Information and Communication Technology in Travel Agency

Question: Write about theInformation and Communication Technology in Travel Agency. Answer: In this new world of technology, information technology has been evaluating day by day, which have considerable impacts on the travel agencies. Internet has become an integral part of the human kind of this new age, which could play important role in the daily operations of the modern travel agencies. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) completely relied on the internet and majority of the population are connected with the internet nowadays (Mihajilovic, 2012). This implication could help in gathering more customers attraction and Following are the usage and values of the information and communication technology in the travel agencies: It helps in facilitating up-to-date prices, product availability and the schedules for the customers. Expansion of Group decision support system (GDSs) and Customer Reporting Standard (CRSs) technology helps in providing a mechanism of effective reservation system. Information and communication technology can help travel agencies in promoting to build complicated travel routes, which can help in attracting more customers. Personalize services Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system can help the agencies in tracking the activities of the clients, which can be beneficial to fulfill the needs of the customers and provide services according to the demand (Rubin, Lomazova Vander Aalst, 2014). The Front and Back office operations have become more integrated by implementation information and communication technologies into the daily operations of the travel agencies. Strategic marketing and management can be accomplished by implementing ICTs in the system (Xiang, Magnini Fesenmaier, 2015). It was being reported that implementation of CRSs and GDSs was very helpful in increasing the productivity of the travel agencies, thus most of the travel agency can use it as a measurement and improvement tool for the agencies. Linkage to a particular distribution channel can result in dependencies. Technologies like Tourmanager, Bistro and many others, offer multi-supplier and Global offers and price comparison between the different travel agencies, which can be helpful in managing the agency its budget plan offering for the customers. It could help in evaluating and calculating the last-minute offers, flights, hotel offers, and last-minute offers. It can also be helpful in providing tourists detailed information about the description of the operations that the agency could offer them. Videotext systems is a technology that can be used as a tool by the travel agency in order to connect with the reservation and database system of the tour operators, which is not much expens ive and reliable. This technology improved the traditional way of doing operations. These values can be helpful in enhancing the performance of the travel agencies and perform its daily operations in effective and efficient manner. Irrespective of this advantages or values of ICTs in the travel agency, there are certain disadvantages of this implication into the system, which are; firstly, this implication needs certain basic trainings for the employees on how to use these technologies (Almunawar, Anshari Susanto, 2013). Secondly, Integration between the front and back office is not much effective and reliable. Reservation process system is much time consuming. References: Almunawar, M. N., Anshari, M., Susanto, H. (2013). Crafting strategies for sustainability: how travel agents should react in facing a disintermediation.Operational Research,13(3), 317-342. Mihajlovic, I. (2012). The impact of information and communication technology (ICT) as a key factor of tourism development on the role of Croatian travel agencies.International Journal of Business and Social Science,3(24). Rubin, V., Lomazova, I., van der Aalst, W. M. (2014, May). Agile development with software process mining. InProceedings of the 2014 international conference on software and system process(pp. 70-74). ACM. Xiang, Z., Magnini, V. P., Fesenmaier, D. R. (2015). Information technology and consumer behavior in travel and tourism: Insights from travel planning using the internet.Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services,22, 244-249.