models that would determine how they will generate profits and produce a superior return on investment. These revenue models are given below:

Revenue Model

2.1 Advertisement Model

British Airways uses this e-business model to attract customers to their company, advertisement on tours and holiday sales could be seen on the website. This model works very well for them because there are a lot of people who visit British Airways website, and when they see these ads they become interested want to know more about what it is about there bringing large traffic to the site which is what brings about some of the revenue earned in British Airways today.

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Figure 2: screen shot of Advertisement on British Airways.

2.2 Affiliate Model

British Airways uses this model for the purpose on getting revenue, the affiliate model is a very important business model to the company, and they advertise hotels and resort for other companies on their website which in turn these companies would give them a percentage of the returns. With this model being implemented it provides purchase opportunities for the affiliate companies.

2.3 Subscription Model

The subscription model is being used by British Airways to generate revenue. Customers or air travel passengers who would want to become executive club members and business members could subscribe. This membership comes with different benefits for the customers

such as having BA miles which would enable the customer to have some services for free. This model attracts customers, which would in turn bring about profit to the airline.

3.0 WEB TECHNOLOGIES USED BY BRITISH AIRWAYS

Web technologies are extremely significant fraction of an organization or company that utilizes technology, assemble, process, store and disseminate information. With the use of web technologies it could bring about a competitive advantage for a company with other organizations, these technologies are what could bring about success and profits of a company. For a company like British Airways which is an internationally acclaimed company, web technologies have been part of what they have used to gain these competitive advantage as well satisfy all their customers’ needs, not also forgetting the enormous profit at which they have earned all year round, web technology have played a major role in all these. The web technologies at which British Airways have been making use of to gain competitive advantage are as follows:

3.1 Wireless Internet Mobile service

One of the web technology at which British airways have adopted is the wireless mobile internet service, to make the travel experience of loyal customers easier and smoother. British airways have been working in collaboration with IBM to develop a facility that allows frequent flyers to use their mobile phones to check in for flights out of the UK, select their seat and access information on intervals and departures. This has brought about time saving benefits for customers and significant cost reductions at BA call centers and check- ins.

Working

in collaboration with IBM, British airways has become the premier UK airline to allow frequent flyers to use their mobile phones to check in for flights out of the UK, and the first airline in the world to enable passengers to select their seat via a geographical seat map on their phones. In addition, any mobile phone user is now able to check flight availability and view up-to-minute flight arrivals and departure information for any British airways flight.

3.1.1 Customer benefits:

Subscribers to the service would be able to check in using the pictorial seat selection tool on the phone, arrive at the airport, collect their boarding pass from a self-service kiosk in a short time, leave their baggage at the fast bag drop, and go to the boarding gate. Other benefits of this technology are:

az? Passengers can shun check-in queues at the airport

az? Customers can check seat availability on flight devoid of having to make a voice call.

az? Travelers can check real-time departures of their flights if delayed in traffic and meeters and greeters can check flight arrivals from any location.

3.1.2 Business benefits

Beyond the improvement in customer service, the development of its mobile internet services has brought British airways a number of other benefits

az? A decrease in call centre charges through lessening the demand for arrival and

Departure information

az? A cutback in check-in costs – by keeping customers out of the check-in queues and reducing desk staffing cost.

az? A grip in the mobile computing network

3.2 British Airways World Cargo

This is a technology that British Airways

use to enhance the provision of customers service within the air cargo industry. The technology works with EDI (Electronic Data Interchange). This technology is being used for the following purposes:

az? Receive and transmit air waybill data by means of EDI (Electronic Data Interchange)

az? Receive and process freight

az? Deliver automated notification of the receipt of freight

az? Track and trace freight from the airport of origin to the airport of destination using barcode technology

az? Advance the intelligibility of performance measurement to their customers.

Customers would have to be connected to the Cargo Community System (CSS) for all these services to be readily available.

3.2.1 Benefits of the British Airways World Cargo

Customers who have subscribed to an EDI connection with British Airways World Cargo via a cargo community system will be notified automatically when they receive their shipments. Customers would also receive notification of their shipment’s progress at key points during its journey (e.g. receipt into LHR, departure from, LHR, and then arrival at destination airport etc.)

Customers who transmit their air waybill data to British Airways cargo via EDI who have their consignments accepted and processed faster, accurately, at the airport of origin.

Customers who are able to barcode their shipments prior to delivery to British Airways cargo would have the following benefits:

az? Increased data accuracy

az? Increased handling speed

az? Effective track and trace of shipments

az? Increased customer service through the availability of quality status information, throughout

its journey.

3.3 Airline Inventory and Reservation System (AIRS)

This web technology is a user friendly solution which enables the users to work on a Graphical User Interface to reduce training times and thus promoting speedy deployment. It provides enormous cost savings to airlines as compared to the traditional models by providing a PC based efficient solution by ensuring savings on mainframe costs as well as legacy platforms and there providing better return on investment.

3.3.1 AIRS Benefits

az? great cost savings for an airline in terms of internal airline offices reservation automation

az? Offers an improved level of functionalities integrated with the steady growth and ensuing requirements of the airline.

az? Is a web based user-friendly solution, which makes it possible the users to work on a Graphical User Interface.

az? Can be implemented the same day at numerous locations and new locations can be added simply with no implementation timeframe setback.

az? It can also be designed according to the airlines requirements. (Bird Information System 2010)

3.4 Baggage Reconciliation System

This is a web based technology used by British airways for their travellers to be able to reconcile with their luggage when departing the airport. There have been huge problems in the past concerning passengers and their luggage, with the large amount of travellers at the airport there is a high tendency for baggage to get missing, so therefore this web technology was designed for sole purpose of avoiding such situations from happening.

The technology uses wireless barcode scanners allowing airport staff to

identify the precise location of any piece of luggage during loading and unloading. The objective is to reduce mismanaged baggage by tracking each piece of baggage and maintaining records of their handling of each piece of baggage.

3.5 E-Ticketing System

British Airways also deploys a system at which customers can prints their own tickets. E-Tickets can be bar-coded for validation. E- Ticketing system has been advantageous for British Airways as it assist in cost and labour savings, with instant delivery to the customer, safe and secure due to bar-code provision etc.

3.6 Ticket Reservation

British Airways utilizes this web technology on their website in order for customers to make their ticket reservation. This web technology allows for an efficient ticket booking. Customers intend to make ticket reservation uses this web technology to make ticket reservation. This has also been a success story for British Airways as it has attracted many customers to the website as it provided efficient and satisfactory ticket reservation for customer as a result of adopting this ticket reservation web technology.

3.7 Online booking

This web technology is used by British Airways which enables users to make online booking on the website, using the functionality and features made available on the website. This web technology is used by making an online booking page directly on the home page with featured links and functionality to enable users make use of it and make satisfying online booking. This is a key web technology in this website as it is the airline’s focal point in operating with a website. This web technology adopted

by British Airways has been crucial to their success in terms of providing easy and satisfactory online booking for the users.

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Figure 3: Screen Shot of Online booking

3.8 Manage My Booking

This is a web technology that is being used by British Airways to manage customer’s booking, it provides features such as the check online booking status which enables passengers to view the status of their booking made. Customers can also view, change or send itinerary such as paying for unconfirmed bookings made previously, purchase and re-select passenger seats of their choice, Change flights destinations, Supersize or Add baggage allowance, Purchase/Re-select meals for those that need special meals, update passenger contact details and upgrading fare class. This is done by entering Booking number, departure date, origin, destination city and email, “check flight status” which allows customers to re-confirm the status of their flights. The section allows for passengers to check their flight details of reservations which were made a day (24-hours) prior to the date of departure by entering departing, arriving, depart date, airline code and flight number, “refund status” which shows passengers the current status of refunds from payments made by credit card. This is done by entering PNR and credit card number, “check baggage status” which enables users to check their luggage status if delay report is made. This is done by entering Baggage PIR number or PNR number or full name in PIR report.

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Figure 4: Screen shot of Manage my booking.

3.9 Intranet

This is a private network which British Airways uses to communicate

within its organization. This is so because of the enormous size and population of British Airways Infrastructure and staffs, so therefore this intranet is a necessity for the organization to share resources within the entire staff and also improve the communication within the organization.

3.10 Flight Information

This technology enables users to have series of information about their flights. This technology is for the sole purpose of keeping the customers updated. It comes with features such as “latest travel news” which gives updates on when there is any flight disruption, “arrivals and departures” which updates minute by minute information about the flight the customer intends to meet and when its arriving as well as flight departure status, it also has “time-tables” which allows users to check the flight schedule for their chosen destination, it also has information on available flights up to one year in advance.

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Figure 5: screen shot of flight information

3.11 Route Map

The route map is designed as a guide to help the passengers to know their destinations and get to their destination safely and easily. This is the quickest and easiest routing technology, based on the normal flying conditions. The route map has all the destinations that British airways fly to in the different continents, when a customer clicks on any of the continent it links to all the directional areas British Airways fly. The route map shows the 300 destinations BA flies. British Airways is a member of Oneworld Alliance which makes them able to offer a total 600 destinations with the collaboration of its partners.

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Figure

6: screen shot on British Airways Route Map

3.12 Hotel Booking

This is another web technology provided by British Airways, which enables customers to book their hotels at which intend to stay. The hotels have been carefully selected to deliver high quality and level of service that customers would expect from British Airways. It contains over 4000 carefully selected hotels which could be filtered based on the customer’s preference, ranging from 4 star hotels with a pool or spa, to 3 star hotels close to the city centre. Customers would also be able to compare prices, location and other details at a glance, as well as seeing the hotel on a street map, so that the customer would be sure it’s his or her chosen location.

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Figure 7: screen shot of Hotel booking.

4.0 IMPACT OF INTERNET TECHNOLOGY TOWARDS THE SOCIETY

The internet technology has been an innovation that has transformed the world to a much better place, it is also commonly referred to as the world becoming a global village where by people or who are divided by a distance of a million miles could actually communicate as if they are just inches away from themselves. The internet technology has had a massive impact on every facet and aspect of life today.

4.1 Economy

Today the world has changed a lot due to internet technology, financial and governmental institutions are being run based on numerous web technologies, to address issues of human lives. With these technologies commercial business have changed for the better, people do business from almost anywhere in the world today, product are advertised, bought and sold on the internet today,

all these have been made possible by the web technologies which have come into place.

4.2 Education

More and more people have become more educated today with internet technologies. People can now be educated by barely sitting at home with their computers and receive lectures, online tutoring have helped a great deal in the society today which could not be achieved until the introduction of internet technologies. Universities now have system whereby students could log-on to in order to get their notes and other necessary information for their lecture or education in general.

4.3 Transportation

Transportation comes in different form, air transport, road, sea, train etc, all have had major technological breakthrough with internet technologies. Looking at the aviation industry today, there a lot of technologies which have now be put in place to ensure air travel is as smooth as ever, passengers can now easily book do all the necessary logistics from booking flight to actually arriving at the destination all entirely on the internet. Same as well goes to other aspect of transport cars are now technologically advanced, sea liners are made as luxurious as five star hotels etc. All these have been achieved with one web technology or the other.

4.4 Health Care

In terms of health care many lives have been saved today, web technologies have contributed towards the improvement of the study of anatomy of humans, diseases have been detected, and analyzed to determine the extent of its damage. More people have been saved what seems to be initially life damning diseases, but technology today has made these diseases look common.

There have been so many other healthcare solutions which have been introduced as well for the improvement of healthcare in the world today.

4.5 Media and Entertainment

Media and entertainment have been an important aspect of life in the world today, web technology have contributed immensely to this effect. Movies and movies today are have been improved with web technologies, people can now easily get to watch movies online or listen to music, the media sector have also improved massively with the wide coverage of almost any activity happening in the world today. People can now get to watch news easily through internet podcast on a website, which has bring about people being increasingly informative.

4.6 Telecommunication

Telecommunication has its own success story, web technologies have also contributed immensely on this area. Mobile phones are now amazingly smart, whereby people could do almost anything and everything they could think of, this has been so with the ever increasing number mobile applications. Mobile networks have also improved with internet technologies, networks can now serve their customers better with these technologies, and mobile networks have come up with different strategies that have made telecommunication taken to higher level with different promotional activities that are taken place.

5.0 FUTURE DIRECTIONS AND CHALLENGES THE COMPANY FACES IN TERMS OF WEB TECHNOLOGY

With the ever increasing technological advancement in the world today, British Airways would have challenges that would be posed to them in the nearby future and they would need to come up with innovative ideas to keep up with

these challenges. Below are challenges they would be faced with and how they could overcome these challenges.

5.1 Passenger Traffic

Nowadays, the waiting time for travelers to check in at a desk has been estimated to 13 minutes, and it has become a known practice to avoid the agent and use a kiosk to get the boarding passes. The passenger traffic could be reduced to a barest minimum with the introduction of self service air travel. A system could be created whereby passenger facilities could be provided at a kiosk there by reducing running cost. This would reduce the heavy traffic times at terminal entrances, thereby spreading the flow of passengers more evenly throughout the airport. Hotel check-in and car rental information could also be embedded in the system.

5.2 Baggage Delay

Baggage handling is an important aspect of air travel because if not handled properly could bring about flight delays, and it is also a priority for passengers worldwide. Baggage handling could be improved quickly by lessening cost, lowering the number of lost bags and enhancing customer experience. A new technology can be put in place to enable closer collaboration and a more holistic view. The system could have information sharing between baggage and other systems. Systems could be linked which would improve quality of baggage handling through more up-to-date and complete data, and connection of baggage information with passenger information.

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Figure 8: Causes of Baggage delay World Wide

(Source: SITA baggage report, 2008)

5.3 Security

Security is an important issue in any facet of life today. As travelers continue to increase

British Airways would be faced with more and more issues concerning the security of their passengers. New technology could be introduced in terms of identity management which will revolutionize how passengers are screened and determined secure.

Web technologies on security which could be implemented in the future by British Airways on security are as follows:

az? An innovation that would bring about connecting British Airways and destination airports should also be introduced.

az? Wireless technology to connect British airways with customs and airports

az? Automated document identification system

az? Facial recognition technologies and data analysis systems to prescreen passengers.

6.0 CONCLUSION

The various Internet/web technologies being used by British Airways today have contributed immensely to their growth and success in the aviation industry today. These technologies they have deployed have gone a long way in bringing customers to them as well maintaining a good competitive advantage in the airline industry. Despite all the success and growth they have enjoyed thus far, they would need to improve in their services as well as upgrade to new technologies in the future, because technological advancement doesn’t stop now it continues, so for British Airways to continue to grow and still have this competitive advantage they would need to carry out research on likely improvements they would need to make for the satisfaction of their customers and the improvement of aviation in the world today so as to maintain their status as one of the world’s premier airline company.