Tour operating is a discipline that every young travel specialist should know. All due to the fact that all the "stages of life" of the tour are registered here, such as analyzing the prices of tour packages on the market, making agreements with hotels, choosing suppliers and airlines, etc.
The concept of tour operating
Tour operating has received a significant role in tourism quite recently - it all started from the moment when general knowledge was no longer enough to sell tourism products. After that, it was decided to introduce a new science - tour operating.
Tour operating is the activity of organizations that provide the consumer with a complex of tourist services in the form of a specific final product - a tour. As a rule, this type of activity is carried out by tourist organizations that sell tours both independently and with the help of other organizations.
Views
There are 3 types of tour operating:
Outbound - involves the design of tours for residents of their country outside of it. Outbound tour operating requiresmaximum efforts and capital investments from tourism organizations. The complexity of organizing tours to another country lies in the possible difference in time, the presence of features of the work of foreign organizations (for example, the beginning of the working day), etc
- Entry - registration of tours to the territory of their country, intended for foreign citizens. Inbound tour operating is the most profitable activity. For this reason, the amount of foreign exchange earnings, infrastructure development, and the situation on the labor market depend on it.
- Domestic - providing tours designed to move tourists from one part of their country to another. Domestic tour operating, as well as inbound, plays a significant role in the development of the tourism industry. All due to the fact that most people prefer to travel within their own state.
Main stages of tour operating
As mentioned above, the main task of tour operating is to create a tour. Creating a tour, in turn, is a rather complex process, and therefore it is divided into the following stages:
- Planning. At this stage, the tour operator coordinates the possibilities of the organization with the needs of the client. After that, the search begins for a tour that would meet the requirements of the client, but at the same time would bring the maximum profit to the travel company.
- Design. Here the tour operator collects and prepares all the documentation for the found tour.
- Organization. At this stagethe company sells the tour to the client, after which it starts preparing services during the holiday (hotels, transfers, etc.).
- Stage control. At the final stage, the tour operator sums up: calculates the profit and decides what work needs to be done on the tour in the next season to improve results.
It is worth noting that the time of several stages may coincide. This happens especially often if the work goes with a wide range of tours.
Types of external factors
External factors of tour operating are primarily characterized by their unpredictability, but they have a great impact on tour operating and tourism in general. Depending on how they influence the tour operating (directly or indirectly), they are divided into macro- and micro-environment factors.
Micro-environment factors include tour operators, dealers, various agents, competitors, suppliers and consumers. Macro factors include various laws, economic stability of the state, religious and demographic factors, etc.
Factor Traits
It is worth noting that the following features are characteristic of tour operating factors:
- Interconnectedness (for example, a change of government may cause a crisis in the country, which will subsequently affect the demand for tourism products). For this reason, tourism organizations should anticipate changing external factors and try to prevent their negative impact on the tour trade as much as possible.
- Complexity of external factors. There are many factors influencing the development of tourism. It is not uncommon for a minor change in policy to lead to global changes in the market. For this reason, the tour operator must not only monitor external factors, but also select (and analyze) those that may affect his company.
- Dynamism of the external environment. The external environment is quite mobile and requires the manager to quickly respond to its change.
Features
Tour operating is an activity with a number of distinctive features:
- He is directly related to the development and compilation of tours and their implementation.
- Requires cooperation between the travel organization and the tour provider.
- A travel agency operator has no right to provide its travel services to individuals.
- The operator takes part in the creation of the tour, as well as in the implementation of all services included in his package.
Also, the features of tour operating include the presence of the stages of creating tours, which were described above.
Economic functions of tour operating
There are 5 economic functions of tour operating in total:
- Production. Represents the creation of the tour by the employees of the organization and the means of production.
- Employment of the population. Tour operating has both direct and indirect impact on increasing employment. Direct impact - the provision of jobs in travel companies, indirect - the provision of places inorganizations that influence the development of tourism (trade, catering, etc.).
- Income generation. Tourism plays an important role in the development of the country's economy.
- Smoothing. Often tourists go on vacation to undeveloped regions of the country with a primitive landscape. This, in turn, provides an opportunity for such regions to receive additional income, which helps to accelerate their development.
- The leveling of the balance of payments. Spending by local tourists abroad is pitted against spending by foreign tourists.
Interaction between tour operating and railways
Few people know that it was the advent of the railways that gave a huge impetus to the development of tourism.
Today, most of the created tours involve traveling by rail, because:
- Railway transport is great for short trips (up to 800 km), as it has a fairly high level of comfort (compared to road transport) and high speed passenger delivery (high-speed trains reach speeds of up to 300 km / h). In some cases, the speed of delivery of tourists to the place of rest by rail exceeds the speed of their delivery by planes.
- In most countries, railways are at a high level of development. Thanks to this, the passenger has the opportunity to get to almost any region of the country.
- Rail transport is considered much safercar or bus. In addition, there are far fewer people who are afraid of trains than people who cannot stand planes and flights.
- Traveling from one point to another by train will cost tourists much less than traveling the same route by plane or bus.
Only the noise of train wheels can be attributed to the disadvantages, however, it is available only in economy class locomotives.
