Travel Tours Short Case Study
Answer the questions to the Travel Tours short case study.
Travel Tours specializes in personalized travel packages at popular prices, and the company operates 12 offices in major U.S. cities. A key selling point is the company’s client management database, which includes preferences such as airline seating choices and favorite hotels.
Travel Tours purchased a client management software as an off-the-shelf vendor package and modified the program to meet the company’s needs. The package has been operational for one year and has performed well. Travel Tours, however, is in the process of expanding its operation to include six additional locations. You have been called in as a consultant to help the company make some decisions about IT support.
1) What performance and workload measurement issues should the company consider at the present time?
2) What capacity planning issues should the company consider at the present time?
3) Should the company establish a system baseline before the integration of the six new sites? Explain your answer.
4) As an IT consultant, you must understand the client’s business. From that perspective, consider the impact of the Internet on the travel agency business.
Travel Tours Short Case Study
Performance and workload measurement
Having a slow performance can be devastating, especially in a travel agency. Customer satisfaction, user productivity, and business results are affected by application bottlenecks and network delays. It is believed that more damage is done by network delays than actual stoppages (Tilley & Rosenblatt, 2016). They happen to appear frequently, and they are not easily detected, predicted and prevented. In such a business, customers do have their expectations, such as reliability and a response that is fast enough within twenty-four hours in one day and seven days in a week.
Performance management software should be used to support the level of service demanded by customers. Examples of such software include the NetQoS product. In measuring the system performance, Travel Tours needs to use benchmark testing. A set of standard tests are used in evaluating capacity and system performance. Performance measurements done by benchmark testing are known as metrics. Metrics usually monitors the number of processed transactions within a given period, the total number of accessed records, and the online data volume. Network performance metrics also include throughput, response time, turnaround time and bandwidth, among others.
Capacity planning
At this time, the Travel Tours needs to consider capacity planning issues such as delays, issues of quality, and material handling, among others. With the use of the current performance as the baseline, capacity planning helps to determine what is required by the system and when it is required. Travel Tours has to set the target capacity figures and contract accommodation and aircraft seats that are enough to cover the demand (Costa, 2019). Some steps need to be followed when doing capacity planning. These steps include, first, taking into consideration of the current service level agreement levels. It has to be done before looking towards future needs. The documents have to be reviewed, including those agreements of signed partnership to reevaluate Travel Tours.
The second step is analyzing the existing capacity of the IT systems. That can be done by making an educated guess or load testing and performance monitoring tools for accuracy. The third step should be determining the future needs of the Travel Tours company. Once the company has the idea of its current IT capacity, future capacity requirements can be mapped. The growth of the company should be based on the needs of the client. The fourth step is identifying consolidation opportunities. Capacity planning should be a perfect time to consolidate the company’s workload or eliminate under servers provisioned potentially. The fifth step is making recommendations on the capacity of Travel Tours and taking action. Recommendations can be formulated on how best to support maybe the IT infrastructure now and into the future.
System baseline
Generally, a baseline being a formal point of reference that measures the system’s behavior, it does so at a given period. Therefore, it is wise to perform baseline comparisons periodically to define and identify noticeable changes within the system, hence making it easier for deployment. Travel Tours must utilize product baseline in form of a yardstick in the elaboration of the client management system before putting the plan of expansion into action. That will help to consider whether counting on additional or more locations will have any effect on the system performance, whether negative or positive. Ideally, there is a need for Travel Tours to try simulating the escalated system activities and load them in a test environment. Duplicating actual online conditions could be almost impossible sometimes (Tilley & Rosenblatt, 2016). To reduce that kind of a risk, instead of adding all the six locations at once, the Travel Tours needs to reconsider adding the new locations just one at a go.
Impact of the Internet on the travel agency business
There has been a significant impact of the internet on the travel agency business. First, people can research and book online. Earlier on, travel agents relied on the personal travel experience, reviewed brochures, attended industry events, and developed personal relationships with vendors to help them make recommendations that were appropriate to customers. Travel agents can currently do research online, book, cancel or confirm travel online (Westcott, Bird, Briscoe, Freeman, Thomlinson, Wilson-Mah & McCartney, 2018). The payment and booking information is quickly sent through emails to clients. Second, home-based travel agents’ work is much easier. This concept might not be new, but the introduction of the internet has made it easier for agents to consult with clients, research travel ideas and options, and book flights and travel products at their homes’ comfort.
Third, travel agent education can now be offered online. Travel agents receive education from travel vendors that include cruise lines and resorts, among others. The continuing education programs keep travel agents well informed about issues like the industry’s laws, new emerging laws, and technologies. The programs offered by tourism boards and travel vendors Help travel professionals in becoming specialists in tourism hot spots and popular accommodations. One of the negative impacts is competition from travel websites. The travel agents are slowly losing their value in the industry since travelers can research and compare one website to another, the best travel agency that offers good services with a minimum amount. Generally, with the help of the internet, travelers can search for the best travel agency, do price shopping, commission changes online, and cut a travel agent’s cost.
References
Tilley, S., & Rosenblatt, H. J. (2016). Systems analysis and design. Nelson Education.
Costa, C. (2019). Tourism planning: a perspective paper. Tourism Review.
Westcott, M., Bird, G., Briscoe, P., Freeman, R., Thomlinson, E., Wilson-Mah, R., … & McCartney, M. (2018). Introduction to Tourism and Hospitality in BC.
