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Essay: Popularity as a holiday

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  • Published: 21 June 2012*
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  • Words: 1,363 (approx)
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Popularity as a holiday

Introduction(partly)

Bulgaria is a country in the eastern part of Europe whose popularity as a holiday destination has greatly increases in the last five years. A forecast done by the Bulgarian Ministry of Economy shows that the number of tourists visiting the country will be more than 20 million for 2010. As well as known with its sea and ski resorts, Bulgaria is also popular destination due to its rich history and unique nature. The current tourist activity is stretched over a number of historical places, many of which are included in the UNESKO world heritage list, thousands of undiscovered rural places as well as traditional activities, hundreds of natural mineral springs and attractive cultural monuments.

‘Bulgarian Dream holidays UK’ is London based travel agency that sells airline tickets and holiday packages to Bulgaria exclusively to British clients and Bulgarians based in UK. Two entrepreneurs created the company in 2005 to meet the growing demand from Bulgarian and UK clients. Soon after the company establishment the roles have been divided between their founders. One of them took care about marketing of the company while the other, who had recent experience in sales field, took on sales. The formula that the company adopted was highly successful, and they had to appoint two more employees to handle the increasing demand. Currently the company is trying to expand their customers target age. Thus, the founders decided to use classical business model which involved selling holiday packages in well known Bulgarian resorts. Due to significant changes in travel market and competition of other holiday suppliers, ‘Bulgarian Dream holidays UK’ has decided to use completely different business model. It launched offering unusual holiday packages ideas in Bulgaria such as dental, rural and extreme tourism. Dental private practice in UK is very expensive, that’s why the company founders has come up with ‘dental tourism’ idea. It includes booking a private dental appointment as well as the necessary sleeping arrangements in an attractive Bulgarian place and this deal sometimes can come at a price up to 3 times less then what a UK dental service would cost. Dental and hunting tourism became a real “spot on”, in terms of package sales, recently. The current weakness of the company is its web presence. The existing website does not allow users to book holidays and trips to Bulgaria; currently its only function is to give information about different types of holidays that company offer. The future plans include investment in a new website that can be competitive against bigger holiday companies. However its new purpose will be also to allow users book a holiday and book a flight trough their website.

Similar models of business

1. The first example is a website called www.infohub.com. This website advertises trips and recommends different and inspirational travel ideas .The nature of its business is to provide a platform where different kind of travel companies and single travel agents can advertise their services. The website benefits from huge popularity because of its unique travel ideas in combination with good business strategy. While standard holiday and travel websites such as ‘Opodo.com’ and ‘Expedia.com’ offer trips to well known destinations, ‘Infohub’ has the inspirational twist for their customers which is probably their formula for success. Currently they are looking for travel companies that offer only unusual types of holidays. With the combination of innovative approaches and keeping the business up to the current holiday and travel needs ‘Infohub’ is one of the most travel companies engaged in alternative travel business.

2. The next model is a Bulgarian travel agency (www.magictours-bg.com) that offers uncommon holidays packages in Bulgaria. The main idea is potentially prospective the website has a number of shortcomings which can have a strong negative influence on the business. One example is the lack of specific information about their holiday offers such as dates and prices. Furthermore, the pricing information which is crucial for the users could be more meaningful by adding a currency converting option. Multi currency display systems are wildly used in travel websites feature that cannot be seen in this website. These are some of the weaknesses which not in favor for the business strategy of this travel agency.

In these two examples the companies are similar and offer relatively unpopular holiday packages, but they are different in the way their business is structured. In first case with ‘Infohub’, the strategy is simple – they provide a platform where agencies can advertise their products and get charged for the service from ‘Infohub’. The slogan “The ultimate source of inspiring travel ideas” expresses clearly the business strategy of the company. While there are other web based companies trying to sell similar products, they focus on different vision about traveling. Currently they offer over 20 000 different inspirational holidays covering activities from Artist workshops to Yoga retreats. On a global operational level thy have over 5000 partners in 120 countries. The one category that these two companies, ‘Infohub’ and ‘Magictours’, can be compared is their innovative ideas about traveling. In this comparison, however, the question is what restrains the Bulgarian travel company’s business to expend to the same level as ‘Infohub’. The reasons can be summarized as follows:

  1. Lack of good knowledge in latest e-commerce trends.
  2. Company message to the customers is not clearly stated.
  3. Does not convince customers to buy their product.
  4. No clear vision about company global expenditure in the market.
  5. Minor collaboration with bigger travel companies.

Organizational and managerialstructure

  1. The director will be responsible for business strategy and company performance.
  2. IT support officer-responsible for the website structure and regular updates
  3. PR officer’s role will be to look after the company’s image on the travel market, liaising with advertising companies and maintaining relations with bigger travel companies. In the organization the worker will collaborate with the company director and IT support officer.
  4. Human Resources officer’s role will be to look after employees’ performance as well as scouting for a new talents that can be employed in the company.
  5. Travel and accommodation officer’s role will involve finding and dealing with travelling and accommodation companies in order to provide best possible services.
  6. Activity consultant will be liaising with tour operators and other key partners such as local extreme activities organisations, hunting organisations, etc. His responsibilities will be also to advise client about visas (where needed),travel insurance, car hire, etc.

Strengths of Bulgarian truism sector

Weaknessesof Bulgarian tourism sector

According to current statistics provided by Bulgarian National Statistical Institute, there is a 15% decrease of foreign tourists visited Bulgaria for the last quarter of 2010. This could partly be accounted by the current economic downturn and overdevelopment in the country. Furthermore, historical tourism is still undeveloped in Bulgaria. Although the country has many monuments, monasteries and archeological ruins they are still quite unknown and unpopular amongst the tourists. Rural tourism is another element that needs further development in Bulgaria. There are many places and villages in and around the beautiful Bulgarian mountains that can be great places for eco tourism, however, they still need advertising and further promotion in order to be employed by the tourist’s sector.

Recent research done by National Tourism Agency shows that More than 90% of Bulgarian travel companies do not offer holiday packages for Bulgarian tourist places. Their business approaches overseas destinations in countries such as Greece, Turkey and Macedonia.

Summarizing,the main tourist attractions of Bulgaria can be grouped as follow.

Black sea resorts-the main benefits are 380 kilometers of coast line, mineral water springs, holiday villages and campsites .

Snow resorts-3 main resorts (Bansko, Borovets, Pamporovo) are in service during the winter season in the period between December and March . This resorts are very popular destination for many western countries tourists.

Spa tourism is not very popular in Bulgaria even though there are about 600 natural mineral water springs.

Historical tourism is another niche that is underdeveloped in Bulgaria, although has great potential and the fact that has been home for many ancient civilizations.

Hunting tourism-Bulgaria has 56 elite hunting grounds but revenues for 2007 shows that only 2 million Euros are spend for this sort of tourism. In contrast is Hungary has only 6 hunting grounds and revenues nearly 300 million EUR.

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