Business Environment of the Thomas Cook

MAIN BODY

a) Key issues in the business environment that are significant for the Travel and leisure sector

Business Environment is classified into two category that is internal and external. Externals environment is further divided into micro and macro. Macro environment is a collection of various aspects such as political, economical and many more. Travel and leisure is a sector which comes under hospitality industry. In order to identify key macro issues it is important to use PESTLE analysis model. Issues effecting business environment of Thomas cook is discussed below:

Political issues - Political factors are the issues which are faced by an organisation due to political parties of nation in which a company operates. Thomas cook is a multinational company which operates in several countries due to which they has to handle political issues of various countries. These issues may arise out of policies and procedures which are prescribed by political parties of a country. Travel and leisure is a sector which requires numerous permissions and authorities due to which it is even harder for organisations like Thomas cook to handle these issues which occur in their business environment.

Economic issues - Economic factors includes taxation and interest rates which impacts demand and supply of a company. In the case of travel and leisure sector, taxation rates on hotels and other necessary requirements can effect demand of Thomas cook. For example: If due to economic factors taxation rates on hotels accommodation increase then accordingly costs of travel packages of Thomas cook will also increase which will impact it's demand and supply (Hamilton and Webster, 2015).

Social issues - These factors are the choices and preferences of society due to which business environment of an organisation gets influenced. For example: If current market trend changes and prefers to travel to distinct places then travel companies has to face issues of high cost involvement in order to research about those distinct places.

Technological issues - Current scenario of world is highly influenced by technological factors. Every consumer requires technical effect in the services they get. In the case of Travel and leisure sector, consumers demand for services which are technology friendly due to which cost of their travel packages increases. The most significant example of technology is emergence of internet. By using the technology of internet, travel industry can get benefitted but this convenience also has few issues such as non reliability and high chances of fraud.

Legal issues - These issues are the laws and legislations which limits the operations of a business organisation. These laws restrict the Travel and leisure industry to perform various tasks. For example: Thomas Cook is not permissible to provide travel packages to their clients of travel destinations which are restricted by governmental authorities. This factor has an another impact on this company. Thomas cook operates in multiple countries due to which they has to follow the laws and legislations of all those countries (Huang-Horowitz, 2015).

Environmental issues - These factors are the issues which are raised from the environment. Travel and leisure sector involves operations of travelling to different locations and variety in the environment of those locations can impact their operations.

The above key issues states that the business environment of travel and leisure sector is influenced by various kinds of factors. The above issues reflects the problems which are usually faced by travel industry and its companies mainly Thomas Cook. Besides these macro issues, there are few other issues as well which are faced by travel and leisure companies. Staff imvolment, licensing and productivity are also few internal and micro issues which are faced by these type of business organisations (Guay, 2014).

b) Potential issues impacts of identified micro issues

Potential impacts which effect functioning of travel and leisure industry are related with the issues mentioned above. In order to ascertain the impact on business environment, two of issues are selected that is environmental and technological. These issues are faced by every organisation working in travel and leisure. Besides Thomas cook, there are various hotel subsector which are impacted by these issues. These hotel subsector can be classified according to the size and type of the business organisation. Hotel subsectors can be motels and restaurants. These subsector are directly directed with leisure but indirectly related with travel industry. The indirect link between these two industries is that individual doesn't not are in direct contact with motel and restaurants in which they dine in as there is a interference of travel companies which manage their trip according to their needs. Impact of environmental and technological issues on hotel subsector such as restaurant and motels is discussed below:

Environmental impact - environmental issues were considered to influence travel and leisure sector by changing the whether. There are other issues also present which specifically influences motel and restaurant hotel subsection and that is sustainability. Motels are the updated versions of hotels which are usually available on low rates but has all basic requirements. Motels provide accommodation to their clients which are influenced by the existing condition of environment of that particular location as they act as the basis of demand and supply of motel accommodations. This issue of environmental impact can be better understood with an example. If a motel is situated at the location where whether is uncertain then this circumstance can impact the demand of their accommodations (Nonaka and Reinmoeller, 2017).

The another subsector of hotel is restaurant which initially comes under food and beverage industry. In this type of subsector food products and services are provided to clients in order to attain their satisfaction and earn profitability. Restaurant is also a type of organisation in hospitality industry which is influenced by environment issues. Climate change and water scarcity will have a big impact on the food and beverage industry which can have the following impacts on the sector. Increase of prices of agricultural commodity and increase price volatility by decreasing yields. Another impact is increase processing costs through operational disruptions and treatment costs. Food safety challenges and conflicts with local communities over resource use is also a impact of environmental issues. In order to overcome with the issues of environmental, organisations make efforts to incorporate sustainability in their operations.

Technological impact - In the case of travel and leisure sector, main technologies which can impact the performance of its companies is internet. As this technology allows clients to research about hospitality companies from any part of the world. In the current scenario, clients can book their whole trip including transport, hotel and food etc by a single click. Issues which are faced by hotel subsector due to technological issues are high competition, high cost involvement. In order better understand impact of these issues, hotel subsectors which are selected are motel and restaurant (Reuer, 2017). In the case of restaurant, there is a high influence of technological factors on the functioning of restaurants. This kind of hotel subsector deals in food and beverage industry. According to the current trends it is usual by clients to promote food of a restaurant using social media sites by which intense competition has to face by restaurants working in same segment of food. Technological factors such as technological advancements focuses on usage of new and efficient processes and machineries which can cost a treasure. This advancement result in high cost involvement.

Another hotel subsector which has selected is motel. Motel are considered as shorter and simpler versions of hotels which has all the basic necessities for clients but does not deal in various kinds of star category. Impact of technology issues on motels is that their client demands upgraded technology in the premises of motels such as automatic doors, motion detection equipments and many more which are hard to introduced by these subsector as profit margin of these type of business organisation is relatively low. Business Environment is considered as the sum of all factors external and internal. Technological factors or issues comes under external business environment and effect the function of motels at a micro-level. Get the best programming assignment help from expert writers at the best price.

Technological factors are the macro issues which are faced by hotel subsector but their micro impact is mentioned above (Charter, 2017).

From the above two macro issues that is technology and environment, micro impact on hotel subsector is discussed. It has been observed above that these issues can be resolved with measures of right marketing and use of this macro influencers in order to attain benefit from them.

c) Describing two challenges faced by carrying above two tasks and suggesting ways to overcome them

Ascertaining business environment of an organisation and its industry is a crucial task to perform. While performing these tasks there were several challenges faced by me which are mentioned below along with their measures of overcome:

Research - According to me, it is easy to research about a company like Thomas Cook but is crucial to investigate about an sector such as travel and leisure as they do not a particular dimension in which they operate. There are various segments of hospitality which comes under travel and leisure sector and are identified by me such as hotel, motel, restaurant, casino, flights and many more. Analysing business environment of this sector resulted in various issues such as lack of data which is required. Second issue is segregation of collected data. Information gathered by the investigation requires a lot of analytical approach in order to interpret the results. In order to overcome with these issues, there is a measure which lead towards research sustainability. Identification of appropriate research design and approach can help in better investigation about business environment of travel and leisure sector.

Related Services:
Planning and Managing the Food and Beverage Components

Data analysis - Second issue in which I faced various problems is data analysis. In order to provide reliable conclusion it is important to analyse and interpret all the data which is collected during the investigation. But due to complexity in data, this task became crucial. According to me, data analysis can be done easily when we have information which resembles with each other. For example: Cots incurred in travel sector has relevance with clients of travel sector and not the leisure segment. This complexity of data lead me towards confusion and overlapping of work. In order to effectively conduct this task, I identified a way out which helped me in overcome this issue. Use of analytical tools such as graphs and charts. With the help of this technique, I analysed all the data using graphs which can provide immediate information about the data.

CONCLUSION

From the above project report it has been concluded that travel and leisure sector is that segment of hospitality industry deals in activities of comfort. This sector has various issues identified in with the use of PESTLE model. Impact of these issues is also identified from which it is concluded that these issues can be tackled with the help of proper measures. A reflective report is also developed to ascertain the challenges faced while performing the tasks.

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