After leaving college, all of us when we are in our youth, desire to spread our wings. After spending many years in colleges and universities for education we wish a job that broadens our horizons and give us a more comprehensive viewpoint of life. Travel and leisure industry provides the exact prospects to fulfill our wishes.
Although travel and leisure industry, like all other sectors of the economy, has taken a hit due to recession, it is showing signs of recovery. This industry requires a love for travelling, creativity, excellent communication skills and an ability to understand people and their needs. The benefits of working in this industry are its lucrative pay structure based on performance, wide appeal and a more creative and fulfilling life. So if you are looking to make a career in this evergreen sector, a few career opportunities along with their requirements are mentioned below.
Tour Operations and Escorting Executive – In this position you are responsible for accompanying a group of travelers and ensure that they have a satisfying experience during all points of their tour including travel, stay and during visit to actual destinations. You should have a craving for travel, a good personality, good handling and escorting skills and strong nerves to handle difficult and unpredictable ground condition efficiently. Although some institutes provide specialized courses for this course but often companies looking to recruit a tour operator do not look for specific degrees. However prior experience in similar position is greatly valued.
Travel Writer – In this job you are required to write interestingly and correctly for newspapers, travel magazines, travel guides and travel websites. As most of the time you are writing about an already well travelled and well described destination, it is expected that you provide a fresh approach to them along with interesting anecdotes. As travel writing involves some strenuous journeys, so being well organized and ability to meet strict deadlines under pressure is desirable. You may work as freelance or on a contractual basis. This is a very competitive job so you may need to have basic training in writing as well as travelling. Some large organization while hiring at this position might specify a degree qualification in communication, journalism or English as a basic requirement for the job.
Flight attendants – Here you work for an airline as member of an airline in order to ensure safety and comfort of passengers during flight. You are also required to conduct cabin checks periodically, especially during night flights to check on the passengers, and listen for any unusual noises or situations. For getting this highly lucrative job you are required to undergo a mandatory training by the airline for a duration of six weeks to six months depending on the airline and the country of operation. A pleasing personality and knowledge of additional languages also helps. Some airlines also have a height and weight requirement.
Fitness trainers – As a fitness trainer you are employed by fitness trainers and health clubs to demonstrate various exercises to the clients and help improve their organizing technique. You are also required to motivate and keep a record of the client’s exercise regime. As far as qualifications are required you need to have completed your schooling and must have undergone a certification program.
Senior Hotel Staff – whether it be bar manager, maitre’d or general manager of the entire hotel, increasingly Westerners are being attracted to job roles in hotels in places as varied as China and Jamaica! The role will typically involve the same duties as it would in the UK or the US, but the surroundings are usually completely different!
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Lucrative jobs in travel and leisure industry
Friday, November 12th, 2010An overview of Travel and leisure industry
Thursday, November 11th, 2010To discover and explore new things is the natural desire in every human being. Hence people like to travel and have been doing so for centuries. With modern means of transportation, travelling has also changed its meaning and has become an important leisure activity. Travel and leisure are a big industry today, worth more than 900 billion Euros.
Essentially travel and leisure industry is an industry covering the following sectors of the economy along with related products and services-
- Entertainment
- Recreation
- Tourism
- Travel
It’s easy to see that there are huge job potential in travel and leisure sector.
Entertainment can be defined as any activity which provides enjoyment to people in their leisure time. Entertainment industry includes operas, movies, television, theatre, music, sports, games, videogames, etc. There is a great need of creative people in such professions. You can work as an animator if you find cartoons interesting, if you are good at acting you can try your hands in films or television, if you have a mesmerizing voice or are good at playing guitars try a career in music. The opportunities are unlimited here!
Recreation differs from leisure in the sense that it is designed specifically for therapeutic refreshment of the body and the spirit. There are Bachelor of Arts program available in this field which help if you want to excel in this segment. Besides time-honored sectors like art, restaurants, writing, amusement parks, yoga etc certain new fields of employment like skiing, bungee jumping, adventure tourism and motor sports have emerged which have a surplus of job opportunities.
Tourism sector is a major employment generator in many countries, so much that it is the largest contributor in the G.D.P. of certain countries like Mauritius. You can find jobs in tour agencies that are a big business and many expert operators have gone online to attract more potential clients. For being a tour operator, first condition is that you must enjoy travelling. Then there are additional things that help like being multilingual, and having good communication skills.
Travelling sector includes all forms of travel. Talking about travel and leisure industry, air lines are seen as the most common because they carry the largest number of tourists. However besides air, sea and land are also important means of travel especially considering domestic tourism. Sea cruises, in addition are also popular internationally. Air travel industry employs a large number of people including pilots, flight attendants and stewards. Often these careers are highly glamorized career. However airlines employ more people in the form of ground staffs as technicians, baggage checker, ticket agents and passenger service agents such as airline lounge employees.
Travel and leisure sector has taken a hit recently in the wake of global war on terrorism and pandemic like S.A.R.S. (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and more recently swine flu. This has cost the industry billions of dollars. Also entertainment industry is facing stiff competition from internet for precious advertising dollars. The global recession has also taken a toll on this industry. But travel and leisure being an inherent human nature is sure to recover. This industry is sure to bounce back soon.
travel and tourism industry
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010Tourists
The origin of the word “tourist” date back to 1292 AD. It has come from the word ‘tour’. A number of experts have defined the term:”Tourists are the voluntary temporary travelers, traveling in the expectations of pleasure from the novelty and change experienced on a relatively and non-current round-trip”.”Tourist is a person who makes a journey for the sake of curiosity for the fun of traveling”.Tourists are:
-Persons traveling for pleasure, health and domestic reason.-Persons arriving in the sea of sea cruise.-Persons traveling for convention.Tourism – the first commercial venture.A religious Englishman called Thomas Cook in 1841 arranged, for a fee, a one –day rail excursion from Leicester to Loughborough for 540 members of a temperance league. Thus the first bona fide travel agent was Thomas Cook. While Cook himself did not make a profit on this first venture, he was a man of vision and was convinced that there was a need for a skilled “travel arranger”. So by 1845 he had become the first full-time travel agent, operating train excursions from Leicester. The next year he chartered a train and steamer for an excursion to Scotland for 330 people. In 1851 Cook arranged ocean steamship travel and accommodations for more than 1,50,000 visitors to the World Exposition in London and in 1856 he operated the first escorted “grand tour” of Europe. Tours to Europe and Middle East were also conducted and, in 1872, the first around the world tour was conducted.Tourism as a Service Industry
Tourism as a service industry comprises of several allied activities which together produce the tourism product. Involved in the tourism product are three major sub-industries. They are: -1. Tour operators and travel agents.2. Accommodation sector (hoteling and catering) and3. Passenger accommodation.According to international estimates, a tourist spends 35% of his total expenditure on transportation, about 40% on lodging and food and the balance 25% on entertainment, shopping and incidentals.The product in this case is not confirmed to travel and accommodation but includes a large array of auxiliary services ranging from insurance and entertainment and shopping, demand generation, in addition to the consumer motivation, is also heavily dependent upon powerful persuasive communication both at the macro (country) level and the micro (enterprise) level. The participants in the process of this service business can be illustrated by the figure below.Some of the pointers to nature of tourism as a Service Industry1. Tourism accounts for nearly 6% of world trade.2. Bulk of tourism business is located in Europe and North America., with 1/8 of the market being shared between the other regions.3. The highest growth rate in tourism in recent years has been in the third world.4. Tourism, like most pure services, because of the character of inseparability, exemplifies a product, which cannot be sampled before purchase; the prospective consumers have to travel to a foreign destination in order to consume the product.5. The major players in the tourism market include a number of intermediary companies. Some of them transnational in character, some of them exhibit vertical integration, both backward and forward, acquiring interests in all major sectors of this service industry.The Tourism Product- Factors Governing Demand.
Because of the unique nature of the nature of tourism product- it being an amalgam of the characteristics of a destination and the infrastructural as well as managerial efforts of the promoter, the determinants of tourists demand emanate from both individual tourist motivations and the economic, social, technological factors. Some of these are:
• Income Levels
In the last 30 years, disposable incomes around the world have shown upward trends, thus allowing more money for activities like leisure travel. Smaller families have meant higher allocations per person in the family. More and more women are entering the workforce and in real terms the cost of travel has fallen. The dramatic rise of tourism in the last 50 years can be attributed in a large measure to the combined effect of more leisure time and rise in both real and disposable incomes.• More Leisure time:
Increasing unionization of labour right from 1930 onwards has reduced the number of working hours per week. Changing managerial orientations towards human resources have increased the levels of pay and paid vacation time in most developed countries. Now people have longer periods of leisure, which could be allocated to travel.• Mobility
Better transportation and communication services have made the world a smaller place, and have brought both exposure and awareness of distant lands to larger sections of potential tourists across the world. Faster modes of transport have cut down on travel time, making it easier for people to economically plan and execute trips abroad.• Growth in Government Security Programmes and Employment Benefits:
The growth in government security programmes and well entrenched policies of employee benefits mean that quite a large number of families may have long term financial security and may be more willing to spend money for vacations.Tourist Classification:-
Tourists can be classified into the following seven demand categories:-1. Explorer: – Very limited in number, these tourists are looking for discovery and involvement with local people.2. Elite: – People who favour special, individually trips to exotic places.3. Offbeat: – These are filled with a desire to get away from the usual humdrum life.4. Unusual: – Visitors who are looking forward to trips with peculiar objectives such as physical danger or isolation.5. Incipient mass: – A steady flow, traveling alone or in small-organized groups using some shared services.6. Mass: – The general packaged tour market, leading to tourist enclaves abroad.7. Charter: – Mass travel to relaxation destinations, which incorporate as many as standardized, developed world facilities as possible.The Travel Decision:-
The average tourist is faced with considerable uncertainty regarding the decision and may have only scanty ideas about distant destinations. His evaluation of alternatives is also limited to the extent of this awareness about possible destinations. The stages of travel decision can be described as: -1. Travel Desire:-The first step where the need to travel is felt and the pros and cons are thought about.2. Information Collection and Evaluation:-This stage involves the process of finding out the trip from travel agents, books and acquaintances .information so collected is evaluated against criteria of cost and time constraints, alternative possibilities, relative attractiveness of destinations, perceived ‘safety’ o the alternative destinations etc.3. Travel Decision:-This is the decision phase involving selection of destination, travel, mode of accommodation and activities to be undertaken.4. Travel Preparation and Experience:-This involves tickets, bookings, travel, money and documents arrangement, clothing and undertaking of the travel.5. Travel Satisfaction Evaluation:-The whole tourism expenditure is constantly evaluated before, during and after the experience is used to influence future decisions.The marketing concept for the travel and tourism industry is profit driven and customer centric (unlike sales which are volume driven and target centric).Service Marketing TriangleService marketing is unique in many ways in the travel and tourism industry. There are 3 players in the transaction process:-
- Company: A travel and tourism company listens to the customers and evolves/develops the travel/tour package and it communicates the attractiveness and the utility of that very tour package directly to the customers. Here it (the company) performs external marketing. The company makes promises to the customers.- Providers: They are a travel company’s internal customers constituting employees and agents. The company does internal marketing with the providers educating and motivating them about the idea of the particular tour package which they can offer to their customers. This is done to enable the providers to effectively carry out the service transaction process. The providers make provisions for office space, accessibility and connectivity. The company enables promises to be kept by this infrastructural association.- Customers (Travelers): The customers are the reasons that the travel company exists and for whom the company has designed the traveling and touring package as well as set up the infrastructural facilities and spent money on employee development programmes. Here the providers are the only ones who interact with the customers, like the travel agents interact with the customers and not the company. The agents perform interactive marketing which is on-time, all-time, every-time. This is the most crucial aspect of service marketing in the travel and tourism sector. Those agents have the responsibility of ‘keeping promises’ made and enabled by the company. The providers (agents) are responsible for the perceived quality level of the service transaction. This underlines the uniqueness of service marketing. Tourism Products:
1. Accommodation• Hotels• Motels• Boatels• Flotels
2. Destination
• Natural Scenes• Historic Excellence• Artificial Beauties• Social Cultural Excellence
3. Transportation
• Infrastructurali. Airwaysii. Railwaysiii. Roadwaysiv. Waterways
• Local
i. Local transport
4. Tour operators
• Travel companies• Travel agents• Guides
5. Shopping
• Handicrafts• Handloom• BooksMarketing mix for tourism product:
The designing of the marketing mix variables in case of tourism is significant as it helps the marketer in conceiving the right ideas, particularly to raise the acceptability of the tourist product by stimulating and penetrating the demand. Framing of a proper marketing mix is significant because it helps the tourist organization in accomplishing the objective and projecting a fair image.Product Mix:
Tourism is a composite product with components like attraction facilities and transportation. Attraction deserves an intensive care. It includes natural site, places of historic interest, events and cultural attraction.
The facilities compliment attraction. The facilities include accommodation, food, transportation and recreational facilities. The transportation component includes the vehicles and infrastructure. Innovation in the tourism product helps raising the sensitivity. The users of the service are looking forward to better and improved product.
The provider of the tourist is a travel agent or the package tour. A well conceived and designed package tour, covering a wide range of tourist attraction at an economic price, helps in attracting the potential tourist.
The travel agent performs numerous activities such as hotel arrangement and accommodation, site seeing arrangement, domestic transport arrangement, air travel arrangement etc.In a true sense the tour agents and the travel agents are the vehicles who can give a fillip to the tourism industry, provided they are well trained.Pricing:
Pricing of the tourist product is complex. Geographical location of the destination, seasonality and varying demand affects the pricing decision.In India the pricing strategies become important for promoting or contracting the tourism industry, since more than 40% of the total population are below the poverty line. In order to develop the tourism industry more and more potential users are to be transformed into actual users.
When a tourist proposes to visit a particular place, the total cost of his traveling also include the expenses incurred on transportation, accommodation and communication.Liberal pricing strategy is found to be a productive pricing decision, particularly in case of tourism industry. The pricing strategy which includes low income group people, student and retired persons can be more effective. This is possible if the government concessional and subsidized infrastructural facilities to the potential tourist below the average income.
The different pricing methods generally used are cost based pricing, demand based pricing and competition based pricing. Promotions:
The promotion mix includes advertising, publicity, sales support and public relations. The purpose of promotion is to make available the information to the user. Advertising the sales promotion can be effective when supplemented by publicity and personal selling.Radio, TV, newspapers, cinema and printings are some of the important vehicles for traveling of messages. Effective slogans raises the effectiveness of advertisement.
Another important component of the promotion mix is public relation. It helps in projecting the image of an organization. Public relation and publicity include regular articles and photographs of tour attraction, use of TV and travel journalists to promote editorial comment.Public relation officer plays an important role. He should be efficient, active, impressive, intelligent and well-behaved.
Good image projection can be made if the PRO manages the affair like a professional. It is said that word of mouth is the best form of publicity. The word of mouth promotion is an important tool in tourism marketing.Place:
The tourist centers should be located at suitable points if the tourists spots are natural there is no question of selection. In a vast country like India with a divergent socioeconomic and cultural patterns, the promotion of domestic tourism encourages unity in diversity.Infrastructural facilities, transport and communication are important for development of tourist centres. The site selected should have natural surroundings, increased accessibility and improved amenities. At the same time it is also important that the ecological balance is not disturbed. Since growing ecological imbalances leads to pollution, some important steps like promoting afforestation, promotion and beautification may be undertaken in countering the side effects of atmospheric pollution and maintaining ecological balance.