Visual Portfolio - Tourism Distribution Systems - Portfolio Assignment Help

Introduction

In last few decades, Urban Tourism has attracted an increasing amount of attention. Researches are being carried out on a diverse range of topics related to tourism including marketing and distribution channels developed for tourism. Tourism is being given so much importance in recent times due to its increasing popularity amongst people and also because it has emerged as one of the greatest economic boosters and has already contributed to many country's economic developments in last few decades (Jørgensen, 2017). It is to be noted that increasing popularity of urban tourism is the result of diverse experience it has to offer to people with different requirements and experience. This portfolio effectively discusses the segmentation and functions present in urban tourism along with the stakeholders' involvement and requirement in the present scenario. The tourist routing systems based on their preferable locations and a brief history of tours and travels has also been discussed in this portfolio (Cornelissen, 2017). The portfolio also gives an insight about the Key elements that impact and control tourist behaviour such as economic, environmental and geographical condition and education level of a person, along with location and movement of products and services within the TDS and role of economic, financial, geographic and political information in urban tourism

The Segment and Functions of Urban Tourism

Every year, millions of people decide to leave their houses and visit new country or place to enjoy the variety of hospitalities, food and beverages and experience weather and climatic atmosphere that are new to them by visiting new places and acting as tourists to them (Papadimitriou et al., 2015). The numbers of tourists are increasing worldwide every year because of increasing globalisation and also due to increase in advertisements and promotional programmes run by every country to attract new visitors every year. Tourism has now become a very important economic factor that contributes to GDP and development rate of a country as it is a zillion dollar industry if counted globally. Every country has two segments of tourist one that belongs to that particular country and is interested in exploring the domestic region of their country and the other ones are international tourists, that comes to visit a country from the whole different country (Miller et al., 2015). These international and domestic tourists usually travel to enjoy services such as accommodations, transportation, food, beverages, and transportation services and hence provides business to all these industries.

Accommodation

It has been observed that, the vaster the diversity of accommodation present in a country the most diverse market segment of the urban tourism it experiences. The travellers are not just limited to casual tourists that visit a place to enjoy basic services they also consist of corporate travellers that visit a city or a country for private or government business affairs (Maitland & Newman, 2014). Therefore for such visitors, it is important for tourism agencies to maintain practice tour bus circuits and affordable intercity ferries for their comfortable experiences. There could be other diverse kinds of visitors to a country that reflect a parallel distribution channel or a complex market segment for urban tourism.

Attractions

However, a different segment of visitors is commonly attracted by diversity present in culture and heritage of a place. The monuments, museums, natural sites and architectural wonders present at a place contributes most amongst all other attraction points present at a place (Yovcheva, 2015). In addition to that diverse nature of adventure sports and party places are the most important attraction points for younger tourists. The big music festivals and concerts attract a large number of tourists from worldwide every year and contribute to creating thousands of jobs worldwide.

Tourist route system

Models of routes have always been important to travellers even before tourism was defined and was just limited to people exploring routes to different places for trade and religious purpose (Önder et al., 2017). It is with the invention of cars and other modes of transportation that tourism is how we know it today and every route and travel facilities are more planned than it ever was. In present time there is a variety of guidebooks, television, and online forms are available that can effectively guide new travellers to give a theme to their routes. Modernisation has contributed to making urban travelling and experience that make tourists feel like poets and storytellers which have given travelling business more life. Moreover, there are other kinds of mature tourists that do not require guidebooks and online help to guide them. This tourist has years of experience in travelling and is most probably the creators of route guides for the younger generations.

However, the modern era of urban tourism would not have been possible without tourism having its definition as we know it today (Brouder & Ioannides, 2014). Tourism was given its definition after many attempts of various geographers. Leiper was a geographer that gave the basis of the definition to which many other geographers made models give tourism its proper definition. Leiper introduces the terms such as ‘movement', ‘home ', ‘market' and connected it with ‘tourist generating region' to generate a definition that connects tourists to the destination through routes.

Stakeholder in Urban Tourism

The structure of distribution system and stakeholders varies from market to market as per behaviour of the consumers. The stakeholders in urban tourism understand the target clients and deliver them with packages that suit them best (Rogerson & Rogerson, 2014). The stakeholders in urban tourism consist of a complex global network of independents planners and distributors who develop, promote and purchase packages though series of intermediaries and network of distributors to deliver the consumers the best tourism experience. Globalisation, modernisation and development in technology have vastly transformed tourism industry in last decade, as more number of people are engaging themselves in tourist activities than ever before. The Internet has helped various sectors of the distribution system to effectively make crossovers in its roles and functions to the target number of customers and help them efficiently. A traditional stakeholder diagram related to urban tourism consists of the inbound tour operator, travel agent, meeting planner, wholesaler and customer.

Inbound tour operators

Inbound tour operators are destination management companies that provide customers with location plans and packages for their travel (Papadimitriou et al., 2015). These companies also help the clients in making coordinate’s reservation, confirmations of payments and making arrangements for overseas clients in the guest country.

Travel Agents

Travel agents are online or offline distribution specialists with no intermediaries, they directly deal with customers and their travel products (Sotiriadis & Fotiadis, 2017).

Wholesaler

Wholesalers are companies located in overseas markets that provide network between travel agents and ITO's. It is Wholesaler companies that purchase ITO developed tour packages or develop packages and itineraries offering transport, tours and accommodations for travel agents and consumers on their own.

Historic timeline of development of Urban Tourism Segments

Historically, tour and travel for leisure were just reserved for royalties, it has been found that in Roman times up to 17thcentury the travel was encouraged only amongst young royal men. However, other people also travelled but only for trade and religious purposes. It was in 1758 that the first known travel agency, Cox & Kings was founded, which was a travel agent for British Royal armed force (Law et al,.2015). It was not up until 1841 when leisure travel agency was Thomas Cook that people knew about travelling for leisure. Commercial travel package with railway tickets and the printed guide was first introduced by Thomas Cook in 1845.

Furthermore, in 1952 first commercial flight took off from London, England, to Johannesburg, South Africa, and Colombo, Sri Lanka. Tourism developed over last two decades, new travel companies opened up, tourism developed and with the commercialisation of automobiles and the era of the internet in today's time tour and travel has become multi-billion industries all over the globe (Stang et al, 2016). Today, the customers are enjoying most affordable packages due to increasing competition among all the existing travel organisations.

Key elements that impact and control tourist behaviour

The factors that control tourist behaviours the most are geographical factors such as environmental and geographic conditions, amenities, advertisements, and marketing of travel agencies (Berné et al., 2015). Also, information available on the social network plays a major role for tourist these days along with the kind of destination they want to travel to. Education of tourist also plays a major role in its behaviour as the more educated tourist would always be more curious to explore hidden heritage and culture of a place he visits.

Location and Movement of Products and Services within the TDS

The flowchart shows that offerings of packages and their prices are promoted in such a way that is attractive to customers and links the national and international distribution channels for easy functioning of the packages.The chart also depicts a solid understanding of potential clients of the tourism organisations who are looking for in a tourism experience, by means of partnering with other companies and wholesalers to create attractive packages.

Role of Economic, Financial, Geographic and Political information Urban Tourism

Key Attributes Associated With That Segment or Function

Conclusion

It can be concluded from the portfolio that urban tourism is one of the biggest contributors to the economies of countries in present time and globalisation and modernisation are important factors that have contributed in the promotion of urban tourism throughout the globe. It is observed from the portfolio that international and domestic tourists usually take tours to foreign and domestic land to enjoy services such as accommodations, transportation, food, beverages, and transportation services and hence contributes in providing business to all these industries. The portfolio also identified inbound tour operators, travel agents, Wholesaler and clients to be the traditional stakeholders in urban tourism where we recognised that wholesaler acts as a network source between travel agents and inbound tour operators to provide people who desire to travel with attractive packages which get delivered to him through travel agents and are organised in foreign lands by inbound tour operators. The portfolio also discussed the history of urban tourism and concluded that in present time people are travelling for leisure more than they use to do a few decades before. In addition to that, we have finally discussed the impact of economic, social and environmental factors on urban tourism.