Intrepid Travel: Small Group Adventure Travel Corporation And PEST Analysis

Introduction to Intrepid Travel

Intrepid Travel is considered as the largest small group adventure travel corporation in the entire world. In essence, the corporation delivers over and above 1500 itineraries in more than 120 nations. As such, the destinations comprise of Asia, Europe, Africa, Antarctica, The Middle East and North America among many others. Intrepid trips are necessarily of grassroots form and include travel through public transport, regional food as well as regionally owned lodgings. In addition to this, the company also concentrates on responsible travelling and is necessarily a signatory to essentially the United National Global Compact. This firm also is said to have become carbon neutral company in the year 2010 and was also known as the world’s first transnational travel company to undertake a stance on particularly elephant rides.

In the tourism industry, the PEST analysis helps in evaluating the world behaviour of the tourism demand. This analysis includes- political, economical, social and technological and thus it refers to the structure of macro-environmental factors.  This is illustrated below:

Political- The political environment of Australia has been quite stable and hence has positive effect on the customers. The infrastructure of the Australia’s transportation is quite effective as well as efficient (Evans, Stonehouse and Campbell 2012). In addition, adoption of visa policy by the Australian government at reduced cost attracts large number of visitors, which in turn helps them to maximize profit. Moreover, implementation of policies regarding protection of environment and VAT policies also benefits this company and the tourist.

Economic-  The inflation rate in Australia has been stable for last few decades. This means that it does increase the cost of travelling in Australia and thereby large number of customers. As the exchange rate is also strong in the recent years, the international travellers spends huge amount of money on travelling . This in turn generates higher revenue to the Interpid travel company.

Social- Social event is considered as the vital factor for the tourism company as it attracts more tourists in the nation. As this nation is considered as safe and has no environmental issues,  this becomes favourable to this company as more travellers chooses this to visit this destination.

Technological- Technological advancement also eased this company’s operations, which in turn saves their money as well as time. This also helps them to introduce on-line method for booking ticket and hence this helped both the company as well as customers.

PEST Analysis for Australia

It refers to the analytical technique used for evaluating the resources of the company and gain competitive advantage. The full of VRIO is – value, rareness, imitability and organization. The VRIO analysis of this company is illustrated below:

Value- The natural resources of Australia adds the value to this organization as it helps them in delivering  better services. It also helps them to seize opportunities and mitigate against threats of this company.

Rareness- The resources of this country are easily obtained and hence this benefits the Interpid company.

Imitability- The itenaries produced by this company are not imitable or substituted. This I turn helped them to gain competitive advantage against their rivals.

Organization- The strategies adopted by the company  helps them in making most utilization of resources. Thus, this company has the capability to improve their operations.

HR plays an effective role in the travel organization  as it helps the employees coordinate their travel arrangements. HR motivating the staff helps in growing the travel company. They focus on their work and also increase productivity. As a result, this helps them in earning them commissions. Proper HRM also increases their safety and security of the employees (Hall, Timothy and Duval 2012). Moreover, proper work environment also helps the employees in assisting more clients. As a result, this attracts more customers and in turn maximizes profitability.

International business environment and Australian context

It can be hereby mentioned that the travel and tourism industry primarily mirror different economic trends witnessed in rest of the economy as expenditure on tourism can be considered to be discretionary and like many other trade familiarized industries, the tourism industry is necessarily divulged to diverse developments in out of the country markets and movements in the rate of exchange (Reisch  and Th_gersen 2015). However, over the current years, the Australian tourism industry has contributed approximately 2.7% to the GDP of Australia and employed roughly half a million of workers, presenting 4.6% of the total employment of Australia. It can be hereby mentioned that the basic conditions encountering the industry have become more desirable, upheld by enhanced economic circumstances in key North Atlantic markets together with depreciation of the currency of the nation Australia. In addition to this, the other factors that affect this industry include persistent strong growth in particularly tourism exports in the country China.

Evaluation of the impact of the environmental factors

Effect of Political factors: The liberal democracy of the nation Australia is necessarily based on constitutional monarchy along with the British Westminster system. However, there is a American federal format grafted into the same. The nation is said to be a federal system where the constitution separates power and authority between national, government as well as states (Reisch  and Th_gersen 2015). It is due to this, political as well as financial associations between states and federal government is necessarily a going concern. This can exert positive impact on the business on the whole.

VRIO Analysis of Intrepid Travel

Effect of Economic factors: There are agricultural aspects involves in this case. Australian agricultural production aids in delivering food as well as clothing for a country of more than 20 million individuals. In addition to this, structure of the industry as well as performance also exerts influence on the tourism industry.  Furthermore, reports suggest that international visitors to a certain consumed nearly $21 billion in particularly goods as well as service produced by the entire Australian economy in the year 2005 and year 2006. Essentially, this reflects approximately 11% of exports of Australian goods as well as services. Furthermore, the top destination for people travelling abroad for short term period during the year 2006 were New Zealand, USA, China and many other places (Reisch  and Th_gersen 2015). 

Competition level within specific industry in which INTREPID TRAVEL operates

Industry and company information and general database that is accessible

Analysis of firm’s mission, vision as well as values and connected sustainability

Analysis of literature of the firm reveals that the mission of the firm is to concentrate on responsible travel as well as small groups and undertake very huge adventures.

The vision of the company is to remain obsessed and intend to be driven by particularly passion, expertise, trust along with a clear sense of fun. The company also have the vision o have the wide range of adventure travel experiences and intend to persistently introduce various innovative products.

Analysis of goal setting exercises and major types of plans of INTREPID TRAVEL

Analysis of goal setting exercise and major plans reveals that Intrepid Travel set goal while acting with integrity, remaining passionate about they do, promoting personal growth, having fun, creating and innovating. In addition to this, company also believe in maintaining sustainability as well as responsible tourism (Reisch  and Th_gersen 2015). 

The goal setting exercise follows a BHAG that refers to Big Hairy Audacious Goal. As per the sustainability report of the company firm’s “OUR BHAG” is to become the most motivating and motivating and at the same time most innovative travel corporation in the entire world.

Examination of approaches to planning of the firm INTREPID TRAVEL

Analysis of business reports of the firm reveals that each intrepid small group travels are meticulously designed to make certain that each customer gets an unforgettable grassroots travelling experience. The management over the years have developed many types of trip styles as well as themes in order to cater to needs of wide array of travellers.

Mission, Vision, and Sustainability Practices of Intrepid Travel

The different approaches include the following:

Basix: This is particularly designed for travellers who are on a budget.

These trips attempt to keep everything very simple in order to provide marvellous experiences for travellers who are on a budget (Brindley and Oxborrow 2014)

Original: This approach is designed in the original intrepid style.

These kinds of trips are designed for the travellers who are looking for a great amalgamation of various activities along with zeal to explore a specific destination in their own manner. This kind of trips utilizes well-positioned, tourist hotels as well as meals.

Comfort: This approach for delivering greater creature comforts.  This approach is adopted mainly to smooth away various rough edges of travelling and crafted to create a specific travel that has an additional degree of comfort attached.

Way sustainability has been incorporated into key decisions and practices

Analytical evaluation of the sustainability report of the firm helps in understanding the fact that the company’s mainstay is to enrich the lives of the people by means of developing exclusive, interactive experiences of travelling. For this, it provides fun, inexpensive as well as sustainable travel that necessarily is profitable for the firm and at the same time proves to be beneficial to regional communities (Lodish et al. 2015). The company has a sustainable development strategy that reflects that the company is working towards attaining sustainability goals under certain areas to make certain longevity of the firm’s business.

• Environment Policy:

The environment policy of the firm reads as follows:

The policy as well as guidelines that address environmental influence at Intrepid includes the following:

Instances of environmental actions adopted by the firm to carry out sustainable operations include corporate actions, management of trips, making investments in renewable energy projects (Belz and Binder 2017). Corporate actions take in measurement of emissions from particularly electricity, gas, waste along with business travels among many others, avoidance of emissions by adoption of energy efficient measures, lessening the total number of business trips and offsetting by investing in superior renewable energy programs. Majority of the company’s travel trips are necessarily Carbon Offset and there are carbon offset flights as well. In addition to this, the company Intrepid Travel also presently offset the carbon by means of investing in globally accredited Voluntary Carbon Standard complaint projects that are mainly founded on company’s biggest destinations (Armstrong et al. 2015)

 Some of the investment projects as part of the sustainability goals of the firm include the following:

Approaches to Planning of the Firm Intrepid Travel

As an employee of the firm Intrepid, it can be said that there is many others things than the job itself. Thus, it can be said that it is also like becoming an important part of a lively and various international family, particularly with a keenness for existence and a desire for travel (Miller et al. 2015). The human resource managers of the corporation make effort to sustain a specific environment that can help in maintaining balance between professional and fun life.  Additionally, the human resource managers of the firm also believe that individuals get inventive when motivated, more prolific when passionate and more creative when identified. The leadership style that can be seen in this organization is that of a human ice breaker kind. They tend to break the tension for the purpose of breaking the tension and creating a fun environment in a room and aids inspire discussion as well as contribution thereby generating an environment of connectivity. Essentially, the leadership that is followed in this company can be said to democratic or participative type. So, it can be said that everyone in the corporation is provided the chance to engage and ideas are in this case are exchanged freely all kinds of discussion is supported.

In this firm, the leadership styles take in certain features in which members of the group are inspired for sharing ideas as well as viewpoints although the leader preserves the final take over company’s decisions. The leadership style followed in the firm help the members to feel more engaged in the entire procedure and in addition to this, creativity is also inspired as well as rewarded (Boley et al. 2017).

Leadership traits and characteristics demonstrated by the firm

The traits that are demonstrated by the corporation include:

• Honesty
• Fairness
• Courage
• Competence
• Intelligence

The leaders help in inspiring trust as well as respect among followers. The leaders are also sincere and always base their decisions based on morals along with values. As they encourage a fun environment, followers or in other words the sub ordinates also tend to feel inspired to undertake actions and contribute to the entire group.

Examination of whether leadership traits and characteristics have been able to inspire performance

This specific type of leadership help in inspiring performance and this can be seen in the way the leaders drive the performance of the entire organization. The leaders of the company are not only travel professionals, but also they are very teachers. Particularly, they can be considered as travel guru and passionate outlet of grassroots experiences. 

Way sustainability been assimilated into INTREPID TRAVEL’s leadership

The sustainability report of the firm reflects that the company delivers training to different leaders regarding safety along with social issues in specific areas where they function (Mihalic 2016). Essentially, the leaders help in educating the passengers on various issues namely cultural etiquette, safety regarding children as well as prostitution. In addition to this, the corporation also offers training on HIV to all the members of the staff of the corporation in different high risk areas. In addition to this, the company also supports local communities and human resource management of the firm hires different local leaders as well as staff in which the company functions, thus contributing to regional employment and making certain competitive remuneration. In addition to this, the company’s policies that address the company’s governance as well as ethical accountability include “Leader Code of Conduct”. Furthermore, Intrepid Travel also developed a strategic venture with particularly TUO Travel Plc to generate a global leader in particularly adventure travel. ‘;’[;;/

Analysis of effectiveness of the firm in management of supply chain

The short life cycle of products, augmented level of competition along with heightened anticipations of customers have forced company to shift from physical logistic management to advanced management of supply chain (Mowforth and Munt 2015). Therefore, the company tends to lessen costs along with lead times with effectual management of supply chain. In addition to reduction of cost, the approach of the supply chain management of the firm facilitates enhancement in the customer service. This helps inventory management, systems of inventories along with distribution networks and this can help corporations to satisfy or else to surpass the expectation of their customers that is the passengers.  The company has sourcing stratagem that includes making or buying decision, manufacturing management and capacity management. The services can be offered directly or else are properly outsourced. In case of management of manufacturing, certain elements are restricted to specific sectors that include food as well as craft gifts and many others (Cheng and Wu 2015). Again, the tourism activity of the firm Intrepid are also necessarily subject to instability faced in demand. The company uses the help of the airlines in order to satisfy the surplus demand by means of enhancing the overall capacity by means of introducing supplementary flights at unique rates. Again, the distribution strategy of the firm also necessarily exerts immense influence on the overall development of the firm. Essentially, the firm directly sells their packages from different primary suppliers to their target customers by means of various reservation divisions of the firm Intrepid.

Examination of whether technology has been implemented in the firm’s operations management practices

Technology has been implemented in the operations of this firm and this too helps the firm ro promote the overall development of the firm. Starting from management of supply chain, the firm utilizes advanced technologies in the areas of information management, management of business process, management of performance and specific features of transportation (Edgell Sr 2016).

Way sustainability been incorporated into important decisions

The sustainability report of the company clearly states that the company inspires the overall development along with diffusion of various environmentally friendly technologies (referring to principle 9-environment).

Conclusion

In conclusion, it can be said that the company has various new approaches and undertakes business in a responsible manner in order to reflect leadership as well as their level of commitment in the process of the achievement of the United National Sustainable Development Goals. The above study also helps in understanding the fact that the company has sustainable offerings to drive the advocacy on sustainability issues. However, one of the most important challenges that the company has faced includes resourcing. Thus, it can be said that the management of the firm can concentrate on the sustainable resourcing policies in order to make it more seamless as well as sustainable. However, it can also be mentioned here that a tourism can never become entirely sustainable as each and every sector has a certain influences, but it can surely operate in the way to become sustainable. In this regard, it can be hereby suggested that the management of the firm can work towards development of planning, operations of tours, management of investment in tours, development of capacity, development of strategies for better consumption of products as well as services and many others. The objective of the management might also include promotion of various systematic applications for the purpose of monitoring and implementation of various information management mechanisms, along with associated communication as well as reporting procedures that in turn can help in informed decision making in sustainable concerns. Intrepid management therefore need to detect that tourism influences local communities as well as the environment and believe that their tour operators need to be accountable in the way they run their business to make certain the welfare of individuals as well as of the environment.

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