BUS2008 Strategic Planning Report Sample
Assessment 2: Applied Project –
Students are expected to conduct external and internal analysis of the business.
Assessment 2 Detail
In this assessment task, students will be creating an Applied Project A - to conduct external and internal analysis of the business.
To complete this project student will be selecting a case study on Travel & Tourism Industry of their choice/preference. As we have identified that in this Covid – 19 situation Travel & Tourism Industry is the one which has hit very hard and have struggle to the maximum to maintain and retain its business. It has been observed that from time to time this industry have made changes and improved its Strategic Planning’s to retain in the business environment.
Following requirements should be satisfied by the students: -
1. Explanation of A very brief overview of the firm and its product or service and target market.
2. Explanation of Vision, Mission Statement & Goals:
• What is the organization’s Vision, mission, and goals? Do you believe in the mission?
• Do you feel your work is contributing to the advancement of the mission, Vision, mission, and goals?
• What does internal and external stakeholder need or expect from us? How well have organisation performed against these expectations in the past?
• What are the immediate results that can be observed because of strategic plan? Long- term results?
3. Explanation of Unique differentiating features. Highlight the unique features of your products/services, particularly what is going to make and stand out above the rest.
4. Complete a PESTLE analysis – Explanation of Internal and External Factors are important. Internal Capacity
• How effective is our staff? Our Board of Directors?
• How effective is the organization’s management and leadership?
• What are the human and physical resources required to operate strategic plans?
• Does the organization have sufficient resources available? Will these be affected in the future?
Solution
Overview of the Company and Its Product or Services
The Expedia travel company is basically an American online travel company for the small business and consumer travel. It offers wide range of services which includes travel shopping, real time access to schedule, pricing information, hotels, and rental cars, availability of airline information, reservation services, cheap flights, stays and thing to do on holidays. The operation of company is through retail, B2B and Trivago segments. University Assignment Help, This travel group has unlocked the best destination recommendations, accurate and transparent information system. Also the targeted market of the company is people who are socially connected such as students, military, in order to gain mouth publication.
Analysis of Vision, Mission, and Goals
Mission and goals- The primary mission and goal of the company are to power the global travelling for everyone and everywhere. The company believes that travel could bring something good to the world (Expedia group, 2021).
Vision statement- It states the local relevancy of company on a global basis, being customers- centric, attract the travel suppliers, engage into the world of these suppliers, and provide power to the other partners of the industry is the vision statement provided by the Expedia group.
How Company’s Activities are Contributing Towards Achieving Mission, Vision, and Goals
The company state that they are travelers and technologists (Santana, 2020). The work across the time zones, languages, cultures and hemispheres and are used to build up the broken things again. They make the travelling process worth it every single time (Chung, et al 2020). Therefore, the mission and vision of the company are seemed to be achieved due to their amazing growing connections with the partners and travelers and they are successfully bringing the good into the world through travelling (Chandrasekaran, Pathak, & Yano, 2020).
Expectations of Internal and External Stakeholders
The internal as well external stakeholders of the company expect that they work and communicate effectively with them regarding the policies and procedures of them. They expect that their sensitive information with them is safe and confidential (Wang, et al, 2021). Further these stakeholders expect them to work coherently and collaboratively with them and work ethically into the environment.
Performance of The Organization Against Such Expectations
The Expedia group seemed to be committed to the expectations of these stakeholders and work exclusively against the environment and diverse workforce (Expedia group, 2021). They are well organized and ensure timely payments as needed. Further, they are dedicated enough in building the media partnerships for their advertisements. Additionally, company has revolutionized the way they could reach and contact the consumers and various stakeholders through e- commerce platform and are emerging as a leader in the industry.
Immediate Results from The Strategic Plans
The strategy of Expedia group is resulting in immediate engagement of consumers back to tourism. They are reaching their customers through variety of channels, internet, and social websites. Also they have multiple brands which are likely to attract more visitors to them and they are successfully getting responses in favor of their strategies (Expedia group annual report, 2021).
Analysis of Unique Differentiation Features
The recently launched features of Expedia that are RSS travel alerts, personal tip guide, gas locator are the unique features of the company which makes it different from others. The Expedia group provides the combination of high end and unique and customize services to the customer. Also, it has the amazing collection of travel package which provides unique exploring to the travelers. The usefulness, trust factor and easy use of services make the product of company unique and attractive (Chalupa, & Petricek, 2020). Further during these pandemic situations the measures taken by the company such as Leveraging Expedia Group’s scale, Innovation through automation and Traveler communications helped them to improve customer satisfaction and reduce call center volumes during the peak of the pandemic which makes it stand out of from the rest.
Internal Analysis
Effectiveness of Workforce and Board of Directors
The BOD of the Expedia group is experiencing in large and complex business structures and also the fast placed environmental changes. Further, the workforces of Expedia are more focused on delivering the results and are work ethics as per the requirements of the stakeholders. Also, they are highly skilled with advance computer and multiple working systems skills.
Effectiveness of management and leadership
The management and leadership within the group have the ability to work and communicated effectively with the variety of personalities all together. Further have the ability to keep the sensitive information, confidential.
Discussion of human and physical resources for running strategic plans
In order to run their strategic plan the Expedia group uses the software application (CMP) that is customer process manager which helps them to manage the bookings of hotels, flights and other services along with 9000 call centers (Expedia group, 2021).
Whether company has adequate resources
Yes the company has adequate as well as sufficient resources. It has innovation lab which helps them to continuously innovate and launch new products. It has leveraged advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and eye tracking systems (Marta, Melnyk, & Baran, 2021).
External environment analysis (PESTLE analysis)
Environmental Trends
Various measures are taken by the company against global warming and climatic changes. Also the company has focused on the sustainable tourism initiatives in collaboration with organizations at global level (Expedia SWOT and PESTLE analysis, 2021).
Political Factor
Restriction on Cuba is one of the impacts of the political sanctions and also the impact of U.S. China war for trade has a vast impact on the tourism sector so on for the company (Stringam, Gerdes, & Anderson, 2021).
Social Factor
Due to access to online facilities the working population within the organization is increased and the social trend states that consumer is now willing to spend more the desirable experiences.
Technology Factor
Use of automation and AL are the recent technological trends in the tourism sector. Also the company has recently gain technology based investments from the hospitality industries.
Economic Factor
Impact of recession due to pandemic has slow down of tourism sector. Also the cyclical factors of travel industry have vast impact on it.
Legal Factor
New regulation due to pandemic enforced by the government regarding travel packages and also the impact of EU competition law on the industry the company is working in
(Law, 2021).
Greatest Areas of Concern for Community
Due to recent times of covid-19 pandemic, as it is not yet over therefore the traveling is still risky. So the need for relevant and safe travel guide and tips is required by the community.
Changes in The Next Five Years
In addition to above need the business is focusing on investing on such process in the near future. Additionally the company is planning to invest in its financial system to take new initiates regarding the financial and operating conditions such as changes in policies and conditions related to climatic changes, sustainability etc.
Opportunities for The Organizations
As per current scenario the opportunity to peruse long term growth particularly with the international markets by attracting more customers is available to the company (Majó, Ramirez, & Moya, 2021). Further broad side and sale of the business provides it with the opportunity of negotiating the competitive rates with the suppliers, travel deals and breadth of choices for the customers. Also the opportunity of adding new values for the loyalty programs of customers. Apart from this the technology developments and innovation within the company are continuing in creating new travel booking options (Mitsoulis-Ntompos, et al, 2019).
Yes, there are some service and policies Gaps due to the pandemic that the company would be fulfilling by developing new policies and procedures as per the current climatic conditions.
Impact of Covid-19 on Travel and Tourism Industry
In current times especially after the pandemic this travel group is highlighted the most. As during pandemic the travel industry faced sever challenges (Yan, et al, 2020). Million of travelers were confused and fear around for their upcoming trip. During those circumstances Expedia Partner Solutions (EPS) and their partner, worked closely to solve these issues and support the traveler in such uncertainties. Further the virus has impacted the tourism sector globally, since 1980 it is the worst one (Nhamo, Dube, & Chikodzi, 2020). The tourism sector is significantly affected and its impact is visible on the employment levels (Shahzad, Hoang, & Bouri, 2021).
Recommendations
Partially, the government has taken measures to restore and reactivate the tourism sector. But still it is required more, apart from protecting business and jobs the company is recommended to build more resilient tourism structure in economy post pandemic (Krasnodebski, 2020). Further it is recommended to restore the confidence of travelers from the services, supporting them to adapt such changes (Pramono, et al, 2021). Also the company could promote domestic tourism at initial stages and provide the travelers with sufficient information regarding the uncertainties involved in the journey for their better health and to reduce anxiety(Risk and Controls Associate - Corporate Audit, 2021). Also in context of decreasing customer satisfaction levels as a result of longer queue times it is recommended to the company to broaden up the customer service department of it’s to reduce the anxiety of their customers (Overcoming a crises, 2021).
Conclusion
From the above analysis on the Expedia travel group it could be said that company is performing quite well, even during this pandemic. The company has taken several measures to provide leisure and adventures experiences to their travelers. Further it could be noticed that they are capably fulfilling the stakeholder’s expectations and are also successful implementing their vision and mission in their practices.
References
Chandrasekaran, R, Pathak, H N & Yano, T 2020, December, Deep Neural Query Understanding System at Expedia Group, In 2020 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data) (pp. 1476-1484). https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9378495/
Chalupa, S & Petricek, M, 2020, Using Customer Characteristics to Manage Marketing and Revenue Management Activities, TEM Journal, 9(3), p.1088. https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=894795
Chung, J Y, Choi, Y K, Yoo, B K & Kim, S H 2020, Bleisure tourism experience chain: implications for destination marketing, Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, 25(3), pp.300-310. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10941665.2019.1708760
Expedia group annual report, 2021, (online), Available through <https://www.expediagroup.com/investors/financial-information/annual-reports/default.aspx> [Accessed on 15th November].
Expedia SWOT and PESTLE analysis, 2021, (online), available through <https://www.swotandpestle.com/expedia/> [Accessed on 15th November].
Expedia group, 2021, (online), Available through <https://www.expediagroup.com/> [Accessed on 15th November].
Krasnodebski, J 2020, The Voice of Major E-Tourism Players: An Expedia Group Perspective, Handbook of e-Tourism, pp.1-26. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-030-05324-6_85-1.pdf
Law, R 2021, The internet and tourism?part IV: TravelWeb. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 10(2-3), pp.117-121. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10548400109511562
Nhamo, G, Dube, K & Chikodzi, D 2020, Impacts and implications of COVID-19 on the global hotel industry and Airbnb, In Counting the Cost of COVID-19 on the global tourism industry (pp. 183-204), Springer, Cham. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-56231-1_8
Marta, B, Melnyk, I & Baran, R, 2021, Factors of digitalization of the marketing activity of tourist enterprises of Ukraine in the conditions of global digitalization, Baltic Journal of Economic Studies, 7(3), pp.29-36. http://www.baltijapublishing.lv/index.php/issue/article/view/1183
Mitsoulis-Ntompos, P, Hejazinia, M, Zhang, S & Brady, T 2019, A Simple Deep Personalized Recommendation System, arXiv preprint arXiv:1906.11336, https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.11336
Majó, J, Ramirez, A & Moya, D 2021, The Effect of Reviews on the Online Reputation of Hotels in Latin America, International Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Management, 4(1), pp.206-226. https://journals.ekb.eg/article_177921.html
Overcoming a crises, 2021, (online), Available through <https://expediapartnersolutions.com/resources/research/case-study/servicing-during-covid-19> [Accessed on 15th November].
Pramono, R, Juliana, S M, Pramezwary, A, Djakasaputra, A & Purwanto, A 2021, GEN Z EXPLORATIVE STUDY ON TOURISM ACTIVITIES IN THE PANDEMIC COVID-19, Turkish Journal of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation, 32(3), pp.2261-2262. https://turkjphysiotherrehabil.org/pub/pdf/321/32-1-272.pdf
Risk and Controls Associate - Corporate Audit, 2021, (online), Available through <https://lifeatexpediagroup.com/jobs/job?jobid=R-65300> [Accessed on 15th November].
Stringam, B, Gerdes, J H & Anderson, C K 2021, Legal and Ethical Issues of Collecting and Using Online Hospitality Data, Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, p.19389655211040434. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/19389655211040434
Shahzad, S J H , Hoang, T H V & Bouri, E 2021, From pandemic to systemic risk: contagion in the US tourism sector, Current Issues in Tourism, pp.1-7. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13683500.2021.1881050
Santana, H 2020, Good practices for e-business in the travel agencies, ???????? ?? ????? ?? ???????-?????, ????? ???????????? ?????, 9(1), pp.71-79. https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=908028
Wang, G, Chen, L, Dikshit, A, Gustafson, J, Chen, B, Sax, M J, Roesler, J, Blee-Goldman, S, Cadonna, B, Mehta, A & Madan, V 2021, June, Consistency and Completeness: Rethinking Distributed Stream Processing in Apache Kafka, In Proceedings of the 2021 International Conference on Management of Data (pp. 2602-2613). https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3448016.3457556
Yan, B, Stuart, L, Tu, A & Zhang, T 2020, Analysis of the Effect of COVID-19 on the stock market and investing strategies, Available at SSRN 3563380. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3596529
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