Company Selected
The company selected is Carnival Corporation & plc, which is the largest travel leisure company in the world today. The company operates approximately ten cruise line brands with over 100 vessels operating in different parts of the world. The company, founded in 1972, has grown towards becoming one the preferred brands in the travel leisure industry with the number of tourists using its brands increasing significantly in the last few years. According to the company's 2017 financial report, Carnival Corporation & plc had a revenue base of US$17.510 billion with the number of employees increasing to over 120,000.
Time Sequence
Based on the company's significant growth pattern, it is essential to reflect on crucial goals that seek to increase its reach within the tourism industry. The following time sequence will be implemented in the 2019 financial year as part of enhancing the possibility for the company to build its successive pattern.
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Q1 (January-March 2019): Roll out of the Carnival Corporation & plc mobile app to create a multichannel approach for customer booking. Customer booking acts as a determinant of performance for companies in the tourism and travel industry (Neuhofer, Buhalis, & Ladkin, 2014).
Q2 (April-June 2019): Increase bookings through the mobile app by 50%. The company may focus on engaging in marketing campaigns as a way of increasing traffic towards the mobile app as one of the critical ideas for making bookings. Marketing acts as a strategic approach for tourism companies to build their strategic positioning in the industry (Iyer, Dey, & Chakraborty, 2015).
Q3 (July-September 2019): the Complete rollout of the mobile app infrastructure to match demands in the western countries. In this quarter, the company will focus on shifting a majority of its operations to focus on the app as a way of building a progressive avenue from which to define its use of technology to build competitive advantage.
Q4 (October-December 2019): Reevaluation of the Carnival Corporation & plc to determine some of the critical areas that the company would need to consider for improvements moving into the next year. In this quarter, the company will focus much of its attention on gaining customer feedback considering that this is a period where a significant number of tourists travel to help make changes for improvements.
Pros and Cons
From the time sequence, as presented, it is essential to embark on an analysis of the pros and cons associated with the new approaches set out for the company to determine the effectiveness of the plan.
Pros
The first notable advantage of the new approach is that it would help improve the company’s market position attributed to its incorporation of a multichannel approach to bookings. Mobile apps act as critical drivers for success in the tourism industry attributed to the number of people with access to smartphones that would increase capacity for them to use such apps (Ukpabi & Karjaluoto, 2017).
The second advantage is that the introduction of the mobile app will help create an avenue for flexibility on the part of the customers allowing them to make bookings much more effectively.
Lastly, uptake of technology may also act as a critical advantage to consider, as the uptake for smartphone apps has increased significantly within the last few years. The company may use this outcome to its advantage as a way of ensuring that it engages in effective marketing to increase knowledge of the app among its customers.
Cons
The cost of implementation is one of the critical disadvantages for the company to consider. The process involved in the development and implementation of the mobile app is costly, thus, suggesting the overall possibility that this would impact the ability of the company to meet its expected outcome.
Cost of Reversibility
In this case, the company invested in the development and implementation of a mobile app as a way of increasing its competitive advantage when compared to some of its key competitors in the market. If the app did not achieve its intended objective, the cost of reversibility would be a financial loss of approximately $258,612 within that fiscal year. The cost includes costs associated with the development of the app, implementation and marketing processes. On the other hand, it is essential to consider that this may also translate to a revenue loss of approximately $200,000 taking into account the number of people that will shift their attention towards using the app for bookings. Usage of the mobile app as part of the tourism industry presents significant challenges in trying to boost customer confidence on the company's involved, as some of the apps may fail to function as per expectations (Mahajan, Patil, Gupta, & Pawar, 2015).
Summary/Conclusion
Based on the analysis conducted, the company may focus on the development and implementation of the mobile app as part of enhancing its capacity to build a progressive avenue for enhanced performance. The calculated risk for this process may include risks associated with financial losses, as well as, reduced consumer confidence, which would occur in the event of failure of the app. However, the advantages of the app outweigh the risks meaning that the company would be in a better position from which to reflect on the overall possibilities of achieving set goals and objectives while trying to build its competitive advantage.
References
Iyer, V. R., Dey, N., & Chakraborty, S. (2015). The advent of information technology in the world of tourism. Emerging innovative marketing strategies in the tourism industry (pp. 44-53). IGI Global.
Mahajan, K. B., Patil, A. S., Gupta, R. H., & Pawar, B. V. (2015). A New ICT based Business Model for Tourism Industry for the Maharashtra and Goa States of India. International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Systems , 8 (1).
Neuhofer, B., Buhalis, D., & Ladkin, A. (2014). A typology of technology ‐ enhanced tourism experiences. International Journal of Tourism Research , 16 (4), 340-350.
Ukpabi, D. C., & Karjaluoto, H. (2017). Consumers’ acceptance of information and communications technology in tourism: A review. Telematics and Informatics , 34 (5), 618-644.
