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Marketing Plan for Bamboo Travels in London

Introduction

Before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, tourism was one of the fastest-growing industries globally. In many countries, tourism plays a significant role in accelerating economic growth. Different governments across the world have, thus, created conducive atmospheres for tourism to thrive in their respective countries. As a result, many businesses have taken advantage of this and established various tourism-related products and services. One such business is Bamboo Tours, which is based in London. Noteworthily, the city of London and the United Kingdom has hundreds of tour operators, a factor that presents Bamboo Tours with stiff competition.

This implies that the company must come up with strategic ways of standing out from its competitors and promote itself as the best tour operator for tourists. Incidentally, one of the best effective ways to achieve this is to develop a marketing plan that will highlight what makes it more superior in the industry. With this marketing plan, Bamboo Tours will increase its customer engagements and boost revenue.

Mission

To deliver quality tour services that exceed the expectations of our clients and achieve an annual growth rate of 10%

Vision

To promote the city of London as an adventurer destination worthy of visit for tourism, cultural, and educational purposes.

Aims and Objectives

  1. Achieve and maintain steady and positive growth each year.
  2. Experience new customer growths who will turn to be long-term clients
  3. To be recognized as the provider of high-end and quality tour operations in London.
  4. A reduction of our fixed overhead costs by maintaining a disciplined growth
  5. Attaining a double-digit growth of financial performance

SWOT Analysis

To develop strategic goals for the company’s tour and travel experience, it will have to establish its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This will be an appropriate way of knowing its market positioning.

Strengths

Bamboo Travel Ltd staff have experienced knowledge about the various tourist destinations and attractions that London has to offer to visitors. They are always available to help customers with the right information on the most appropriate places to visit while in London. The tour company also has deals with various airlines such as British Airways that ensures that it is constantly supplied with customers for trips (Goryushkina et al., 2016). Furthermore, the company also provides additional services such as hotel bookings and relaying relevant information about the availability of various tourism events to customers.

Moreover, Bamboo Travel Ltd has been in the industry for quite a while and, thus, it understands all corners of London including some of the most breathtaking tourist destinations. In addition, the city of London has various beautiful sceneries and destinations that the tour company can always leverage. It has a vibrant culture and people who are always open and welcoming to visitors. This makes it more attractive to visitors who Bamboo Travels Ltd can cash on. The company’s vehicles are also Wi-fi enabled to allow travelers to easily access the internet whenever they are using its services.

Weaknesses

London is a city that is elaborately connected with functional public transport charges relatively cheaper amounts to use. This means that a significant number of tourists, especially those operating on a budget might not see the need to pay premium prices to a tour company like Bamboo Travel Ltd. In addition, the company still operates diesel engine vehicles, which have been blamed on climate change. Many tourists are increasingly becoming environmentally conscious and would like to use products and services that have little detrimental impact on the environment. Therefore, failure to quickly adopt technology in the form of solar-powered cars is a major weakness that is causing the company many clients.

On the other hand, tourists have been blamed for polluting the environment in various ways. Every destination they visit is left littered, resources overused, and sometimes overcrowded. In the eyes of the public, travel companies significantly contribute to this. The effect of this is that Bamboo Travel Ltd has a bad image among some Londoners.

Opportunities

Not many people are aware of the tourism potential of London including its attractions, beautiful sceneries, hotels, and accommodation as well as education opportunities available. Bamboo Travel Ltd can take advantage of this opportunity to educate people especially the millennials to boost its customer numbers. The company can also make a deliberate move to embrace technology and adopt fuel-efficient or environmentally friendly vehicles to avoid backlashes from green technology enthusiasts. Technology can also be applied in other related services such as online bookings to avoid waiting periods for customers.

In addition, London is a big city with a huge population. Only a small fraction of the city residents consume its tourism products (Nault, 2017). With a comprehensive marketing strategy, this situation can be changed to convince more people to practice domestic tourism. This implies that there is a huge opportunity for growth of Bamboo Travel Ltd.

Threats

The biggest threat to the operations of the Bamboo Travel Ltd in London is competition. Some of the company’s competitors include Collete, Explore, Europamundo Vacations, Evaneos, Untours, Planet Rail, Exodus Travels, and Travel Talk. All these tour and travel businesses fiercely rival each other for the limited number of travelers across the city. There is also the threat of terrorism, which often scares potential visitors from making their trips (Sarsby, 2016). Furthermore, due to the problems linked to climate change, sometimes the city of London experiences extended winter periods. Some people, especially foreigners do not prefer traveling around this time.

The latest threat, however, has been that of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has come with various implications such as cancellation of flights, staying at home, and social distancing. This has dealt a big blow to the tourism industry worldwide. It has also ruined the economies of many countries and drastically reduced household expenditures (Fotiadis et al., 2018). As a result, not many people can afford to travel for holidays at a time that they are still reeling from an economic downturn (Magalhães et al., 2017). Furthermore, the city of London occasionally experiences heavy traffic snarl-ups, which seriously affect travel plans for most customers.

Pestle Analysis

To gauge the exact operating environment for Bamboo Travel Ltd, it is significant to analyze London’s tourism industry as a whole.

Political Factors

Tourism as an industry is greatly impacted by the government’s political policies and goodwill. In London and England as a whole, the government has allowed for the free movement of people. Despite Brexit, the UK government still allows citizens from various countries, particularly within the European Union to visit it with minimum entry requirements. This is a boost to the tourism industry, which Bamboo Travel Ltd can leverage since it allows citizens from other countries to come and spend their money in the country (Silva et al., 2018). However, political factors in some countries could either enhance or boost the marketing plans of Bamboo Travel Ltd.

For instance, in countries such as Vietnam, North Korea, China, and Iran, social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have been banned. This implies that Bamboo Travel Ltd must use other platforms in its marketing strategies aimed at attracting tourists from these countries.

Economic Factors

In its endeavor to attract many travelers, Bamboo Travel Ltd must be aware of the economic conditions and circumstances of their target customers. It must position itself to appeal to both young and old generations by designing different packages for them (Safaeva et al., 2019). For instance, the older generations might have high disposable incomes as compared to the younger generation (Franco & Castillo, 2018). Effectively, Bamboo Travel Ltd must come up with ways of lowering subscription rates for youngsters to keep them as customers. The balances can be offset by charging premium prices to gold-level clients.

Social Factors

It will also be significant for Bamboo Travel Ltd to understand what is socially accepted within its different categories of customers. Some clients might want to travel as groups while others prefer family units or solitary travels. The company must have vehicles that will be available to take care of the needs of all the customers. This will also include paying attention to the kind of music or radio talk show that it will be playing in its vehicles (Gupta, 2018). After Bamboo Travel Ltd has identified all its target markets, it will establish its level of internet usage to appropriately design online advertisements and bookings.

Technological Factors

To enhance its presence to its target customers, Bamboo Travel Ltd will have to employ different technological approaches. It must begin with having a functioning and easy-to-navigate website that users can visit and find first-hand information about several details of the company. The website must be available for use on PC, smartphones, and tablets (Anon, 2021). Bamboo Travel Ltd must also leverage social media and have direct links that take users there from the website.

Environmental Factors

Tourism as a whole is a big cause of alarm for the detrimental effects that it leaves on the environment. Bamboo Travel Ltd will have to rethink its approaches when it comes to the issue of the environment. This will include adopting energy-efficient tour vehicles and installing litter bins within the vehicles to avoid littering the environment (Kamel, 2019). The company must also invest in education programs that will train visitors on how to take care of the environment.

Competitors Analysis

The competitive position occupied by Bamboo Travel Ltd in London and the rest of the UK can be analyzed using Porter’s five forces. Supplier power is the assessment of how the company’s suppliers can drive up costs (Mulyani et al., 2020). Their primary suppliers are fuel companies, vehicle spare part shops, and tour vehicles. If any of them increases costs, the same will be transferred to the customer.

This can make the clients seek cheaper options within the market. The power of the buyer will be determined by the number of available visitors in the market depending on the seasons. Meanwhile, the competitive rivalry will assess the different services offered by the company’s competitors (Niyas & Arun, 2020). Fortunately, the tour and travel industry does not suffer from the threat of substitution since the various locations in London can only be accessed by vehicles. However, since tourism is attracting many players, there is the threat of new entrants, which will erode Bamboo Travel Ltd.’s profits.

Marketing Strategies and Resource Analysis

To attract more travelers and stand out from competitors, Bamboo Travel Ltd will have to deploy particular strategies to market itself. The marketing strategies used by the company should adapt to the technological evolutions of the day. However, this will depend on the type of the target market. Thus, Bamboo Travel Ltd should first strive to understand its target customers (Labanauskaitė et al., 2020). If the target customers are young people then the company should enhance its online presence and make its website and social media usage visible. It should frequently optimize its website to boost its conversion rates and improve user experience.

This should also be supplemented by emails, blogs, and live videos (Lin & Hsu, 2016). On the other hand, if the target market is old people, traditional platforms like newspapers and radio ads can suffice. Incidentally, all these platforms, whether old or new, serve as resources that can be used to drive marketing campaigns. In addition, the company can stock itself using tour guides, tips, and video guides that will make travelers more engaged and learn more about the tourist hotspots in London.

Budget Planning Table

2022 2023 2024
Advertising £22,570 £22,570 £22,570
Printed material £1480 £1480 £1480
Social media influencers £1850 £1998 £2,220
Website maintenance £740 £740 £740
Total £26,640 £26,788 £27,010
Budget Planning Chart for 2024
Budget Planning Chart for 2024.

Implementation Plan

Milestone Start Date End Date Budget In-Charge Department
Marketing plan completion 1/1/2022 31/1/2022 £0 Marketing manager Sales and Marketing
Website development 2/2/2022 31/3/2022 £1,110 Head of IT IT
Training employees on how to use it 2/4/2022 9/4/2022 £666 Head of IT IT
Completion of first trip 15/4/2022 16/4/2022 £74 Operations Manager Operations
Completion of 100thtrip 24/4/2022 25/4/2022 £2,220 Operations Manager Operations

Evaluation Methods

The efficacy of this marketing plan will be evaluated by measuring the number of successful tours made within a specified time and the amount of revenue that the tours would have earned for the company. This will be measured against the expenses incurred (Butnaru et al., 2018). This will be achieved through the use of software that will categorize all the items against their targeted amounts.

Reference List

Anon., (2021) ‘Business Continuity Plan for Tour Operator in a Crisis of COVID 19 in Thailand.’Psychology and Education Journal, 58(1), p. Web.

Butnaru, G. I., Miller, A., Nita, V. & Stefanica, M., (2018) ‘A new approach on the quality evaluation of tourist services.’ Economic Research, 31(1), pp. 1418-1436. Web.

Fotiadis, A., Mombeuil, C. & Valek, N. S., (2018) ‘Designing and Implementing a Marketing Plan,’inSotiriadis, M (eds)The Emerald Handbook of Entrepreneurship in Tourism, Travel and Hospitality. London: Emerald Publishing Limited, pp. 297-311. Web.

Franco, E. R. L. & Castillo, S. F. F., (2018) ‘Marketing strategies for tour operators in the parish Posorja Province of Guayas.’Journal of Business and Entrepreneurial Studie, 2(2), p. 37–44. Web.

Goryushkina, N. Y., Shkurkin, D. V. & Petrenko, A. S., (2016) ‘Marketing Management in the Sphere of Hotel and Tourist Services.’International Review of Management and Marketing, suppl. Special Issue, 6(6), pp. 207-213.

Gupta, G., (2018) ‘Inclusive Use of Digital Marketing in Tourism Industry,’ in Sotiriadis, M (eds) Information Systems Design and Intelligent Applications. Singapore: Springer, pp. 411-419. Web.

Kamel, M., (2019) Tourism Marketing Strategies for 2021 and Beyond. Web.

Labanauskaitė, D., Fiore, M. & Stašys, R., (2020) ‘Use of E-marketing tools as communication management in the tourism industry.’Tourism Management Perspectives, Volume 34, p. Web.

Lin , C.-T. & Hsu, S.-C., (2016)‘Constructing a Travel Risks’ Evaluation Model for Tour Freelancers Based on the ANP Approach.’Advances in Operations Research, p. Web.

Magalhães, M. J., Magalhães, S. T., Rodriguese, C. & Marques, S., (2017) ‘Acceptance criteria in a Promotional Tourism Demarketing Plan.’Procedia Computer Science, Volume 121, pp. 934-939. Web.

Mulyani, A., Kurniadi, D., Septiana, Y. & Wahyono, T., (2020) ‘Strategic Planning For The Implementation Of Tourism Information Systems.’International Journal Of Scientific & Technology Research Volume , 9(2), pp. 4714-4717.

Nault, A., (2017) Marketing strategies in the tourism sector. Web.

Niyas, M. M. & Arun, K. C., (2020) ‘Porter’s five forces in achieving competitive advantage by improving the organizational knowledge and innovative services in Sri Lanka’s tourism industry.’PalArch’s Journal of Archaeology of Egypt/ Egyptology, 7(17), pp. 5209 – 5220.

Safaeva, S. R., Ishankhodjaeva, D. A., Juraeva , N. A. &Matyunina, O. E., (2019) ‘Economic and Legal Aspects of Tourism Regulation in the New Economy: International Practice.’Journal of Environmental Management and Tourism, 2(34), pp. 460 – 465. Web.

Sarsby, A., (2016) Swot Analysis: A Guide to Swot for Business Studies Students. New York: Spectaris Ltd.

Silva, M. A. d., Costa, R. A. & Moreira, A. C., 2018. The influence of travel agents and tour operators’ perspectives on a tourism destination. The case of Portuguese intermediaries on Brazil’s image. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Volume 34, pp. 93-104. Web.

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ApeGrade. "Marketing Plan for Bamboo Travels in London." January 6, 2023. https://apegrade.com/marketing-plan-for-bamboo-travels-in-london/.

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ApeGrade. 2023. "Marketing Plan for Bamboo Travels in London." January 6, 2023. https://apegrade.com/marketing-plan-for-bamboo-travels-in-london/.

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ApeGrade. (2023) 'Marketing Plan for Bamboo Travels in London'. 6 January.

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