Will retail travel agencies in Singapore survive: Comparison between retail travel agencies and online reservation services

Over the last two decades, the tourism industry has grown rapidly. But its evolution has been influenced by various factors such as culture and environmental changes including economic status and competition. Some of these factors, culture for instance, act as constants, providing some form of predictability to the evolution of the tourism industry within a specific society. While other factors, such as economic status and competition, act as variables that drive the industry to reach its potential. Hofstede defined “culture” as a collective programming of the human mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another (Stedham & Yamaura, 2004). Hofstede considered “national cultures” as the main mental programs that were shared by the majority of the middle class of various countries (Hofstede, 1998). The national culture in Singapore consists of a wide racial diversity. Singapore has a mosaic of several dominant cultures (Tambyah, Tan, & Kau, 2009). And it is undeniable how integral a role culture plays in the lives of many Singaporeans and in turn, it becomes almost a determining factor as to how many Singaporeans chose to spend their money, even when it comes to vacationing

Travel and the Chinese outbound tourism market: Governance and Ethical considerations

The rapid growth of China’s outbound tourism market is appealing to developing nations such as South Africa. The academic literature is still limited in this area and studies on China’s outbound tourism are equally limited in number and in scope. Chinese outbound tourism is fixated on group travel for both long- and short-haul outbound travel. Chinese travellers tend to select the perceived safety and convenience of packaged tours from China and the presumed expertise of the travel agents with whom they conduct business. However, it is often the case that tourists are disillusioned with their ultimate travel experiences as many fall victims to unscrupulous operators, travel agents and guides in China, and other stakeholders who exploit them. China is striving towards and can and should become a promoter of ethics in business as it is rapidly emerging as an economic dynamo. Thus, the ethical rules which the Chinese assimilate into their business’ practices will and do have a global influence. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the current knowledge in the area of Chinese governance, and business ethics as it relates to the travel business and especially to outbound tourism, and to provide some directions for future research in this area. To achieve the objective, the paper has been structured as follows. It first briefly looks at Chinese tourism to South Africa and its value given its Approved Destination Status (ADS). This is followed by briefly looking at some problematic areas in tourism. Following this, governance in China is investigated with the aim of attempting to determine desired Chinese operational practices based on Confucianism and CSR. This is followed by an assessment of Guanxi in present day China. Lastly, the researchers’ provide suggestions for future research and discuss the implications of the work to travel practitioners.Graduate School of Business Leadership (SBL

The Effect of Loyalty Program Attributes on Customer’s Booking Choice

A loyalty program is commonly observed in our real world to establish and maintain a customer relationship. However, there is limited research information on the effect of loyalty program schemes on customers\u27 choice in an online booking context. The current study summarized the awards currently offered by major hotels and online travel agencies (OTAs) and examined: 1) customers\u27 preference toward attributes of the loyalty program, 2) within reward attributes, which contributes to an increase in consumers\u27 booking choice, 3) which attributes make customers book on hotel websites rather than on OTA websites, and 4) the interaction between customer involvement and hotel loyalty programs\u27 attributes on booking preference. The results revealed that customers prefer rewards that are related to hotel booking and immediate point redemption. Changing the reward attribute level from unrelated rewards to related rewards increased customers\u27 probability of choice. However, timing of redemption did not affect the choice. Further, the effect of related rewards on increasing the chance of booking was stronger for consumers on a high reward program tier than those on a low reward program tier. However, no interaction was found between time and customers\u27 tier of the program. Results suggest that the effect of hotel and OTA\u27s loyalty program attributes on customers\u27 choice is different from other industries\u27 loyalty programs

Internationalization process: GuestCentric Systems Embracing People‟s Republic of China

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and EconomicsThe way the independent hotel industry makes business has recently changed. Startup venture capitalist GuestCentric Systemsi henceforth called GC, is a small sized IT company that is tackling an unmet opportunity, they are revolutionizing the online presence of the independent hotel industry by offering a fully integrated e-commerce management solution that allows hotels to create an outstanding online presence, resulting in an increase of their online bookings, through equipping hoteliers with innovative e-commerce optimization features, in a fast and affordable way. Up until now this was only within reach of big hotel chains, thus GC is leveling the playing field, as well as empowering hoteliers to bypass intermediaries, reducing costs while increasing sales growth. Notwithstanding, CG has massive costs that are impacting seriously the company and causing a huge negative EBIT of €1.100.000, meaning that their revenues of €300.000 are not able to cover minimally their costs of €1.400.000 estimated for 2010. Thereby, GC has an innovative business model that is sustainable, if and only if, the company is able to capture a great market share. GC was demanded to internationalize and will have to proceed on doing it to obtain the required customer base and overcome the delicate financial situation. Being a web based company, GC has perceived that it not enough to have a website to attract clients, it is required highly countries‟ adaptations to boost sales. That is the reason why this project has as its cornerstone the internationalization process of GC to China, therefore, the purpose of this work and its major added value is not only to build up and streamlining a step-by-step internationalization business plan with accurate solutions to enter and succeed in this market, but also, recommend GC the right momentum to enter in it, having in mind the tradeoff between the consolidation of their financial position and the vitality of the Chinese market

The determinants of online hotel reservations among university staffs

To compete in the current business environment, hoteliers need to cut down their distribution costs and adopt the electronic distribution channels such as the Internet.However, Malaysian hotels have been relatively slow in adapting this due to the current preference of using traditional method of room reservation by hotel patrons. Based from the literature review of the Internet users, a public university was chosen to represent one of the profiles of Internet users.A sample of 193 respondents was collected and the findings indicated that profiles conformed to previous studies.In adopting online reservation, online “bookers” would look for fast, reliable and convenient system. Price is a key motivator to purchase online. The findings are important in encouraging more hoteliers to adopt and implement online hotel reservations as part of their main sales mechanism