Consultancy Services To Intrepid Travel: Creating Interest For TGR Of Australia

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Executive Summary

This report has been framed in order to provide consultancy services to Intrepid Travel’ management section to plan and chalk strategies to create interest for TGR of Australia to visit TDR of China. The report has been constructed in order to provide consultancy services to the management of the tour operating company in China, Intrepid Travel. The primary aim of the report is to help this tour operating company to develop an International Tourism Project so that it can a greater revenue. Recommendation have been made to improve the business process and develop certain sections of budget options. Research process has been initiated to illustrate the findings section of the report with data and factual statistics about the specific TDR regions selected.

Introduction

The report stresses on the importance of establishing a new Tourism Destination Region (TDR) for a specific target market. The target market in this case is the Tourism Generating Region (TGR) from where a tourist section will be selected in order to engage them in visiting this newly identified tourist destination. The TDR region selected is in China and it will be encompassing some of the specific regions of China that is relatively new for the tourist groups and left for them to explore the area. 

The destinations selected were new to the Australian tourists to create interest in them and keep them engaged in knowing them. The International Industry Sector of China that has been selected is the operational efficiency of a tour operator company functional in China and is aimed at gauging the international tourism related potential. A new product destination market has been proposed that Intrepid Travel can implement in their operational activities to gain more popularity as a tour operating company. 

FindingsInternational Tourism Related Potential

Intrepid Travel is counted among the world’s largest small group adventure travel company offering at present more than 1,500 itineraries covering approximately over 120 nations. Thus, it has a wide potential in growing the tourism sector over the countries it operates. It has a International Tourism business covering various regions such as Latin America, Australasia, The Middle East, Africa, Antarctica, Asia, North America and Europe (Intrepidtravel.com, 2018). It has an annual revenue collection estimates accounting to $300 million with over 1,000 employees in present time. The products that it mainly caters to its tourists or genres in which its expertise in conducting the operational tour is adventure related tours. Intrepid Travel was founded in 1989 with its headquarters in Melbourne, Australia (Intrepidtravel.com, 2018). It has a customer loyalty and tourist base surpassing 29 years and thus has entered the maturity and post-maturity phase. In the present scenario, in order to keep the same amount of interest about it in the global tourism industry, it requires to invest in new projects. The sole purpose of this report is to Intrepid Travel exploit its full potential to engage tourists of Australia in some of the new TDR regions of China and also to add some more product genres in its services of tour operational activities (Intrepidtravel.com, 2018). 

On critical analysis of the position and potential of Intrepid Travel in International tourism arena it can be identified that there are six reasons that makes it worth travelling with and increases it brand value and they are
Real-Life Experiences: It strives to provide real-life experiences to its tourists that cannot be Googled or found in a search engine. It helps in knowing and exploring a place on its own terms such as exploring unknown places of a region such as hidden galleries, noddle bars and backstreet bodegas associated with a place (Intrepidtravel.com, 2018). 

Connected by Travel: It focuses on a small-group of travel and this enhances the travel experience since stories were shared and it remains as experiences with tourists. It heightens the potential of Intrepid Travel as tour operating company in the International backyard. The stories of the places visited can be heard and travellers gets a feeling of exploration (Intrepidtravel.com, 2018). 

Travel Plan Balance: The travel plan balance helps in providing tourists to spend time in groups and also to have time for himself while travelling. The average group members consist of no more than 10 and thus a lot of places can also be visited (Intrepidtravel.com, 2018).
Responsibility: The market potential of Intrepid Travel is further increased on International grounds since it promotes sustainable travelling. It promotes self-awareness among the travelling group to take care and responsibility of protecting the environment of the places visited. 

Focus on Adventure: It focuses on enhancing the experience of its travelling group through providing opportunities of doing or engaging in adventure spots at TDR. It believes that entertainment and adventure is for all age and is open to anyone coming forward to experience it. 

Able Leaders: Intrepid Travel has some able leaders in their business organizations organizing the whole tour operation and helps in executing the plan in safe, secure and pleasing manner for the tourists. Such able leadership within the organizational culture has also played a major role in enhancing their net potential world-wide. 

Thus, it can be interpreted from the findings that Intrepid possess great potential as it covers every aspect of being a responsible tour operating company in the modern-day context. It takes care of the well-being of the tourist section and understands their demands. It also stands up for protecting the environment of the place they travel to improve sustainability of the TDRs (Intrepidtravel.com, 2018). It has engaged in conducting responsible business and it has helped it in gaining brand loyalty. It has invested in improving the lifestyle of local community people, conserve wildlife and environment and worked greatly to restore human rights. It has focused on developing a business devoid of carbon emissions since 2010 and at present has 27 carbon-neutral offices and also engage in conducting almost 1400 carbon-offset trips. It also has a non-profit wing under the name, The Intrepid Foundation that invests in developing grassroots projects (Intrepidtravel.com, 2018). 

It has also helped tourist groups to find peace and connection with the place they visit and the group they travel. They have not been made feel to be lost in crowd as the group number of tourists never exceeds 10. It engages in conducting hassle free adventures and through years of research have prepared the itineraries to give real-life experiences to the touring group. Intrepid Travel’s x-factor has been its schedule for the touring group that creates the right balance between the holiday and touring itinerary. There are rooms for experiencing urban adventure (Intrepidtravel.com, 2018). It also provides three unique travelling plans in accordance to the suitability of touring party to develop an unbeatable travelling experience and personal values. 

The new regions of TDR China that has been selected for promotion comprises of regions where adventure can be done along with real-life experiences both for solo and group travellers. The report proposes activities and business plans tat can be included into the operational routine of Intrepid that can be improved and also proposes a new product activity that can be suggested in order to bring in newness to its itineraries. The region involves a combine package of tour operation for Terracotta Army, Hanging Monastery Lonhji Terraces, Mogao Caves and Great Wall of China (Touropia.com, 2018). These places have their unique features and tells history of China in a nutshell. 

The Great Wall of China must be there in the itineraries of the tour operational companies due to its unique engineering feat and being labelled as the longest outdoor museum in the world. It has a great potential in the International Tourism market of the select TDR China. It represents the tourism destination of China to the entire world and is a synonym of rich wat strategy implemented during 5^th century BC (Touropia.com, 2018). Intrepid Travel will like to access the part of the Wall covering the Beijing region since it is open for tourist visits and beautifully snakes over the mountain peaks. The Terracotta Army is regarded as one of the most famous archaeological findings of the world. It comprises of army of terracotta warriors located in three vaults. The unique features of this place are that no two faces were alike proves the amount of labour and skills put in making 8,000 lifelike terracotta warriors with 130 chariots. It also has a great potential of attracting tourists from Australia and all over the world (Touropia.com, 2018).  

The third TDR that will be covered in the itinerary having great potential of tourist attraction are the Hanging Monastery that is situated up a cliff at a height of 75 meters. It is one of the remarkable visiting places of China. The architecture comprises of 40 rooms linked together in the mid-air with corridors and walkways and seems to be glued. It carries with it the rich culture and heritage of monasteries, a traditional representative of China’s TDRs (Touropia.com, 2018). 

Longji or Dragon’s Backbone rice terrace is one of the rich historical presentation of China built around 500 years ago in times of Ming Dynasty. The terrace filed were located in Longsheng which is about two hours journey from Guilin (Touropia.com, 2018). It will be perfect for the touring plan of Intrepid Travel since visitors were allowed to meander through villages and welcomed by its pigs, chickens, horses and working local groups. Mogao Caves will give a new dimension to the tourism visiting China for its contribution to the world on spiritual grounds. It is situated on the famous Silk Road that itself has a rich history associated with it (Touropia.com, 2018). The cave is situated exactly at Dunhuang region and is representative of early Buddhist cave art. Earlier there were 1,000 cave temples and carbon dating of paintings shows it to be of 4^th century. It has a rich collection of mural cave wall paintings (Touropia.com, 2018). 

Improvement Criteria

This section focuses on chalking out strategies that can prove to be beneficial for the tour operator company, Intrepid Travel to indulge in International Tourism Project in TDR of China. This will be aimed at providing benefits to the touring group of Australia. Improvement can be done by focusing on increasing the operational strategies of the tour operational program of Intrepid Travel while visiting places such as Mogao Caves, Hanging Monastery, Longji, Great Wall of China and the Terracotta Army. This improvement can be done in both ways by engaging tourists in the touring activities in a participation form and also through providing economic benefits to the tourists. This will give Intrepid Travel more tourists and revenue generation can be improved. 

For example, Intrepid Travel can offer discounts to Australian tourists on their willingness to visits these new places of China that has not ben open too much to them for knowing. This implies that they are unexplored territories by Australian tourists (Intrepidtravel.com, 2018). The Intrepid Travel can improve its itinerary and schedule so that tourist get attracted in visiting these places. It has to be done strategically so that the touring party were not bored and keep intrigued for visiting these places. For a travel and tour operating company, it is essential that it decides the tour package, places to visit the sequence of it in such a manner that it keeps the spark alive among tourists to visit the place. This can be done by involving Great Wall of China along as a site visit option along with all the latest unexplored places of China TDR. This will keep the interest alive among them as Great Wall of China is a special land mark of this TDR. However, before it all other touring places such as Terracotta Army, Longji, Mogao Caves, Hanging Monastery has to be in the itinerary so that tourist’s gest involved and take interest in knowing the rich cultural heritage of the places (Touropia.com, 2018). 

In addition to this, in order to attract tourists to visit these unknown territories which were never heard or visited by Australian TGR, Intrepid Travel requires to create interest and give financial benefits in the first few travel trips. It will help in spreading word of mouth by the Australian tourists about the beauty of the place and the rich heritage that it carries with them. This can be achieved with the help of providing a certain percentage of discount on travel trips to the most hyped TDR of China, Great Wall of China. 

It will create interest and engage tourists to book travel trips with Intrepid Travel. Intrepid Travel has to do market research and then keep a price of the tour such that it gains competitive advantage. It has to give discounts in first few trips and then might decrease the discount percentage slowly so that the profit percentage can be increased. In addition to this, Intrepid Travel can also make its touring group feel easy and comfort by providing guides that speak in the Australian language so that it will be convenient to them to understand the tradition, culture, heritage and architectural brilliance of the place. 

Added Product Activity

The latest destination spot that can be added to the package of tour operation program of visiting Great Wall of China involves Hanging Monastery, Longji, Mogo Cave, Terracotta Army. It might also extend the days of the package and make the touring company cover a few more famous regions of China of rich cultural heritage and places that carries history and tradition of the nation. It involves places such as Xi’an City Walls that stretches around cities of Xi’an. It was built to protect the city against invaders like the Great Wall of China. It is 12 meters tall and 15 meters wide at the bottom region. It is considered as on of the well-preserved sites of national heritage of China. 

The additional activity that can also be included in the touring program involves that of introducing the concept of filming a documentary on the places that were visited. Since, Intrepid Travel schedules program for not more than 10 people on each trips it will be convenient for them to have this program of documenting the culture of the place from close quarters. The tour operational companies provide the opportunity of taking a solo-walk through the places they were visited and enjoy real life experiences of the place. 

This documenting of the place visited is a new concept that have been proposed and can be implemented in the plans of Intrepid Travel to engage the touring party and take interest in the unexplored areas and TDR that are not much talked off. Further, more interests among the touring group can be generated through the introduction of this documentation as a form of competition with an award in the form of monetary benefits. It can be such as that the tourist group or an individual which will come first in capturing the beauty of the place visited will get a free coupon on going for a dinner at on of the lucrative restaurants of the place. It can also be like that person will gain a certain amount of discount on the whole trip. 

Other latest attractive TDR of China that can be added to the itineraries of Intrepid Travel involves Three Pagodas that is located in the Southern China region. It conveys the message of the way the Buddhist structures of China is constructed. It is one of the man-made wonders of China since it has endured several catastrophes both artificial and natural. Since, Intrepid Travel actively involved in making or conducting tour operations based on the theme or sector of adventures, a new separate travel trip for China TDR can be planned that will involve places where trekking and Wildlife beauty can be experienced. This will involve Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, Shilin Stone Forest, Wudang Mountains, Mount Tai, Tiger Leaping Gorge, Mount Huang. These tour package will give elusive opportunities for the tourists to experience the natural beauty of China TDR. 

Research Analysis

Research Analysis has been done to support the data finding section of the report where certain 50 tourists of Australia were interviewed with the help of two survey question. 

Question 1: To which extent are you interested in visiting unexplored areas of China TDR? 

Figure 1: Analysis

(Source: Created by Author)

Analysis

This shows that a very high percentage of tourists almost accounting to 40% were interested in visiting unexplored areas of China TDR. It will beneficial for Intrepid Travel to take advantage of this interest and make the International Tour Project for Australian TGR. 

Question 2: To which extent are the activities involved and the travelling schemes available at Intrepid Travel satisfactory? 

Figure 2: Analysis

(Source: Created by Author)

Analysis

This shows that 36% of the tourists surveyed were interested in taking tour trips with Intrepid Travel and for the 16% who were unhappy with the services, recommendations have been made to improve their experiences. 

Conclusion

It can be concluded from the research report that International Touring companies such as Intrepid Travel can improve and expand its tour operational programs to new horizons of certain TDRs. It can be concluded that China will be an ideal TDR for the Australian section of TGR that can be explored by Intrepid Travel. This is due to the fact that many of the places were left unexplored that can be used to draw attention of people. China is such as TDR that has in it travelling spots for tourists of every genre. It hosts some of the rich cultural heritage of China that are resemblance of brilliant engineering and strategical ways of the ancient Chinese. It also hosts one of the seven wonders of the wonder, Great Wall of China.  

Recommendations

In terms of the representative of the consultancy company giving advices and proposing ideas to establish the tour operational business of Intrepid Travel, the following recommendations can be suggested:

It must make few discounts offers on trip to certain unexplored and lesser know TDRs so that tourists take interest in visiting them,

It has to do proper market research of the potential of a certain TDR and then determine whether to organize and schedule a itinerary based on those facts or to discard it and make some other tour schedules.  

It is recommended to involve attractive sports and activities within the small group of tourists that it takes with them. This might involve a completion of filming the place as most of the time compassionate travellers are excellent photographers. This will enhance their interest in capturing the heritage of the place.