Impact Of E-Business On The Local Agents/ Operators In Tourism Industry

TERM PAPER

Synopsis:

The tourism is a one of the business in India, which has a great scope and challenges for the management. Despite of the slogan “Incredible India” at the world cup 2011, the tourism industry still need to organise and prove its credential for its sustainable development. The local and poor people of India not seeing the benefit can cause the conflict and violence which further lead to the instability in the place. Employment and business opportunities can bring the local operators into the play and will boost local economy.

The present change in the information technology has made a great difference in the way business was done by the local agents earlier and at present. E-commerce has brought down the operation cost and more information is available than before. But with this the need for the skill sets are changed for the local players, basic computer literacy is must. Also the customers have easy access to internet, so they book their own tickets and indeed make the travel agents redundant.

 How this business system will be. Who all are the actors in tourism industry and how they are taking care of the needs of the local travel agents and people

Introduction

The growth in the IT sector has already put the India among the hot list to be watch in terms of GDP growth rate and the pace is enough to be felt on all other sectors as per the application of IT is concern. The E word added before the various existing words like business, commerce, tourism etc had altogether changed model of the existing system. The management system has a dramatic shift after the arrival of the IT. The new system other than finance system, marketing system, accounting system, supply chain system, etc is the IT system, which has now became the back bone of any business.  It is very important to understand that any fault in the IT system of a company is a business fault and the responsibility goes to CEO of the company.

The two major areas of concern are 1)HR challenges and 2)Sustainability of tourism industry using the current E-commerce business model. Since earlier most of the business was done by the local agents and operators, the skill set know required will be different, more inbound(foreign) tourist have increase the challenge in term of the human development to fill the growing demands in this industry.

Methodology:

We have two source of collecting data 1) primary and 2) secondary. We used the secondary source to develop our case.  In order to develop the case in a more systematic way , we have used the SAP-LAP  (situation –actor-process, learning-action-performance ) framework ( Sushil 1994,1997,2001) to evolve the learning issues for the current situation and suggest actions for the improvement.

Figure : SAP LAP analysis framework (Sushil, 2001)

                                              

SAP inquiry

Situation

1)  What is the current status of number of tourists in India (domestic and foreigner)?

2)  What   E business model, Indians are using?

3)  What is the role of “Incredible India” programmes?

4)  What all involved in the supply chain?

5) What is the role of the operators and agents?

6) What is the education background of operators/agents?

7) What all training facilities are available?

8) What is the role of the Ministry of Tourism?

Actor

1) Who is the nodal agency?

2) Who all are the players in the supply chain of Tourism?

3) Who all are providing the training programs?

Process

1) How the E business works in tourism industry?

2) How the operator / agents working with/without e business?

3) How the operators/ agents are selected by the Ministry of tourism?

4) How the training and skill enhancement is done?