Intermediation portfolio

Portfolio MAY 2012 Blanca Riquelme Martinez

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Blanca Riquelme Martinez Blanca Riquelme Martinez

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Portfolio MAY 2012


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INDEX

Introduction…………………………………………………3

Part 1

Calendar sessions……………………………………..4

Tourism intermediation……………………………5

Tourism management groups…………………..6

Turisme solidari………………………………………..9

Tourist business groups……………………………9

Independent agencies…………………………….12

Communication………………………………………13

Disintermediation…………………………………..13

Part 2

My progress……………………………………………14

Appendix……………………………………………………16


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Introduction

At the beginning of this subject I was expecting to enhance my knowledge since I’m doing hotel management, so my knowledge on tourism intermediation was very low.

I really didn’t know what the subject was about, I thought it was about travel agencies but nothing much.

In this portfolio I will do an overview of all the topics we have seen in the subject as well as my thoughts and opinions about it.

I enrolled this subject to study in depth all the contents, because I had never


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Part 1-‐ Summary of contents

Calendar sessions

31st January – Presentation and basic vocabulary to understand the subject.

07th February – Conceptual map of intermediation.

14th February – Starting to work on Tourism Management Groups

21st February – Tourism management groups presentations

28th February – Analysis of brochures.

06th March – Presentation of Turisme Solidari by Edurne.

13th March – Escola trobada empresa

20th March – Tourist business groups.

27th March – Tourist business groups.

10th April – Tourist business groups presentations.

17th April – Independent agencies.

24th April – Intermediation vs. disintermediation.

08th May – Review.

15th May – Final class. Reading of some news.


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Tourism intermediation

The first class we did an introduction to the subject seeing some words related to intermediation we had to define. That was really helpful to begin understanding what intermediation is and what is involved.

The vocabulary we saw was (words defined in appendix): ACAV, BSP, AEDAVE, Basic commission, commission cero, Regular company, CRM, Disintermediation, retailer, fee service, frequent flyer program, GDS, Home-‐based agent, IATA, intermediary, inplant, wholesaler, wholesaler-‐retailer, source market, responsive bid, OMT, Overbooking, touristic package, rappel, UCAVE, Yield management.

Tourism intermediation is all the business activity that link the commercially in the mediation and organization in the sale of tourist services. In other words, it’s the mediation of the sale and touristic services organization

Nowadays the role of the intermediary is a difficult role to play in the industry. People are more informed and aware of destinations, transportations, prices, accommodation, etc and Internet is helping so.

The percentage of people buying trips via Internet has been growing so fast in the last years. That means, people going to travel agencies to book their trips are decreasing.

On the other hand, intermediation has so many advantages we have seen in class. The customer has a personal dealer in case of having a problem

To see all the agents involved in the process of intermediation, we created a conceptual map in class.


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Tourism management groups

Tourism Management Group is a coalition of tourism officers and managers that

oversee the development and implementation of tourism projects in destination

development, management, marketing and advocacy. Provides more effective,

efficient destination management both within and across boundaries and economies

of scale for tourism projects in regional, national and international markets.

Provider (hotel, transportation, others)

Online Wholesaler Retailer

Mix

Costumer

Disintermediation


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-‐ Main tourism management groups:

Organization that meet the needs of integration of small and medium sized travel agencies, channeling their concerns and expectations, in a strategic business plan to appropriate agents to clients in all segments of travel. They do individual management of each of the member agencies, optimizing the conditions of purchase and selection of suppliers, enabling members to strengthen their own markets and complete on a more solid and guarantee the quality to the traveler.

The Group of Tourist Businessmen OVER, was created fruit of the union of several professionals, proceeding from the first projects of the associations of the Catalan sector of travel agencies.

It’s objective was to contribute on security to the independent travel agencies and optimize the maximum profitability of it’s management.

Over has dedicated big economic resources to create a system that allowed to cover all the possibilities of

action of his associate agencies as it own system of management and the constitution of it’s own wholesaler to develop personalized products exclusively sold in his associate agencies, in complement to the classic products of the market.

Is a corporation, created by independent travel agencies with the aim of joining forces to provide highly personalised services to customers.

Its goal is to provide management and advanced technological means to travel agencies to capitalize on its management to the benefit thereof, and the negotiation and commercial representation of their behalf.

It is a management group that negotiates with various travel suppliers directly representing its entire branch network. They have the philosophy of an independent company, which wants to create and associate the major number of travel agencies. They have many commercial, administrative, economic and professional advantages.


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Team Group constitutes a new concept of group of management, an idea that tries to move away from the current conception of the groups of travel agencies, the verification from which it is possible to be independent indeed and to take part of a group with similar, identical problematic ideas and a common project.

It is the link of union between his suppliers and the agencies of the group, to unite efforts between all of them.

The Grupo Cybas, was created in 2000, with the aim to create a new concept of management group of travel agencies and with the intention of offering at all time a careful attention personalized to his associate agencies and parallel offer the best economic conditions with different wholesalers and suppliers, and also offer the best tools and technological developments to all his partners.

Grupo Europa is a great network of distribution as way of competing with the big vertical networks and with the innovative virtual ones. Representing the members, defending their interests; negotiating with suppliers; developing tools to support the management; improving the level of service to the customers, etc.

It is a commercial network of travel agencies, with a common aim in his commercial projection, coordinated and managed from the head office. All its actions are directed to facilitate all the necessary services to optimize the functioning of its agencies members.


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Turisme Solidari

I loved the presentation made by Edurne about Turisme Solidari. I really like this topic.

She explained her final project and her current work focused in Africa. She explained so well and not so many people have clear all the things involved. Unfortunately, population is not aware and do whatever they like and want just to enjoy their trip in some country, whatever its consequences will be.

The presentation was about how travel agencies are involved to this concept of tourism, how they work to achieve it, the destinations she was working on, what kind of travellers usually do this trips, etc. Travellers have to learn to be responsible, respect the environment and population of where they are going, learn about other cultures and help to save the ecosystems. We could see what really is turisme solidari and how easy is to do one’s bite.

Tourist business groups

It is one of the Spain's leading tourist companies and one of the most important worldwide. Its hotel and travel divisions operate more than 160 hotels in 16 countries and 365 travel agencies in 22 countries. Barceló Grupo focuses its activities on the development of different tourism businesses, which are vertically integrated in one business structure. In its hotel division they own Barceló hotels, and in its travel division they own Barceló viajes, Barceló Amex, Plan B! or La Cuarta Isla.

Globalia is the first Spanish tour group. It consists of a set of independent

companies that compete, fortunately successful in their respective sectors. Each has its own history. The group started in 1971 with Halcón Viajes. Now they have different segments as receptive, hotels or air transport.

Grupo Iberostar is a collection of companies dedicated to the tourism industry based in Palma de Mallorca. Currently, this group consists of, among others, Ibersotar Hotels & Resorts (hotel division), Iberoservice Incoming Services (division receptive) and Iberostate (property division).


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Nautalia Travel is a company dedicated to the marketing of tourism products and services: travel, vacation, hotel reservations, cruises, car rentals, airline tickets and everything that a customer may need for their travel. They are very focused in cruises, so they work with Royal Caribbean Cruises and Pullmantur. They are differentiator compared to other tourism enterprises with the integration of trade policy between the traditional sales and website.

Orizonia is one of the major European tourist groups. The company is present in all the processes of the offer of trips, leisure and vacations across seven lines of business: wholesaler, retailer, air, receptive, hotel, online and present boxes. Seven tour operators are assigned to the group: Iberojet, Solplan, There lives Tours, Condor, Kirunna and Orizonia Life, which allow the group to show a wide leadership in the wholesale national sector, and Iberojet Internacional, which operates on the Latin-‐American market, the airline Orbest, the hotel chain Luabay, the travel agencies for Internet Rumbo.es and Viajar.com -‐ in a joint and the boxes I give Kaleidoscope.

Grup Serhs is a cooperative. It owns travel agencies, hotels, catering,… It’s the first tourist group in Catalunya, with different segments, and each segment has its own direction, which part in the general office.

The Group Transhotel is formed for six brands related by the tourist industry. About 900 professionals of all the areas work to offer more than 60.000 hotels and more than 78.800 travel agencies collaborators of the whole world. The Group has as basic aim offer a new


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dimension of the concept service, and to be kept always to the technological forefront offering at all time the best solutions for the professionals of the tourism.

It works as a Tour Operator with Soltour. Their segments are senior, familiar, business, sun and beach. They own has hotels, transport, residences, rent a car… is a very competent group. They want to give a nice image of RSE having presence in Latin America and Europe.

It is currently the largest group in tourism industry worldwide and is present in all European Union. TUI owns travel agencies, incoming agencies, hotels, airlines, cruise ships and tour operators. It is also a major. TUI is organised into three business units: tour operator, MICE and sales target.


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Independent agencies

Retailer travel agencies working by their own, meaning that doesn’t belong to a tourist business group. Usually they are part in a tourism management group to be stronger within the market.

Independent travel agency selling trips with certain routes to Europe, Africa, America and Asia.

Specialised in alternative and adventurous travels around the world.

Specialised in trips to Morocco. They own hotels in Morocco, a transport company and travel agencies in Spain.

Specialised in adventurous trips around the world mainly in Africa with truck routes.

Tailor made travel sellers to a lot of destinations around the world.

Specialised in selling trips worldwide mainly in Asia and India.

Specialised in trips in cold destinations in northern earth and Antarctica.

Specialised in routes through different destinations. Also offer thematic routes.


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Communication

Communication in tourist intermediation is really important. Communication is about information transmission. Companies have to be good communicated and it has to be a good communication between them. If there’s no communication the intermediation process will broke or go wrong. Speaker, receptor, channel, code, message, situation, interface and feedback are the elements that take part in the process of communication. The communication also is an important aspect regarding to customers. Customer has the right of know everything involved in his travel and in a clear way.

CSR stands for corporate social responsibility. It is the responsibility of the management and the business-‐travel and its impact on the environment and the society, both at home and in the countries visited by our travelers. In our country and in countries visited by our travelers, thinking about today and tomorrow.

Disintermediation

Disintermediation is the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain. Instead of going through traditional distribution channels with intermediaries, companies now are dealing with the customer directly.

In the tourism industry, the disintermediation is a result of the use of new technologies, mainly Internet. For instance, hotels are selling their rooms directly to guests thanks to Internet, instead of through travel agencies. Also disintermediation happens a lot nowadays in the air transportation. Travellers are booking their flights directly to the airlines, searching them on Internet and finding the best price whenever they like.

This disintermediation benefits a lot of companies because they save some fees for service in case it was with intermediaries. To avoid the intermediaries companies offer extra services, upgrades, loyalty cards, discounts and promotions, facilities, direct communication between customer and enterprise,…

For all this, and adding the economic crisis, a lot of travel agencies in Spain had to close or lay off many employees. Some companies are changing their way of working or reinventing themselves.

As we have seen in class, companies such as the new Vibo (before Viajes Iberia) are changing the idea of travel agent.

From my point of view, people are more and more informed or at least have the tools to do so, without the need of a travel agent. Disintermediation has increased so fast, and Internet and new technologies such as smartphones are helping to stay that way. I think that intermediaries have to reinvent their role in order to keep them in the industry, and give the message to customer of all the advantages intermediation have.


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Part 2-‐ My progress

I am Blanca and I am currently doing my 4th and last year in Tourism Management at CETT. I decided to study tourism first of all for my loving to travel; also it is a great and wide industry to work where you can meet so many people from different cultures and languages.

At the beginning of the degree I was not so motivated since the subjects are more “general”, like economics, law, accounting,… So it seemed we were not studying Tourism and my marks were not so good. But later, subjects tend to be more specialised in tourism and hotel management and I get more motivated and my marks also increased.

Luckily, I had the opportunity to travel to more than 15 countries, experience so many things, manners, ways of living, languages, etc. One of the best experiences has been doing Erasmus for 6 months in The Netherlands. With that long time you can get to live like them.

I also appeal cooperation, solidarity and sustainability. I believe in a better world and I want to contribute doing what I like. Thanks to this subject I have seen different ways on how to cooperate with other countries doing tourism. Now I have curiosity and desire to inquire more in the hotel industry.

My experience in the industry has been not so long, I just did internship in two hotels. The first one in Alimara hotel as the mandatory, in the housekeeping department. In that internship I could see how a hotel works from inside for first time. My second internship was in the reception of a hotel in Ibiza. There I could meet a lot of people and know how a big hotel with over 400 rooms work. Those internships made me more confident in the hotel industry and I had learned a lot.

My near future is going to London for a whole year internship with the worldwide hotel chain known, Hilton. I am very motivated since is my first long term job in the industry, also is another country which I love and a great opportunity to grow as a person and as a worker.

In a distant future, I don’t have anything clear, I don’t have any goal in my mind. I want to work in different countries, and try to research and work on real sustainable hotels.

I chose this subject because I felt I had not so much knowledge about travel agencies and intermediation, so I wanted to go in depth, and try to know a little bit of everything related to tourism industry. It really helped me in growing that knowledge, thoughts and how that big industry works.

At the end of this course I can say I have learned a lot. At the beginning I barely could define the list of words on the first class, but in the last class, we defined them again and the result was so much greater.

All classes have been very useful. In each class I learned something new I didn’t know before. Also the way we did the classes and the dynamic of it had been motivational, understandable and as I said useful. I liked to work with real


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companies, to see what they do, what’s their role in the intermediation, their position in the Spanish market, etc.


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APPENDIX

Triping

Triping was invited to the Escola Trobada Empresa the 13th of March.

Triping is an online meeting place directly between customers and Spanish specialised and independent travel agencies, where there are no intermediaries. Is a unique market place that goes where the big websites and tour operators are not enough.

Through their website it is possible to check travels of more than 50 travel agencies. Triping offer personalized results according to various criteria.

Travel agencies belonging to Triping are specialised in a type of product. Those travel agencies must meet certain requirements, representing a guarantee of quality for travelers.

Some of the travel agencies belonging to Triping, are the ones we have seen in class, such as Terres llunyanes, Èxode or Rutas 10.

It is a helpful company, because collect different independent travel agencies which separately are not that known to buy their services. So that way, if the customer know what destiny want to go, just have to click and Triping will tell which travel agencies operate that area.

Documents

Intermediation portfolio