Introduction
The aim of this paper is to outline the third part of a marketing plan for a travel planning/advice company—Travel Supreme. The paper will discuss the company’s product, place, price, and promotion.
Product
The company will specialize in leisure travel, which accounts for more than 80 percent of the $341 billion travel industry (Deloitte, 2017). Travel Supreme will provide its customers with trip planning recommendations and help them to create complex itineraries, thereby organizing both last-minute getaways and long-term trips. By hiring a global network of experts, the company will be able to offer its client base location-specific, first-hand advice on budgeting, accommodation, and itinerary development.
Other company’s services include, but are not limited, to safety advice, hotel reservation, coordination of travel plans, rental vehicle arrangement, insurance, and event planning (Archer & Syratt, 2012). Travel Supreme will focus on the following regions Southeast, East, and Central Asia, Europe, New Zeeland, Australia, and the US.
The agency’s brand will be associated with innovation; therefore, by utilizing an advanced algorithm and machine learning methods, the company’s travel experts will provide their customers with top-ranking landmarks and tourist trajectories. A routing recommendation system of Travel Supreme is based on the analysis of Web 2.0 data—Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) (Sun, Fan, Bakillah, & Zipf, 2013).
The algorithm will gather and analyze georeferenced photos on social media such as Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram, and calculate “the similarities between the geotagged image distributions of different users” (Sun et al., 2013, p. 1). In addition, the company’s system will allow us to better understand the individual traveling preferences of its customers. It is especially important for group recommendations when the travel preferences of all members of a group will have to be considered (Chen, Cheng, & Hsu, 2013).
The use of the algorithm will provide the company with a competitive edge over its main rivals—Zap Travel, Adioso, and TripAdvisor. In order to emphasize innovation, which will be a key part of the company’s brand, Travel Supreme’s logo will be shaped like a square. The company symbol’s shape is extremely important since “squares and rectangles represent order, mathematics, rationality, and formality” (Jiang, Gorn, Galli, Chattopadhyay, 2015, p. 13). The logo will feature the letters ‘T&S’ and will be designed by The Logo Company whose customers include Mega Travel and The Master’s House (TLC, n.d.).
Place
Instead of having a traditional team, the company will build and manage a virtual network of travel advisors with the first-hand experience of different locations. By doing so, Travel Supreme will obviate the need for renting an expensive office. To this end, all employees will be reimbursed for setting up home offices (Gera, 2013). Furthermore, the company will use GoToMeeting as a virtual meeting space, which is a platform that allows conducting conferences with as many as 150 attendees at the same time for $49 per month (Techpp, n.d.).
The team will also have access to virtual IT support, which will be provided by the CTRLIT company (CTRLIT, n.d.). By hiring a virtual team, Travel Supreme will be able to reduce its overhead costs, increase diversity, and hire the best employees, thereby gaining a competitive advantage over its rivals.
Price
Travel Supreme’s clients will be offered free 5 to 10 minutes’ consultations for discussing budget constraints and travel preferences. Furthermore, the preliminary consultations will help to assess the need for full-service options. A 30-minute session will be an optimal choice for first-time travelers and will cost $40. Customers who are interested in multiple destinations will need an in-depth consultation. It will last for one hour and cost $65. A two-hour session will be offered to travelers who are interested in a comprehensive itinerary planning and will cost $130.
The agency will adopt a market-based pricing strategy, which presupposes considerations such as the assessment of demand, price sensitivity, and extra features (Hinterhuber & Liozu, 2017). Furthermore, by adding optional extras such as train and ferry booking advice, visa application suggestions, and restaurant recommendations among others, Travel Supreme will be able to turn a higher profit.
Upon comparing the company’s prices to that of its main competitors, it is clear that the Travel Supreme’s pricing strategy provides it with a competitive advantage. Moreover, taking into consideration the fact that the agency will specialize in the provision of virtual services, its planning advice will cost less than that of independent travel planners (Food Fun Travel, 2017).
Promotion
In order to promote the company’s services, the Travel Supreme’s target audience will be engaged on social media such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram among others. The firm will also establish a strong online presence by hiring social media consults and content managers.
Travel Supreme will launch a direct mail campaign and generate offline attention through print advertising in travel magazines. A thoroughly planned offline campaign will allow the company to reach a broad pool of potential customers, thereby outperforming competitors.
Conclusion
The paper has discussed product, place, price, and promotion for a traveling advice company—Travel Supreme. It has been argued that by hiring a virtual team of specialists and employing both online and offline promotion strategies, the company will gain a competitive edge.
References
Archer, J., & Syratt, G. (2012). Manual of travel agency practice. London, England: Routledge.
Chen, Y., Cheng, A., & Hsu, W. (2013). Travel recommendation by mining people attributes and travel group types from community-contributed photos. IEEE Xplore, 15(6), 1283-1295.
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Deloitte. (2017). Travel and hospitality industry outlook. Web.
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Gera, S. (2013). Virtual teams versus face to face teams: A review of literature. IOSR Journal of Business and Management, 11(2), 1-4.
Hinterhuber, A., & Liozu, S. (2017). Innovation in pricing: Contemporary theories and best practices. London, England: Routledge.
Jiang, Y., Gorn, G., Galli, M., & Chattopadhyay, A. (2015). Does your company have the right logo? How and why circular-and angular-logo shapes influence brand attribute judgement. Journal of Consumer Research, 1(1), 1-17.
Sun, Y., Fan, H., Bakillah, M., & Zipf, A. (2013). Road-based travel recommendation using geo-tagged images. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 24(1), 1-11.
Techpp. (n.d.). How to set up a virtual office: Best tools you need. Web.
TLC. (n.d.). Portfolio. Web.