Tour Operations

Tour Operations

Introduction

Within the entire U.K. travel and tourism industry, the packaged tours industry constitutes the second largest revenue-producing sector of the travel services group, bringing in about half the revenues of air carriers alone. As of 2001, the entire travel and tourism industry was the nation's leading services export and the third-largest retail industry, following automotive dealers and food stores (Lisella, 2001). To provide some perspective on the enormity of the economic impact of travel and tourism on the U.K. economy, in 2001 alone the U.S. travel industry received more than $555 billion from domestic and international travelers. The industry has provided some 7.9 million jobs in the United Kingdom with a payroll totaling $174 billion.

Consolidation of Tour Operator

From this enormous market, tour operators earn their revenue by providing a host of travel services to a travel agent, who then sells these services to tourists. The types of tours provided vary widely according to the type of tour operating business concerned, ranging from arranging transportation, lodging, meals, and a guide for a week-long, gorilla tracking expedition in Africa, to the simple service of providing newly arrived guests to Hawaii with ceremonial leis.

Tour operators frequently offer the following advantages: cheaper price, grouped travel with others with similar interests or same socio-economic level, predetermined costs, and pre-planned activities (Lisella, 2001).

Historically, tourists who have chosen to arrange their vacations through a tour operator rather than through a travel agency do so for several different reasons, which, over the course of the modern travel industry's existence, have fluctuated in their relative importance to the tour operator industry (Pucci, 2003). Initially, tourists were attracted by the cheaper total price of their vacations when purchased from a tour operator; they also preferred to travel with a group, have the trip's budget determined beforehand, and ...