Management of SME in Tourism and Hospitality Business

UNIVERSITÀ DELLA SVIZZERA ITALIANA

“You Travel” Management of SME in Tourism and Hospitality

Business

Prof. Gianluca Colombo

Sara De Francesco

May 20010

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Table of contents

1. Introduction ..........................................................................................................................p. 2

2. Market analysis....................................................................................................................p. 3

3. The service entrepreneurial formula.............................................................................p. 5

3.1 The market segment ...................................................................................................p. 5

3.2 The service concept.......................................................................................................p. 5

3.3 The delivery system.......................................................................................................p. 7

3.3.1 Personnel idea............................................................................................ p. 7

3.3.2 Client management ....................................................................................p. 9

3.3.3 Technology, tools and setting .....................................................................p. 9

3.4 The image management .............................................................................................p. 10

4. Pricing ...................................................................................................................................p. 11

5. Promotion ...........................................................................................................................p. 12

6. Consolidation phase ..............................................................................................p. 13

7. Conclusions .........................................................................................................................p. 16

8. Bibliography .......................................................................................................................p. 17

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1. Introduction

“You Travel” is an Italian tour operator which provides packages to different kinds of disabled people: blind people, deaf persons and people in wheelchair. All packages differ one from another and are suitable to the specific disability of the client. The idea was born for two different reasons: first of all in all the world there are only few of this tour operators and second because there are a lot of disabled people and it seems that nobody cares about them, while they are very important. The market analysis in next chapter will better let readers understand this aspect which is the most important one.

This paper will describe in detail every aspect of this tour operator: how it works, the technologies involved, the distribution concept and the human resource management.

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2. Market analysis One person out of ten in the world has a disability. The United States assert that in all the

world there are 650 million persons with disabilities1, 80% of them lives in developed countries and in Europe 10‐ 15% of the population (which means at least 50 million people) is affected by disabilities. Their spending power is quite big: in the UK £80 billion pounds per annum are spending; in the US it was estimated around $200 billion and for travel in particular, American adults with disabilities spend $13.6 billion each year2. Another important aspect we have to take in consideration is that, according to some surveys, 48% of all people with disabilities would travel more frequently, if there were more accessible and suitable offers3. Moreover 37% of them have already renounced a travel because adequate offers were missing. In fact Scott Rains that is a World Traveller, Disabled Travel Advocate and Expert on Universal Design said that “When you are disabled, all tourism is adventure tourism”. We don’t have to forget that disabled people want the same kind of holiday and travel experiences as everyone else.

Now let us have a look at the Italian market. Istat data assert that in Italy there are around 2 million 824 thousand disabled people4. Four typologies of disabilities can be identified:

• individual restraining: restraining at bed, on wheelchair or at home;

• disabilities in functioning: difficulties in dressing, washing, and eating;

• disabilities in moving: difficulties in walking, doing the stairs, stooping, and sitting;

• sensorial disabilities: difficulties in hearing, watching or speaking. Around 33% of Italian disabled people have at least 2 different disabilities at the same time

between disabilities in functioning, moving and sensorial one. Focusing on the travel aspect we have to underline how difficult is in Italy, to travel and enjoy the free time for the target group we are taking into consideration. “Handi superabile” which is an Onlus association that takes care of disabled people’s rights, states that the superior problems in travelling are:

• difficulties in using public transportations, touristic services and structures;

• difficulties in understanding if the accommodation chosen is accessible or not;

• missing information about the accessibility by tour operators on the catalogues5. Moreover in Italy there are only few tour operators and associations that take care about the free time of disabled people. In the next page there is a list of few tour operators and travel agencies that provide services to disabled people. With the list we can found also the weaknesses and strengths of each firm.

1 http://www.dirittiglobali.it/articolo.php?id_news=16685 2 Elina Michopoulou “User requirements and technology acceptance of a tourism information system”; Enter 2010 3 Franz Pühretmair “Enabling and supportino accessible tourism is a chance and not an obligation”; Enter 2010 4 http://spazioinwind.libero.it/gianluca_affinito/web_barriere/disabili.htm 5http://www.handysuperabile.org/documenti/PRESENTAZIONE%20PROGETTO%20TURISMO%20SUPERABILE.pdf

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Table 1 Italian Tour Operators and Travel Agencies

FIRM STRENGHTS WEAKNESSES

7 MATES6 • Different kind of travels (mountain, seaside, culture..);

• Different kind of accommodation (b&b, residence, hotels..)

• No secondary services: no proposal of activities to do during the holiday, no possibility to have an assistance...;

• No accessible information: The websites are not accessible to every kind of disabled people (eg. blind people);

• Limited destinations;

• It’s difficult to find the website;

• No differentiation in the packages: the packages are the same for every kind of disabilities.

LP TOUR7

LA ROSA BLU8 The website is not available

It must be underlined that the weaknesses above are the less important one, in fact during

my research I asked myself “If I need two hours to find a useful website, how much time is needed by a blind person?”. In fact during the research a huge numbers of websites were listed, but at the end some of them do not exist, some are not available, some are fake and some have holidays’ proposal for 2009.

For all this reasons disabled people do not travel a lot. That is why this business idea rises. Starting from the market analysis done above, I will develop a project which will take into consideration all the problems and try to satisfy disabled people needs.

6 http://www.7mates.com/temi/vacanze-per-disabili.aspx 7 http://www.lptour.it/ 8 http://www.larosablu.com/index.html

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3. The service entrepreneurial formula 3.1 The market segment

“You Travel” is an Italian tour operator which offers holidays in Italy. It addresses disabled people who want to visit Italy, taking a particular care of three main groups:

• People on wheelchair;

• Blind people;

• People with hearing and speaking impediments.

3.2 The service concept “You Travel” service concept comes out from a complex system of interrelated

elements: Table 2 Elements which belong to the system

Now let us focus on the core service.

“You Travel” knows that every kind of disability is different and every client has a particular need. This is why this tour operator offers different types of activities. This activities are based on the philosophy that if a disabled person is not able to use at least one out of the five senses, the other senses have to be stimulated. The table below shows few examples of activities that can be done during the holidays.

CORE SERVICE Packages customized to satisfy all the specific needs of our clients.

PHYSICAL ELEMENTS • Accessible infrastructures

• Accessible website

• Accessible means of transportations

EMOTIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ELEMENT • We offer them the possibility to have an

assistant for all the holiday if they don’t have one

• We take care of them because we understand their specific needs

• Medical assistance

PERIPHERALS • New experiences

• New friendships

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Table 3 A few examples of activities proposed by “You Travel”

PEOPLE ON WHEELCHAIR

BLIND PEOPLE PEOPLE WITH HEARING

IMPEDIMENT

SENSES THAT HAVE TO BE STIMULATED

Touch Taste Hearing Sight Olfaction

TouchTaste Hearing Olfaction

TouchTaste Sight Olfaction

EXAMPLE OF ACTIVITIES PROPOSED BY “YOU TRAVEL”

• Excursions to farms and zoo safari where customers can touch animals

• Gastronomic experience in different kind of restaurants

• Wine tasting

• Concerts of different kind of music

• Theatre representations

• Excursions on the seaside

• Excursions in the city with an important cultural history

• Visit botanic gardens



• Wine tasting

• Concerts of different kind of music




• Wine tasting

• Theatre representations

• Excursions on the seaside

• Excursions in the city with an important cultural history


“You Travel” takes care of its clients during all the travel experience, which means not only before but also, and especially, during the consumption. In fact this is the most important phase.

In the next page there is “You Travel” service chain which underlines this concept and summarizes the main characteristic which have been discussed so far.

TOUCH

TASTE

HEARING

SIGHT

OLFAC.

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Figure 1 “You Travel” service chain

Travel planning and decision making

Sports

Medical assistance and care

Arrival/ departure

Services at the holiday location

Excursions

Arrival/ Familiarization

Accomodation

Moving around at the holiday location

Sightseeing/ cultural activities

3.3 The delivery system 3.3.1 Personnel idea

“You Travel” human resources play a primary role. Since our target group is a special group of persons our personnel is made for a large part by disabled people (long term employees) as well. The reasons for this choice are:

• they can better understand clients’ needs;

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• they are people that have difficulties in finding a job, we want to give them the chance to have a job since for us they are a resource and not a burden;

• they can help us in improving our activity because they know exactly which are the problems travelers can have;

• we do not want our clients to feel different or strange and unfortunately people without disabilities possibly can make them feel like this.

Furthermore we will have volunteers (temporary personnel). We have volunteers for the telephone switchboard, assistants who take people to the destination and stay with them for the duration of the holidays. This is because we need to cut costs, since disabled people in most cases do not have a job, like we already said, so they do not have a high budget for their trip. Fortunately there are a lot of people who wants to work as volunteers and there are some of them who have to do it because of the civilian duties and we have an agreement with the Italian state.

Of course both categories of employees, temporary and long term, are involved in our business improvement program. We care about their opinions and we want them to give us suggestions because as we said, in chapter 2, this is a business which does not exist, at least not in Italy. It is also useful to make our employees feel as an important part of the firm and not only simple employees with a time work to respect and tasks to perform. Our employees come to work not because they have to but because they want to.

We work more like a family than like a rigid firm, this point is very important because we do not work only for money, we have also an important social role. Moreover we will offer to the employee of the year a free of costs vacation, in a destination of his choice. The best employee in our business is the one who comes out with the best ideas and is the more involved one. We think that competition is a good thing. Figure 2 Our employees at the office and our volunteers

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3.3.2 Client management As we already said “You Travel” business is a special business. Our clients,

like our employees, can help us to improve our business. That is why we put a blog inside our webpage where our clients can give us their feedback and suggestion about their holidays and they can get in contact one with the other.

This idea is important as well from a commercial point of view. In fact in this way each one of our client can know the other clients of “You Travel” tour operator and maybe they can decide to do an holiday together.

3.3.3 Technology, tools and setting Technology plays a primary role in our tour operator. It is present almost

everywhere:

• In the website: we use tools which makes our webpage accessible for everyone. Our webpage when it was designed, took into consideration all the web accessibility standards like WCAG (Web content accessibility guidelines), ATAG (Authoring tool accessibility guidelines), UAAG (User agent accessibility Guidelines). This standards permitted us to make every kind of information on the WebPages available and understandable to everyone: texts, images, videos, scripts and so on. For example audio and videos have captioning so they can be understandable also from people with hearing disabilities. Every image has a textual description which is translatable by the software used by every blind person surfing the net. The layout is very simple and the instructions and all messages are clear. Using this standards we increased the reachable audience, we improved the search engine optimization, we increased the customer satisfaction and of course we demonstrate our capability.

• In the structures (hotels, b&b, residence) that are our partners

• In the software we use to sell our packages: we have an online catalogue which allows us and the travel agencies selling our product, to book holidays without making mistakes of overbooking.

“You Travel” use technology especially for the promotion, we will see how in chapter 5.

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3.4 The image management The image “You Travel” wants to transmit to people is the image of a firm which does

not work only for profit. Of course profits are important since without them the tour operator cannot go ahead, but the satisfaction of clients’ needs is on the first place. This idea should be clear through the way it acts, especially through:

• the way employees are managed;

• the main services offered to clients, packages are complete, nothing is missing;

• the secondary services offered like the blog on the official webpage, the assistance service during the holiday, the medical care at the destination.

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4. Pricing

The policy price of our tour operator is to keep the price at the lowest level as possible, for two main reasons:

• the income of disabled people are very low, most of the time they are unemployed and they take from the state a very low subsidy;

• from the market analysis we found out that in Italy there is a high number of disabled people but no one offers a service like we do, so we reach a high number of clients.

Of course the price of our packages depends on costs. We have high fixed costs like:

• the office rent;

• the employee’s salary;

• the salary of an external collaborator which takes care of our webpage, as we already said the webpage plays a primary role and we need it to be always updated.

We have also high variable costs because every service included in our packages has a price. So we leave some costs at a low level, for example:

• we have volunteers who assist our clients, in this way we do not have to pay other people;

• we have disabled employees who help us in understanding our clients’ needs and problems, so we cut the research costs;

• we sell packages by our self, so we do not have to pay travel agencies;

• we sell packages also through travel agencies but since we have a large number of clients we give to the agencies a low percentage;

• we do not spend a lot for marketing, we are going to discuss this point in the next chapter.

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5. Promotion

To promote our tour operator we use different strategies.

First of all we do the best to make our clients happy, so they will be the first one to promote “You Travel” through the word of mouth.

Then since we are the first tour operator in Italy which gives so many services to disabled travelers we promote our self by the collaboration with specialized associations like “Unione Italiana ciechi”, “Istituto Cavazza” and “Data Coop” which work in favor of disabled people, especially for their rights. This associations are on a daily in contact with disabled persons and they promote “You Travel” since we have a wonderful reputation and we can satisfy disabled people desires.

We also have our blog in the official web site. We already discuss this point but few things have to be underlined. Now a day’s people do not trust the official sites because they know that each firms promises the best possible service on its websites. Firms can say everything they want about themselves but at the end a lot of information they give are fake, they promise to give services/ products that they do not have. There are only positive statements. Blogs are different. They are unofficial pages where everyone can say everything he/she wants. There are positive comments as well as negative ones. This is why people trust more blogs and why they use always more this source of information. So the blog we create in our web pages can help us to promote our tour operator, in fact in this section users can find every kind of information, comments, travel experiences that our clients lived. Since we have a web site accessible to everyone we promote it on google doing SEO (search engine optimization). We are always in the first page of this search engine when for the keywords: Travel for disabled people, travel for everyone, excursions for disabled people, hotels for disabled people, holidays for disabled people, you travel tour operator.

Moreover as we already said we give a lot of importance to internet and the use of technologies, this is why we put backlinks in few websites. Of course for some backlinks we have to pay.

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6. Consolidation Phase

Until now we discuss how to develop a business idea. Everything referred to how to introduce, on the market, a model which can work in the right way. In the image below we can clearly see that after the introduction there is the consolidation phase. The main aspects of the consolidation phase are:

• the reproduction of units;

• the redefinition and development;

Figure 3 Service lifecycle

Considering the model of “You Travel” tour operator I will develop it reproducing it. In fact for a business like this is very important to “gain” foreign markets. Is for this reason that I will reproduce the same idea in other countries, starting from the one which are closest to Italy like Switzerland, Austria and France.

In order to better understand how to reproduce the model I will briefly summarize the core concept of this firm.

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Table 4 Summary of the main concept on which “You Travel” is based

KEY ELEMENTS THE CASE OF “YOU TRAVEL”Service offered Travel packages in Italy which include:

• accommodation,

• transportation,

• activities and sports at the destination,

• medical assistance,

• assistance.

Target Disabled people with a low income.

Personnel idea People working for the firm are involved in the business.

• volunteers,

• disabled persons,

• people specialized in tourism field.

Client management Clients are free to interact and give suggestions through the blog on the official website.

Technologies They play a key role.

Image It’s a tour operator which doesn’t work only for profit.

Price The price is low because we know that disabled people have not a high income. We cut the costs thanks to the personnel management and the promotion.

Promotion We can’t spend much money in the promotion because as we already said we need costs to be low. Our main means of promotion are:

• word of mouth,

• collaboration with specialized associations,

• blog,

• SEO,

• backlinks

As we can clearly see this is a complex model because there are a lot of aspects that have to be take into consideration. Reproducing a service like this is not simple, a lot of decision need to be taken.

It’s very important to decide which aspects of the entrepreneurial formula need to be maintained in the central control and which one have to be externalize. Moreover a structure need to be developed because reproducing the same formula in other countries means that the structure of the initial firm will be modified and all the business will be very complex.

The table below shows all the aspects we took into consideration in the previous table and clarify the role of the main firm and the role of the new agencies.

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Table 5 Role of the tour operators after the reproduction phase

KEY ELEMTS MAIN TOUR OPERATOR

(ITALY) NEW FIRMS

(FRANCE, SWITZERLAND, AUSTRIA)

SERVICE OFFERED Since the packages are travel in Italy there will be a department who assemble all the services. This service will be developed only by the Italian tour operator.

TARGET Italian disabled people. French, Swiss and Austrian disabled people. The new agencies are born to enlarge the number of client.

PERSONNEL IDEA They spread the idea The way human resources are managed is exactly the same as in the main t. o.

CLIENT MANAGEMENT

TECHNOLOGIES There is a department who works for improving the technologies and give the information to the other branch.

There will be an official webpage developed exactly in the same way as in the main t. o. Each decision is taken from the main t. o.

IMAGE The image must be the same it is very important the message to be clear and the same for all the countries.

PRICE The price is fixed by the department which assemble the packages according to the policy adopted by the t. o.

For legal and ethical reason the price is exactly the same.

PROMOTION The same means of promotion but applied in each country (for example there will be collaboration with the Swiss associations)

Need to appoint a TOP MANAGER for the control

and coordination between the main t. o. and the other branch

Need to appoint a DIRECTOR who control all

the activities and communicate with the

main firm.

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7. Conclusion

The main idea of this business plan is to show a possible economic activity. It could become a new idea to offer holidays to disabled people, since they have the same rights as we do and travelling, according to the last laws, is part of human rights. In fact the Ministry of Tourism with the collaboration of Confturismo decided at the beginning of 2010 to give travelling bonus to families with a low income. So this concept confirms that travelling is a wonderful and important experience that everyone should be able to have. Families in Italy will be helped by the State from the economic point of view. What about disabled people? Who will help them? Maybe this business plan can be useful to help people with disabilities to travel.

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8. Bibliography

www.dirittiglobali.it

www.libero.it

www.handysuperabile.org

www.7mates.com

www.lptour.it

www.larosablu.com

Elina Michopoulou “User requirements and technology acceptance of a tourism information system”; Enter 2010

Franz Pühretmair “Enabling and supportino accessible tourism is a chance and not an obligation”; Enter 2010

Management of SME in Tourism and Hospitality Business

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