Marketing Assignment: Marketing Analysis of Adventure Tours Australia

Question

Task: Marketing Assignment Task: Select one Tourism or Hospitality organisation (eg. a hotel, motel, café or a fast-food restaurant or formal dining in restaurants, tours and Travel Company, an airline or sea cruise company).

Drawing on the marketing theories you have learned in class and the information you have gathered, briefly discuss the service characteristics, relationship marketing, and segmentation.

Answer

Introduction
The selected organization for this marketing assignment is Adventure Tours Australia, which is an award-winning tour business specializing in small groups of excursions. The organization was founded in 1993 and the business line of the organization includes managing and assembling tours for sale by the travel agents. The selected organization is said to be the most celebrated tour company with a high level of brainstorming sessions to come up with several adventures for the customers. The organization is located in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and is said to be a part of the Services Industry and Travel Agencies. Adventure Tours Australia has more than 500 employees and produced about $53 million in sales (USD). Within the corporate family of Adventure Tours Australia, there are 17 companies. However, the key purpose of this report is to reflect on the selected Tourism and Hospitality organization wherein it will discuss the overview of service offerings, marketing strategies, and recommendations as well as a conclusion based on the overall findings.

Overview of Services Offerings
Adventure Tours Australia is concerned with delivering services and facilities that are related to travel, they buy individual travel components, particularly from their suppliers, and assemble them into a package tour, which later on sold with their own overall package cost to their customer directly or through middlemen. The company mostly focuses mainly responsible for providing and operating the services specified in an offered package tour. The services that the organization offers are expert guides, exclusive accommodation, and the best experiences the customers ever had before. Currently, the organization is offering several attractive places to their customers such as Uluru, Kakadu & Top End, Arnhem Land, The Kimberly, West Coast, The Outback, Kangaroo Island, and the Southern Ocean & The Nullarbor. Besides, Adventure Tours Australia provides local guides so that the client may not face any kind of safety issues, they also provide accommodation and transport as well as responsible travel throughout their itinerary. The services themes that the company provides are the First Nation culture, Wildlife, Overland, short breaks as well as new trips.

However, Adventure Tours Australia offers an exceptional service wherein they provide package tours and flights, hotels, cab services, day tours and they also focus on client safety as they believe that client safety is their main priority. At present, the organization is offering a multi-trip discount of 5% off with last-minute deals of $99 deposits (Adventuretours.com.au, 2021). Thus, it can be said that Adventure Tours Australia not only provide an exceptional and exclusive service to their customer but also provide a discount on several occasions or events and also give more priority to its customer's safety and security.

The key service offerings of Adventure Tours Australia have been listed on the following grounds:

• Offers a full vacation package such as flight bookings, cab services, hotel booking, local tour guides, tours as per the itinerary and package.
• Offers on deals for packages on seasonal events or occasions,
• They offer hassle-free bookings by communicating with the expert through online or offline services,
• The organization offers a theme based on customer preferences such as Wildlife, new trips, first nations culture, overland, etc.

Marketing Strategies
It is essential to evaluate the strategies based on service marketing through determining the significant service characteristics and providing the critical analysis of the selected company, Adventures Tours Australia. The essential features of Service Marketing are- Intangibility- Intangibility is considered a significant feature that complicates the significant authority of a marketing manager in Adventures Tours Australia particularly while motivating the perspectives of consumers. Services cannot be seen, felt, or smelled before they are purchased.

Inseparability -Marketing managers at Adventures Tours Australia are also required to comply with this prescribed characteristic while marketing the services. It emphasizes the particular fact that services must not be separable. Usually, the services are established and supplied at the same time (Kropp & Totzek, 2020). The marketing managers at Adventures Tours Australia are required to undertake the authority of reducing the gap between the services granted and the services promised.

Variability -It is considered as another significant feature of services, that implies that the quality varies to a great extent and is highly dependent on how they are offered. Service variability can be managed in Adventures Tours Australia in several ways. Staff can be recruited and trained effectively to offer adequate service. The satisfaction of customers can be reviewed through researches, complaint systems, and suggestions.

Perishability - It is possible to store services similarly to goods since consumption and production are carried out at the same time. The risk element is quite different in the case of goods and services. In case, the goods are not sold at present, they can be stored for future sales. On the other hand, if the services are not sold at present, it is lost even for the future. Hence, the executives of the company need to apply their professionalism to reduce the occurrence of economic waste.

Seasonality - As per the researches, seasonality is regarded as the significant factor that regulates the operations of several companies. While framing strategies based on services of tourism and hospitality of the company, it is essential to emphasize this particular characteristic.

Unclear ownership -Absence of ownership is also considered one of the significant attributes of service. This particular feature is closely associated with the other features of services that have already been demonstrated such as inseparability, intangibility, and perishability.

Interdependence - The prosperity of the tourism sector is entirely dependent on how the products or services are collaborated to establish efficient and unique outcomes. However, it can be recommended that tourism products in Adventures Tours Australia must be the contribution of specialized services.

In order to evaluate the relationship marketing strategy, it is essential to determine the five distinct stages of relationships that can be established with customers.

Basic- There must be no follow-up after conducting sales. It is considered as the significant level in the relationship marketing strategy. Reactive- In case of any difficulty, initiatives of consumer must be contacted.

Accountable- Salespersons are required to review the customers after purchase
Proactive- The Company is required to contact the consumers regularly and must provide assistance.

Partnership- The members must collaborate to generate adequate results.

Market Segmentation
Market segmentation is a marketing term that aggregately prospects buyers into segments or groups based on the common needs so that the marketing response can be similar(Singh and Jain,2019). There are primarily four types of market segmentation and their application in Adventure Tours Australia is as follows:

Geographic: This segmentation categorizes customers based on geographical borders. Adventure Tours Australia is based in Australia, which is one of the top tourist destinations in the world, and the international tourists can be segregated based on their countries. It will be effective if the company takes adventure tourism to the highest level by taking the tourists to untouched terrains in Australia. The landscape of Australia is extremely versatile and this can be segmented based on the customers’ preferences as well. Adventure Tours Australia can target customers who hail from colder climates and make them interested in the warm climate of Australia long with the adventurous spots, which will give them a phenomenal experience.

Demographic: Demographic segmentation is factual and statistical as it is comparatively easy to uncover the various market research sites. Adventure Tours Australia can potentially target the age group between 18 and 45 as this age group will be their primary customer base based on the adventurous tourism that they provide. The company has been providing the customers with the facility of customized tours, but it will be essential to segregate the customers based on age, income, gender, etc so that the marketing plan can be established based on various demographic factors. This will also allow Adventure Tours Australia to make their marketing strategy more efficient by making the cultural experiences more livid among the customer based on their age. I addition to that, the income factor segregation will ensure that the customers even with lesser affordability get the best experience.

Psychographic: These factors are slightly difficult to identify as they are not data-focused and requires significant research for understanding. Adventure Tours Australia works in partnership with Aboriginal communities so that those communities are supported in terms of their livelihood. In addition to that, the company emphasizes the social status of the tourists by ensuring that they get the desired facilities even in the toughest adventurous spots. The accommodation of the people is taken special care of as there are massive personality differences among certain tourists and to ensure sustainability in the place, the accommodation is taken special care of.

Behavioural: This segmentation is based on knowing the customers’ actions. Adventure Tours Australia targets customers who search for adventurous tours in Australia based on a variety of budgets. Special occasions like Christmas and New Year are targeted where people normally have holidays and tend to spend money on adventure and sight-seeing. The company provides special discounts on holiday seasons so that the maximum number of tourists is attracted. Lastly, the company studies the behavioural aspect of customers based on the holiday season and special occasion preferences, so that a proper marketing strategy can be established.

Conclusion
Adventure tourism entities like Adventure Tours Australia faces have to protect the tourists from potential risks, as during the adventurous activities, the tourist may get hurt or face an injury. Hence, protecting them is a key thing for the entities. Along with protecting the tourists, the protection of the natural environment is also important. In the case of adventure tourism, it is important to motivate the tourists to enjoy the excitement and thrills they will get via participating in the activities. In adventure tourism, danger during the activities is a major threat factor, which can hamper the lives of tourists. Hence, well-managed safety guidelines and procedures are required to ensure the safety of the tourists. Along with that trained guides needs to be employed to take care of the tourists. Risk management is a crucial thing required in the adventure tourism business. Proper risk management needs to be developed and properly implement to address the threats to the business.

Recommendations
Ways to improve existing services
1. The first thing that needs to be improved in the services of the organization is the safety procedure. The threat factor related to the on-spot injury is common in the case of adventure tourism; the entity needs to develop proper safety procedures to address such issues (Ardani et al., 2019). To ensure the safety of the tourist, the minimal medical facility should be available, which can handle such emergency injury cases.

2. Proper training of the guides is important to enhance the overall service quality. Lack of training or less knowledge about the work can lead to negative consequences. The guides should be trained for at least 6 months initially, and after that, they should be provided periodic training to ensure better productivity (Ardani et al., 2019).

3. Some people may find adventure tourism as a risk factor, so they hesitate to participate in it, so the idea about adventure tourism needs to be converted by ensuring the safety of the tourists. As tourists will find the activities safe, they will enjoy their journey with fewer worries.

Ways to improve the relationship with existing customers
1. Existing client base is a strong thing for a business, as it includes more chance of sales conversion. Finding sales opportunities among the existing customers is a great thing to retain the existing customers. Making the existing customers aware of the latest services and pricing of the services will keep the customers updated about the on-going activities of the business.

2. Apart from the existing customers, the new customers' needs to be approached to extend the customer base. In the case of new customers, a discount on their initial adventure tour needs to be provided to attract the customers. Ensuring safety will help the tourists to enjoy their journey fearlessly (Ardani et al., 2019).

3. Along with the existing services, the customer needs to be offered new services based on their current needs. New service offering for the customers is a great idea to attract a large number of tourists at a time. Attracting the customers via new offering will help to gain huge growth in sales. ?

References
Adventuretours.com.au. (2021). The ATA difference overview | The ATA difference. Www.adventuretours.com.au. Retrieved February 13, 2021, from https://www.adventuretours.com.au/travelling-with-ata

Ardani, W., Rahyuda, K., Giantari, I. G. A. K., & Sukaatmadja, I.

P. G. (2019). Customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions in tourism: A literature review. International Journal of Applied Business and International Management, 4(3), 84-93.

Kropp, E., & Totzek, D. (2020). How institutional pressures and systems characteristics shape customer acceptance of smart product-service systems.

Industrial Marketing Management, 91, 468–482. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2020.10.008

Singh, A., & Jain, A. (2019). Innovations in Market Segmentation- A Review. International Journal of Research, Commerce, Economics and Management, 9(8). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336211673_INNOVATIONS_IN_MARKET_SEGMENTATION_A_REVIEW