Sustainable Tourism Case Study: Analyzing Innovation opportunity for Resort

Question

You need to complete a research report, investigating the feasibility of an innovation strategy for the sustainability tourism case study of a tourism resort in northern Queensland.

Answer

Executive summary

The aim of the paper is to analyze the best innovative opportunity for the sustainable tourism case study of a resort to survive the competitive pressure in the tourism sector and to gain promised investment opportunity from the government. The industry analysis and external environmental analysis showed that the tourism sector of Australia faces high competitive pressure and high bargaining power of buyers; however, they face low threat from substitutes and low bargaining power from suppliers. Moreover, the resort faces benefit from the economic and political condition of the Australian economy; however, the rising environmental concern and social needs makes it important for the resort to take alternative service approach. In such a circumstances, the most innovation opportunity the resort can implement is “green tourism” by making use of rise sharing services. This is both innovative as well as new approach the resort can take by implementing ride sharing in their service provision and education the tourist about the natural sites of Australia.

Introduction

Innovations in tourism is a highly demanding and concerning areas, that is gaining importance. Innovation in tourism covers new creative ideas and new value chain in tourism. Trends are continuously changing in the tourism and hospitality industry due to changes in customer needs and preferences. Moreover, with severe competition it has become highly important for the tourism companies to seek innovation in its practices that can give better tourism service. Improvement in tourism services helps in improving customer satisfaction and better profits (Anamaria and Maria-Cristina 2013). This makes innovation and opportunity exploitation an important part of tourism and hospitality sector.

The tourism resort in the given sustainable tourism case study is facing challenges of low transport facility to implement their service of taking guests to natural attractions. Moreover, it is also facing huge demand for sustainable tourism trends that is in huge preference among the tourists as well. The competitive pressure the resort is facing in Australia as well as other international destination makes it important to respond to such changing market trends to attract tourists to visit its environmental attractions. Technological and sustainable tourism service provision are the two most important opportunity that the resort need to exploit for attracting tourists to Queensland.

The report analyses the internal and external factors affecting the tourism resort in Queensland. Further, the report identify and evaluate three potential innovation opportunities that the organization can explore and implement for gaining success. Lastly, the project develops review and monitoring innovation opportunity for the case study organization.

What are the internal and external factors the organization is facing in the sustainable tourism case study?

Porter’s Five Forces Analysis

Existing rivalry

The existing rivalry in the tourism sector is high with the growth of online medium for hotel information and booking. The rivalry becomes intense due to zero switching cost of the customers from one rival resort to another. The internet has reduced the differences among competitors and customers get access to best price and experience online. Queensland has large number of tourism resorts offering different facilities and services such as historic view, adventures and site seeing provisions and others (Uçmak and Arslan 2012). This increases the rivalry among existing firms and sustainable tourism case study organization.

Threat of potential entrants

Threat from new entrant in the tourism sector is low due to high investment cost that act as a barrier to entry. Even though barrier has reduced with spread of internet, yet building a full facility resort like the case study organization is difficult (Uçmak and Arslan 2012). Moreover, the sustainable tourism case study organization can increase barrier to entry in the sector by adopting differentiation strategy that become difficult to adopt by a new entrant firm.

Bargaining power of suppliers

The bargaining power of suppliers in tourism sector is low because the supplies needed for resorts and tourism companies can be attained easily. The major supply of the resort is the employees that can deliver services. Employees in this sector are easily available with lack of special expertise needed to implement a service and this reduces their bargaining power. Similarly, other supplies by hotel or resort chain are attained easily through online channel (Varelas and Georgopoulos 2017). The case study organization thus manage their cost of supplies due to low power of suppliers.

Bargaining power of buyers

Consumers are at the high end of the bargaining power where they can bargain for the price and get resort at best price online. With the development of virtual reality, customers are also able to see the rooms and facilities of the resort virtually and book the best services. This has raised the bargaining power of buyers because many resorts in the sector offers similar services at differentiated prices and faces zero switching cost (Varelas and Georgopoulos 2017). The case study organization will face high bargaining power from buyers and need to differentiate its services to eliminate competition.

Threat of substitutes

The threat from substitute products and services in the tourism sector is moderate with some threat faced from commercial accommodation. Some of the commercial accommodation offers good services and can be a choice for tourists to choose it above leisure or domestic accommodation (Varelas and Georgopoulos 2017). The sustainable tourism case study resort will also face moderate substitute from such commercial accommodation available in Queensland.

Pestle Analysis

The case study resort is also impacted by external factors prevailing in Australia such as political, economy, social, technological, and legal and environment. Various legal laws and conditions prevail in Australia that affects the resorts of Queensland.

Political

Australia is considered as one of the most stable political system with points standing at 0.98 points in 2018 (TheGlobalEconomy 2020). Moreover, the governance of Australia also offers safe and secure business environment with business freedom standing at 87.8 points (Heritage 2020). This offers an opportunity for the case study resort in Queensland to act freely and take actions without strict regulatory system and lack of political problem that can obstruct their growth.

Economy

Australia has faced rapid increase in labor supply with more woman also increasing in the labor force. This acts like an added advantage for hospitality sector like the case study resort to get abundant of labor resources for their services. Moreover, Australia is expected to experience a rise in its GDP from 2019 to 2023 by 2.7% and these further benefits the resorts with rising living standards (Heritage 2020). The sustainable tourism case study resort will be able to attract domestic travelers in their resort with rising living standard and make their economy successful.

Social

The motive of international and domestic travelling in Australia is majorly due to cultural attraction. Visitors seek to travel to experience Australian culture and heritage while they travel (health.gov 2020). Moreover, travelling in Australia has been highly restricted due to covid-19 spread and various guidance has been raised to make the tourism areas safe for tourists (Abs 2020). This acts as a challenge for case study resort where it has to align their service with the motives of the travelers and meet the new traveling guidelines to make their resort safe and attractive.

Technological

Australia has seen huge rise in technology in tourism and travel sector such as augmented and virtual reality, artificial intelligence, internet of things, voice technology, wearable devices, Wi-Fi connectivity and others (Tore 2020). This acts as a challenge for the case study resort to adopt such technology and make it attractive for the visitors and differentiating services from other competitors.

Legal

Australia implements privacy laws for tourism sector for all their services and interaction it does online. This comes under number of Acts like the Privacy Act 1988 Tourism Australia and the Span Act 2003 (Tourism.australia 2020). This makes it important for sustainable tourism case study resort to comply by these laws to protect the information and data of the travelers.

Environment

With rising environmental issues in Australia there is rising importance of sustainable tourism in the economy. This is because sustainable tourism helps in reserving environmental and cultural values of the tourist sites and act as a great attraction to tourists (Unwto 2020). This makes it important for the case study resort to take into consideration sustainable tourism service for making it attractive to tourists.

SWOT Analysis

The analysis helps in knowing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats faced by the case study resort based on its external business analysis and the situation the resort is facing.

Table 1- SWOT Analysis

Source- Author’s creation

Potential Innovation Opportunities

Innovation and technological development is forming one of the most important changes that is reshaping the tourism industry. New technological innovation has the potential to enhance the service of tourism industry. This is changing the way the tourism firms are targeting travelers and disrupting tourism services. The innovation is important for transforming the experience of the visitor and improve end-to-end visitor journey. The accommodation sectors such as resort and hotels has faced a huge disruption in the digital technology where it has affected their services. Some of the recent technological development in the hotel and resort sector such as augmented and virtual reality, visitor tracking, social media, sharing economy and others (Anamaria and Maria-Cristina 2013). This has helped in making the hotels to customize the travel services of individual travelers and better services alongside accommodation. Lee (2013) has pointed out that one of the recent innovations that is in high demand in truism sector is sustainable tourism where the activities are planned according to sustainable development. Based on this view the three innovation opportunities the sustainable tourism case study resort can implement to improve their services are:

Innovation opportunity 1

The first innovation the resort can take is making use of service oriented robotic (artificial intelligence) for shaping the tourist experience and reducing human interaction in the tourism services in the rising risk of pandemic. Service oriented robotic will help in managing the inflow of tourists in the resort in the safe way keeping in mind the alarm of the hour. It is a kind of process innovation that help gain the resort the competitive success with added technology and innovation, however, it will also help the resort to form sustainable tourism services by implementing a responsible initiative (Lukanova and Ilieva 2019). Thus, it is a kind of both technological adoption and responsible service development, however, it can be costly for the resort.

Innovation opportunity 2

As per the sustainable tourism case study, the second innovation opportunity for the resort involve implementing green tourism initiative by implementing visits to rich natural sites near the resort such as rainforest, Great Barrier Reef and others. These activities will not only be implemented for fun and leisure, however, it will also help the tourists to get close to nature and natural life (Jarvis et al. 2010). For the initiative, the resort will make use of ride sharing platforms Airnub, Uber and others by collaborating with them to act as a disruption in transport modes used by the resort. This is yet another technological and innovative method taken by the resort to attract tourists and fit their services according to the requirement of the customers. The resort will make use of recent technology in transport services and create disruptor in their tourist services. This will not only help the resort to help the resort to make use of new technology, however, it will also present itself as a sustainable service resort to the government and tourists.

Innovation opportunity 3

The third innovative opportunity the resort can use is voice technology in their services where the tourists prefer to switch from types in search technology for interaction. It is yet another important innovative and sustainable initiative the resort can take for improving their service. This will help reduce crowd in the resort and take up reservation in a systematic manner. This will also help the resort to conserve the natural surroundings of Queensland (Juganaru et al. 2008). It is one of the most important opportunity for the resort to increase demand by improving the efficiency of the service. Moreover, it will also enable the resort to provide wide range of service to be delivered to the people worldwide in a responsible manner.

Evaluation of One Innovative Opportunities

From all the three innovative opportunities that the resort can take to explore their initiative the most suitable and innovative opportunity that the resort can take is implementing green tourism. This is an initiative that not help the resort to take advantage of recent technology such as ride sharing platforms, however, it also allow the resort to be sustainable over time. Zengeni et al. (201) stated that green tourism has the major objective to preserve the nature and natural resources. It helps in raising awareness among the tourists and education them about important aspect of natural and cultural capital preservation. Thus, the opportunity is the most appropriate for the ongoing opportunity for the sustainable tourism case study resort that is to attract promised investment capital given by the government. Moreover, ride sharing platform will also help the resort show their sustainable tourism service to the government where use of sharing ride will reduce the use of private transport by the resort and in turn reduce carbon print (Jarvis et al. 2010). Likewise, the resort will be able to gain better customer satisfaction by facilitating the service of giving the best experience to the customers of the natural sites. It will also help in improving the image of the resort as a responsible venture that preserve the natural sites of Queensland.

Thus, it will help in leveraging the competitive position of the resort by making it both educational and sustainable service firm. The new opportunity is a useful initiative for the resort to reduce its weakness of poor and bus fleet and threat of rising competition and loss of market due to poor service. Moreover, it will help exploit the opportunity of taking advantage of technological improvement and natural resource availability (Uçmak and Arslan 2012). However, the technological innovative will raise the cost of the resort because it will have to incur cost in collaborating with the ride sharing companies for helping the guests travel to natural destinations easily. The resort has to incur cost in planning and implementing a systematic travel to natural destination that do not reduce the natural habitat of Daintree rainforest, Great Barrier Reef and Wallaman Falls.

Plan of Implementation

Table 1- Implementation Plan

Source- Author’s creation

Process of Review and Monitor the Progress of Innovation Opportunity

The resort defined in the sustainable tourism case study will have to ways to measure and monitor the progress of the chosen innovation opportunity to know the success of the opportunity and need for development of alternative plan. The review will be done by the resort after six months of plan implementation using survey method. Survey will be conducted for both employees and customers. This will help review the views of the employees on the process success, the difficulties they faced and the need for further training. Further, customer survey help review the increase in their satisfaction rate and perception of the customer about the new service (Jugdev et al. 2013). Moreover, the investment the resort gets from the government is yet another ways to review the success of the new opportunity.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Therefore, it can be stated that the new innovation opportunity of implementing green tourism in the resort by making use of ride sharing platform will help the resort to present itself uniquely and responsibly in front of the customers and government. It is one of the best opportunities that make use of sustainability and technological development approach. The overall plan is the best way to attain success in the challenging and competitive environment of the tourism sector.

Recommendations

Based on the sustainable tourism case study, the recommendations will guide the resort to achieve success in the selected innovation opportunity by implementing it in a most effective manner.

Firstly, it is recommended that the resort should conduct training for the employees to train them in the new ride service processes that can allow them to facilitate the service in the most efficient manner.

Secondly, it is recommended that the resort should conduct research on ride sharing companies and choose the one that offer most efficient service along with low cost. This is possible because of the low bargaining power of suppliers in tourism sector. This is an integral part of the innovation opportunity and without effective transport service; the resort will fail to give importance to natural sites.

Lastly, it is recommended that the resort conduct effective marketing strategy that can make their sustainable tourism service known to the potential visitors and increase their value in front of both the tourists and the government. It is the best way to promote that the resort has responded to the market trend.

References

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