Marketing Management 1 for Section 1: Tours and Travels Scene in Mahabalipuram

P A TOURS AND TRAVELS

With marketing individual project on my mind I stepped into the Mahabalipuram market with a target- to know the marketing strategy of the tours and travels here, with the increasing trends and the ease with which now everyone can book tickets online, the discounts given by various online holidays package booking portals, how are these local old fashioned tours and travels still exist and flourishing.

With this query on my mind I asked for the most popular (according to some Indian and foreign tourists I met) tours and travels agency in town, the majority of them suggested me P A Tours and Travels, located at the primary location in Mahabalipuram market, the office is a well furnished office and I was welcomed by a smiling face hoping that I was a customer, but to his dismay I was not, instead of me he started asking me questions where I want to travel, but I cleared the picture by saying that I am an MBA student and I am here to study and learn his marketing skills. To my surprise he was very cooperative.

P A Tours and Travels Agency is a well renowned name in booking tickets and providing holidays packages and services. Started with only booking railway tickets, they now book air tickets both national and international, run their own taxis (1 Indica, 1 Indigo, 1 Innova and 1 Tempo Traveller) for local and nearby states holidays destination (and nearby for them ranges from Tamil Nadu to Kerela to even Goa) and they even book tickets for luxury buses running from Mahabalipuram.

P A Tours and Travels was started by two friends and now partners, now has two branches one in Mahabalipuram and other in Chennai and these two partners now independently handles each branch, Jai, who is one of the partners handles their Mahabalipuram branch. Their employee strength consists of 4 drivers and all of the office work is handled by jai alone.

To survive in the ever growing competition in tourism industry he uses various strategies, one of the major and the most impressive of it all, if one books a tempo traveller for a long trip then the package charge includes the breakfast for all the tourists, also keeping competition in mind he charges very nominal rates as compared to other travel agencies, if one books a tempo traveller he only charges Rs 13 per km and interstate tax (if applicable) with no extra driver charges and on a simple railway ticket apart from the ticket actual price, he charges only rs 35/- as his commission and on an air ticket he charges Rs 300/- commission for national flights and Rs 500/- commission for international flights. He has a tie-up with an international flight booking portal with the help of which he can book tickets between two different countries sitting in Mahabalipuram with very minimal extra costs. His Agency also has tie-ups with different bus services which gives him an edge as in if one wants a ticket in emergency then with the help of his tie-ups he can get it.

For advertising purposes he actively promotes his agency in local newspaper and even via internet through various portals and blogs dedicated to South India Tourism.

Strength of a successful organisation are its employees and he as an owner believes in the concept of employee satisfaction and for the retention of his employees, he uses strategies like he pays every driver 10% of per trip share and Rs 300/- per night he has to spend out on a trip.

But every time is not all jolly and good in tourism business in Mahabalipuram, like tourism On and Off Seasons he also face the effect of Off Season, when asked what exactly is their On and Off Season, according to him Off Season is from March to July which is very hot here and even considerable warm in other parts of the world (the majority of tourists who come here are from Western Countries), when its freezing cold in those countries tourists come here to be in the warmer part of the world, Hence the On and Off Season depends on the winter season in Western Countries.

With this long conversation I can now simply say that if you have a correct sense of business and has ability to stretch your limits, you can do wonders and success will follow you. I learnt a lot from this brief experience, I understood that how important are things like location of the shop, employee fellowship, optimum utilisation of resources around and letting people know that you are capable of performing all those that you say and the foremost thing Customer Retention by providing them with competitive rates, best service, small in house incentives and the way you treat customer.