Hi, I have an assignment of 10-12 pages. It was in 2 parts. In the first part you have to open your own business of anything and have to write the required information about it. I had already done th

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Business Plan: Peaky Adventures Travel Planning Company

Name

Student’s Number

Course Title and Number

Professor’s Name

Institution

Date

Company Description 3

Mission Statement and Goals 3

Industry Structure 4

Feasibility of this Travel Company 4

Products and Services 5

Business Model 5

Marketing Plan 6

Market Research: Trends 6

Customer Experience 6

Local Experience 6

Augmented Reality 7

Virtual Reality 7

Artificial Intelligence 7

Barriers to Entry 8

Threats and Opportunities 10

SWOT Analysis Worksheet 10

Target Customers 12

Key Competitors 12

Competitive Analysis Worksheet 13

Marketing Strategy 16

Pricing Strategy 16

Operational Plan 18

References 20

Business Plan: Peaky Adventures Travel Planning Company

Peaky Adventures travel planning company is mainly geared towards providing travel-planning services and other tourism services to people around the United States. The travel and tourism industry is expanding; thus, it is one of the fastest growing industries of the US economy. With this hasty expansion, the desire to meet people’s spirit of adventure and the rise in information about beautiful and magnificent sceneries around the globe, the traveling and tourism sector has experienced an unprecedented change, creating a massive market segment for startups that promote and sell travel destinations across the continent. Peaky Adventures should leverage this growth to their advantage by capitalizing on tours and travel opportunities in the country.

The mission of Peaky Adventures is to transform into the leading provider of travel vacations and retreats for people around the United States. Peaky Adventures is devoted to establishing solid relationships with their client through client support and excellent training. It also desires to become a popular travel planning agency in the United States. The organization’s primary goal is to provide unforgettable experiences to its clients, grow progressively, and increase profitability during its operation.

Running and starting Peaky Adventures in the tourism market segment requires an overview and understanding of the market and industry trends. Examining the industry trends and structure within the travel industry related to marketing, consumer purchase, cost, and price help shape this company’s competitive strategy.

The concept of founding a travel-planning organization revolves around different factors. Currently, there are limited travel and tour companies across the country. Peaky Adventures will be an independent travel agency dedicated to international adventure vacations in the United States. This organization has a substantial opportunity to occupy and take over the tourism industry in the United States. Peaky Adventures is focusing on becoming a hired agent for big travel companies in the industry. Many of these famous companies are constantly searching for travel agents that can link their customers from different countries with their services. Research reveals that the target market of Peaky Adventures finds it challenging to get influential and dependable guidance in places around the world. Research also shows that the customers in the travel industry are less likely to plan their vacations again from an organization that planned their last vacation due to a lack of informative and instructive salespeople. Peaky Adventures will accommodate these requirements and nurture a determined return-customer base. Peaky Adventure’s main objective is to provide a wide variety of travel services to back tourists, alongside a reference book of services, travel insurance, and pre-and post-holiday consultations. These services will be provided by creating an online website and renovating the company’s physical offices.

Peaky Adventures is a tourism-related organization; hence it will be handling destination marketing associate promotion for land, air, and cruise transportation, providing memorable and epic adventures for luxury, entertainment, and sightseeing tours at the comfort of the clients as indicated in the values of the company. The primary services offered by Peaky Adventures are aimed at giving customers great satisfaction despite offering similar services from other travel agencies. This organization provides the best pilgrimage and educational, private, and unique interest tours. Besides, even though tourism is rapidly expanding, political factors often affect it. However, Peaky Adventures is determined to provide its services through online booking. This organization proceeds to book flights and make reservations for their clients by paying more attention to the preferences of the clients and by providing high-quality services.

Ranging from selling affiliate products and tour destinations, Peaky Adventures intends to leverage its profits by recognizing any predicted expense or the target market. This travel company will apply business models such as Consumer to Consumer (C2C), Consumer to Business (C2B), Business to Business (B2B), and Business to Consumer (B2C). These models are crucial for new entrants and startups in any business sector since they help motivate management and staff, recruit talent, and attract investments.

Modern tourism and travel organizations are increasingly dedicated to enriching their clients’ experiences. Clients constantly have more alternatives due to the entry of many affordable travel planning agencies; hence, ensuring satisfaction and loyalty is increasingly crucial. Peaky Adventures has to leverage existing technologies to create a positive and satisfactory customer experience. From AR applications to help customers navigate their desired destinations and chatbots utilized to book trips, good customer experience enhances how clients feel about their booking experience.

The era where tourists are often confined in a hotel, eating the same food every day, and interacting with individuals locally is coming to an end. Many travelers in the modern world are seeking destinations where they can engage with the landscapes, cultures, and people from the countries where they travel. For example, local food is a crucial attribute of many vacations, with tourists always trying new foods. Besides, cultural experiences are the highlight of many holidays, and modern tourists are always eager to participate and witness local traditions.

Augmented reality has become an essential tool for tourists. It connects virtual reality to real-world experiences. Augmented reality travel trends might include virtual museum exhibits that allow a tourist to view structures and objects in the actual world by allowing them to see them as a reconstruction of their original images. Augmented reality could also be applied in offering information about destinations a client wishes to explore, listings for travel and entertainment, and historical or cultural information about their desired destinations. Many travel agencies easily use augmented reality through standard devices like smartphones, driving this industry trend further.

Besides offering immersive and enjoyable gaming experiences, virtual reality has made it easier for tourists to plan vacations and explore different places globally before traveling. It can also augment visits to memorial sites by reconstructing ancient structures and other monuments as they appear in real life. This technology is also applied in ‘city marketing’ to lure potential clients into traveling to a particular destination.

Artificial intelligence systems have become one of the most popular trends in the tourism industry. Several types of artificial intelligence are currently being used across many travel agencies in the tourism industry. For instance, chatbots utilize artificial intelligence to streamline and automate many customer and sales service responsibilities. Ideally, clients demand more interaction and faster responses; hence chatbots help bridge this gap when humans are unavailable. Even though chatbots are limited in functionality, they could offer crucial information to clients. Moreover, machine learning enables such systems to gain knowledge from each interaction and improve continually. Artificial intelligence is also used in tourism to boost efficiency, customer satisfaction, and security.

‘Bleisure’ Travel

This type of travel is also referred to as ‘bizcation.’ Morgan (2022) explains that ‘Bleisure’ combines leisure activities and travel for commerce or work. Even though this trend is not among the latest in the industry, people are increasingly extending their business trips to experience leisure activities. ‘Gen Z and millennials have widely embraced Bleisure’ travel. For people under this age group and generation, combining leisure and work travel has become one of the most efficient ways to visit destinations they would otherwise fail to afford. The most popular type of ‘Bleisure’ journey in the modern world is where online freelancers go on vacations with their laptops as they work.

There are many actual and perceived barriers to entry in the travel and tourism industry. Organizations seeking to set up as travel planners and agents face several financial and legal challenges. These challenges might minimize competition among the firms that wish to enter the tourism industry. To begin with, an organization that wants to enter the market as a travel planner to offer package holidays is supposed to have Air Travel Organizers’ Licensing (ATOL). Economic Investigations (2015) explains that this licensing scheme was established to protect the public by ensuring that tourists do not incur the loss of money, leaving them stranded in foreign companies in case the travel organization they used is liquidated. Therefore, new entrants in the travel and tourism industry applying for Air Travel Organizers’ Licensing (ATOL) should pay bonds that would compensate tourists affected by any shortcomings from the travel company.

The costs of entering this market are also a significant factor affecting the setup of travel agencies in the tourism market. A leading travel agency revealed that the cost of establishing a travel agency managing 200,000 clients would need a net asset worth £9 million and a £6 million insurance bond. Moreover, an organization entering the travel and tourism market should expect losses for the first three years of operation. Thirdly, brand recognition challenges are also a possible barrier to entry. Clients are always likely to have preferences for travel companies. However, this is not the reality for many tourists. The brand of a travel company is the most negligible influential factor that impacts travelers’ preferences.

The main threats affecting the travel and tourism industry include government regulations. As mentioned above, startups in this industry must have an ATOL license to guarantee that their clients would be safe in their destinations if anything happens to the travel company while the customers are on vacation. Besides, travel companies are rapidly increasing in the United States, posing a significant threat of competition to existing and startup companies.

The United States labor force is stable, dynamic, and well educated. It consists of personalities attached to this country and has decided to see and stay through the previous periods of economic downturns. Peaky Adventure’s target customers are professionals with a net income of $65,000, married and single people, and children and adults.

With significant economic growth worldwide, travel agencies also contribute significantly to developing many countries’ GDP. The main competitors for Peaky Adventures are Expedia Group, Bookings Holdings, and American Express Travel. Expedia Group is a US-based online travel planning organization for small and consumer business travel (Biz Vibe, 2022). This organization is famous for its aggregator websites where clients can book hotels, car rentals, and flights. It is also a metasearch engine where clients could look up and make travel plans. On the other hand, Bookings Holdings is famous for operating tourism and travel search engines, including OpenTable, Momondo, Kayak.com, Priceline.com, Rentalcars.com, Agoda.com, and Cheapflights (Biz Vibe, 2022). Lastly, American Express Global Business Travel (GBT) is a travel company that offers its services mainly to business travelers.

The worksheet below provides a competitive analysis by assessing whether the listed factors are a weakness or a strength for Peaky Adventures and its competitors. This analysis also ranks the importance of these factors to Peaky adventure’s target market using the 1 to 5 scale. This information will help explain the competitive advantages of Peaky Adventures.

1. Discounting

Even though travel agencies provide discounts during the offseason, an organization should be selective in its implementation since discounts could reduce its profitability. Therefore, with last-minute deals, a travel company should only choose where there are many takers. Peaky Adventures should consider including conditions to discounts such as a limited number of travelers or minimum stay in the booking. Many travelers are accustomed to discounting prices, thus making it harder for travel agencies to change their rates.

1. Last Minute Pricing

This is a popular pricing strategy in the tourism industry that travel agencies use to fill last-minute gaps.

1. Seasonal Pricing

This is a common pricing strategy in the travel and tourism sector because there are seasons that many people travel and plan for vacations. For instance, many families travel to other countries during Christmas, and this season is when most travel agencies take advantage and raise their prices. Therefore, Peaky Adventures should take note of high and low seasons in fixing their prices.

1. Rack Rate

Travel agencies and other tourism companies must have rack rates. These are official travel rates before applying any discounts (Campbell, 2021). Ideally, they are brochure” prices that an organization prints before the next season approaches. In high seasons, the rack rate for attraction and activity operators often remains the same. Nonetheless, accommodation providers constantly change their rack rates to fill their capacity.

1. Packages

For an inclusive price, many tours are turning to tourist packages to sati,sfy their vacation needs, such as transfers, airfare, hostel, and tours. Therefore, designing tourist packages is an excellent strategy for stimulating demand and adding value without offering discounts. Tourist packages could also target niche markets such as relaxation and beauty, wine tasting and food, or golfing holidays. Peaky Adventures could utilize visible pricing that allows customers to select their most preferred tour packages based on their budget and travel preferences. However, this travel company could use disguised pricing (a pricing technique that hides the actual prices of components and the amount of discount offered by other operators.

1. Mark Up Pricing Strategy

This is done by setting the costs of activities, tours, and holidays to ensure profits from each sale. Peaky Adventures should identify all expenses linked with business operating, such as the time to promote or develop an experience or holiday.

1. Mark Down Pricing Strategy

This strategy requires a travel agency to mark down its prices to remain competitive in the industry (Reyhle, 2019). It is effective during slow months. Generally, if Peaky Adventures typically charges $2000 per head, it may mark down these costs to $1600 per head. This will allow the company to remain competitive and keep its operations afloat. Moreover, it may mean that Peaky Adventures get more bookings than usual without any promotional discounts. This will create more income for the organization.

Peaky Adventures will deliver its services through an online website where potential clients can visit and explore the traveling options that are available in the organization. This website will be operated by IT professionals and Artificial Intelligence when humans are out of reach. Some AI that would be used include chatbots to streamline and automate many customer and sales service responsibilities. Ideally, clients demand more interaction and faster responses; hence chatbots will help bridge this gap when humans are unavailable. The quality of services provided by Peaky Adventures will be maintained by asking for feedback from clients and asking them to rate their experiences planning and booking their flights with the travel agency. Peaky Adventure will also secure an ATOL license to ensure that it adheres to legal regulations and guarantee safety to its clients.

Biz Vibe (2022). Top 10 Travel Companies in the World by Sales in 2020, Travel Industry Factsheet. https://blog.bizvibe.com/blog/top-travel-companies

Campbell, K. (2021). Hotel Rack Rates: Everything You Need to Know. https://www.cvent.com/en/blog/hospitality/hotel-rack-rates

Economic Investigations (2015). Handout: Barriers to Entry – Tour Operators. https://peped.org/economicinvestigations/handout-barriers-to-entry-tour-operators/

Morgan, B. (2022). What Is Bleisure Travel, And How Is It Transforming The Hospitality Industry? Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2022/06/27/what-is-bleisure-travel-and-how-is-it-transforming-the-hospitality-industry/?sh=1d025d1b7231

Reyhle, N. L. (2019). The Top Retail Markdown Strategies for 2020. Light Speed. https://www.lightspeedhq.com/blog/the-top-retail-markdown-strategies/