Assignment Background:
INDITRAVELS LTD
Inditravels is a specialist holiday company arranging itineraries for, and selling travel
tickets to the “prudent, broke and independent traveller”. Most of the customers are
students who have just graduated and are wishing to spend a gap year to travel and
have fun and relaxation in India, before they start work, in the “dog eats dog “
competitive environment.
The business was set up in 2012 by Mr Amar Akbar Anthony. An Indian national,
who had moved to London UK, when his wife was wife was seconded to the Indian
High Commission in the capacity of IT cultural attaché. Using his hard earned
savings Amar, who had some experience in the travel industry in his native Punjab,
opened a small bucket travel shop near the High commission, in Aldwych. Initially the
agency sold only heavily discounted and charted flights tickets to 3 major
destinations in India –Mumbai, Delhi and Goa.
The agency was staffed by Amar and one or two part time staff who were often
recruited by word of mouth from the local Asian community. The business developed
quickly and diversified, selling travel and accommodation to especially law students,
who sought law internship with major Indian Law firms, as Indian law is based on
British law. The open skies policy, international airports in practically every major city
and addition of 7 Indian domestic airlines taking up intercontinental routes, really
opened up market.
With this competitive, albeit bright future, Amar was able to invest in the business
and opened new travel shops in Birmingham and Manchester. Amar’s next stroke of
genius was to tap in the lucrative market for sole agencies for the new airlines and
hotels and the massive growth in the infrastructure of the Indian Tourist Industry, to
include Health tourism. Amar opened a further 9 branches, each employing a
manager (India expert) and around 10 travel clerks Locations included Scotland,
Wales and Northern Ireland.
In the early 2000’s,the major high street chains like Thomson Holidays and Asia
Worldwide travels, and Trailfinders were experiencing severe problems, with their
huge fixed costs and a very competitive market including the emergence of so called
virtual “click companies”
IT expertise was very close to home for Amar (his wife!) yet Amar decided to
maintain the so called “Brick company”presence on the high streets, with a small IT
back office operation. He was confident that if he continued to guarantee a high
quality of personal service and specialist tailored advice, he would not only maintain
his market share but actually increase and dominate the “niche market”.
Although there was no formal Marketing Planning, Amar with his entrepreneurial flair
and gut feeling realised that the expansion and success of Inditravels depended onemploying high quality staff. In particular, he needed staff with a commitment to
customer service in all aspects together ,with a detailed knowledge of the specialist
service being provided, and an understanding of the pitfalls and challenges of
independent travel operators (ideally gained through personal experience).Moreover
staff needed to be intelligent enough to work out the best available deals from the
myriad of Indian tourism information, legal formalities including visa and alcohol
permits/restriction and social norms in terms of acceptable behaviour , dress code,
and above all, to be able to be informative and serve as well as sell.
The days of little or none proactive Marketing planning, new products/services being
offered on purely subjective, unscientific and gut feeling were coming to an end.
Inditravels had strategic medium term objectives to expand in the neighbouring
expanded EEC market. Inditravels now tended to draw on experienced travel clerks
from a range of smaller competitors and occasionally bright HND Hotel and Tourism
qualified students would be taken on as trainees.
Given that he wished to develop his marketing strategy around personal face-to face
service Amar wanted to explore further expansion through an increased expenditure
on marketing. As a result, he called in a firm of marketing consultants to examine his
marketing practises and procedures and sought to implement the appropriate
recommendations.
Inditravels Mission statement is,”To be the best value, quality and service provider
of comprehensive flight and holiday services” .Mr Anthony and his loyal and
conscientious staff at Inditravels are very excited and saw this as golden opportunity
to expand.
To this effect, a new post has been created – Marketing Manager. YOU are the new
Marketing manager.
In your capacity as a newly appointed Marketing manager of Inditravels advise the
company on:
Task:
You are required to,
Q1 a) Critically evaluate characteristics of service oriented marketing in comparison
to product orientated one. (20 Marks)
b) Analysis the internal and external environment and assess its impact on
Inditravels (20 Marks)
Q2 a) Evaluate and role and importance of Strategic Marketing planning for
Inditravels
(20 Marks)
b) Analyse Inditravels current customers profile and advice on segmentation,
Targeting and positioning strategies for Inditravels.(20 Marks)
Q3 a) Create an appropriate marketing mix based on the STP for Inditravels,
(20 Marks)
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