MINISTRY OF EDUCATION & TRAINING UNIVERSITEÙ LIBRE DE BRUXELLES HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY SOLVAY BUSINESS SCHOOL MBMM PROGRAM MINISTRY OF EDUCATION & TRAINING UNIVERSITEÙ LIBRE DE BRUXELLES HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY SOLVAY BUSINESS SCHOOL MBMM PROGRAM 1 DECLARATION I declare that the project entitled “Improving Travel Service of Smileviet Company” is my own work. The information and data of the project are based on reliable sources. I hope that my project will be evaluated seriously and approved for applying at Smileviet Travel Company. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to express my most gratefulness to my tutor Mrs. Nguyen Thi Mai Trang, who has given me great support and continuous encouragement. I would also like to express my sincerest thanks to all Professors in Ho Chi Minh City Open University and the Solvay Business School, ULB, the MBMM program coordinators for the knowledge, support and advice during the MBMM program. Additionally, I would like to appreciate all of the MBMM members; it is my great pleasure and honor to be with you guys in this MBMM program. Finally, my thanks are extended to Mr. Luu Moc Thuy, Director and founder of Smileviet Travel Company for his assistance in supplying related and valuable information to help me complete this study. May, 2007 Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Luu Moc Khe 3 Tutor comments: Mr. LUU MOC KHE has proven his capability and willingness to complete the final project. Mark: 33/40 This project is qualified to be presented. 26 May 2007 Tutor signed Nguyen Thi Mai Trang 4 Table of content DECLARATION 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 2 Tutor comments: 3 Table of content 4 Tables 6 EXUCUTIVE SUMMARY 7 INTRODUCTION 9 Scope and limitation 10 Chapter 1: Tourism Situational Analysis 11 1.1 The demand trends 11 1.2 Tourism Favorable regulations 12 1.3 The economic and business conditions 13 1.4 Tourism difficulties 13 1.5 Competitor analysis 15 1.5.1 Saigontourist Travel Service Company 15 1.6 Company analysis 17 1.6.1 Company profile 17 1.6.2 The operation process 18 1.6.3 Smileviet customers 19 1.6.3.1 Smileviet Company target market 21 1.6.4 Company Product 22 1.7 Smileviet Company SWOT 23 Strengths 23 Weaknesses 23 Opportunities 24 Threats 24 Chapter 2: Improving travel service of Smileviet Company 25 2.1 Strengthen the professional of current Tour guide 25 2.1.1 Fortify the tour guide knowledge ground 25 2.1.2 Narrowing the service quality gaps between expectations and perceptions of tourists 26 2.2 Tour guide recruitment plan 28 2.3 Create company website and deliver the final offer 29 2.3.1 The E-album of the trip 29 5 2.3.2 The company website 30 Conclusion 31 Reference 32 Appendix 1 33 Appendix 2 41 6 Tables Table1: The arrival figures of tourist from 2001 – 1st quarter of 2007 Table 2: Company tourist information of 2006 Table 3: Company tourist information of 1 st quarter 2007 Table 4: Estimate cost of implementing website and E-album 7 EXUCUTIVE SUMMARY Smileviet Company is a travel company targeting in bound tourists. The booming of Vietnam tourism marketing has created many favorable conditions for the flourish of Smileviet Company but also attracted a lot of players join in and to share the market. Gradually, the competitive situation has become stiffer. Consequently, Smileviet Company has to assess and analyze the current scenario and accordingly it must alter the traditional way of doing business or will be crossed out from the market. The Company realizes that tourists have so many choices and that Smileviet Company has no chance to reach the tourist unless it positions in the mind of the tourists and differentiates itself from the competitors. A customer or a tourist select a product or service usually based on the price or the quality and the benefit brings to the customer or tourist. Hence it presents two ways for positioning either in price or quality. Positioning by pricing is only practicable to strong financial players or finally leading to bankruptcy. The proper way of positioning is that Smileviet Company can pursue is positioning itself as a high quality travel company. What Smileviet Company offer is a travel service, an experience and a process. Tourist can neither touch, nor feel nor try in advance. Besides, travel service also requires many other supporting elements like: hotel, restaurant, transportations, sightseeing places and so on. The competitors also exploit those same elements while providing the service. The difference between Smileviet Company and the rest is the tour guide and the service professional. While buying a tour, tourist does not own anything after the payment; he or she only becomes eligible to take part in the process of the trip in a certain amount of time. When the trip is over, the tourist only has experience, memory, knowledge and or feelings. Making the 8 tourist actually satisfied wholeheartedly processes a physical item after accomplishing the trip is another differentiating strategy that Smileviet Company can apply. To offer high quality service, Smileviet Company starts from the core of service which is the role of the tour guide. Duty of the guide is to communicate, to introduce, and to convey local information and special facts to tourist. Aiming to that point, Smileviet Company educates its guides team by the latest and most updated information so that while on duty, the guides can convey to enrich the tour, tourist joining the tour with a certain level of expectation, but sometimes it happens that the perception of the tourist is different from his or her initial expectation result in the evaluation of poor quality from tourist. The guide of Smileviet Company is trained to manage this gap. Offering high quality services is also having same meaning of having sufficient man power to satisfy the increasing demand of market. The back up tour guide work force also helps company to make a tool that help tourist storing his or her happy moment during the trip but also an effective advertising tool for company. Currently company does not have a web site for tourist to search for it information, credibility. A high quality service providing company not only has a website but the website existence is to serve its customer. [...]... focus on service- oriented and unlike the traditional marketing strategies Particularly, where a small number of travel firms that offer nearly identical services are competing within a small area, establishing a higher service quality may be the only way of differentiating The purpose of this project is to position Smileviet Company as a high quality travel company by improving the professionalism of current... creative in its service deliveries and provide high quality service that bring satisfaction to tourists 1.5 Competitor analysis There are numerous of travel companies operating in Vietnam Author selects the leader of travel company also targeting inbound tourism for deeper study 1.5.1 Saigontourist Travel Service Company Saigontourist Travel Service Company established in 1975 and is a division of the state-run... analysis 1.6.1 Company profile Smileviet Trading and Travel Limited Co are established in March of 2005, a small size travel company with fifteen employees and thirty tour guides It head office is located in Hanoi and one branch office in Hochiminh city The establishment of the company can be considered as the personal evolution of company founder, Mr Luu Moc Thuy In 1995, the travel company where the founder... between travel companies Existing social improper behaviors that may drive away tourists or jeopardize the tourism image of Vietnam 25 Trend of visiting three countries VN, Laos, and Cambodia in single trip Competitors are outranking in size and business of scale Chapter 2: Improving travel service of Smileviet Company From current company situation and to position as a high quality travel company, one of. .. characteristic of the service provider is friendliness They are often very conscious of the environment issues9 1.6.4 Company Product In general, the tour products or programs offered by Smileviet Company are package tours that lead tourists to sightsee the famous and popular sites They are 23 a set of travel destinations for tourists to visit either from north to south or vice versa according to the length of. .. travel company, one of the approaches for Smileviet Company is to apply value based strategy by differentiating its service tour guides, by offering superiority of service quality and create a company website with extra service to attract visits The first step is to improve the professional of the current selected freelance tour guide and contract them turn into company own guides Second step is to work... On the date of arrival, our tour guide will meet and take over the traveling responsibilities of the whole group From this moment on, our tour guide will accompany the travel group, provide tour guiding services, looking after the eating, staying, visiting… of the trip Our responsibility is over when tour guide send off all the tourists to the airport for departure Obviously, Smileviet Company plays... the access to any information and become professional in making their choice or selecting the travel service providers even in their home The potential customers not only know your company but also find hundreds more of other companies probably providing the same kind of services If Smileviet Company wants to survive, not enough, and to be successful, the company must provide greater customer value... quality other supporting services like the bus that uses for the trip, the food in restaurants, the seats of a show, the rooms available of the hotel are according to the contract between our company and other service providers In addition, in order to help the guide to monitor and measure the service standard of those supporting services, the tour operator will attach details of the services provide so... companies Only two well known exceptions are Saigontourist Travel Company who provides web blog for its domestic customers to share their experiences and the other one is Vietravel Company that creates www .travel. com.vn to provide tour directly booking service with details of price, seats availability left, and flight information… etc Website of Smileviet Company could be a “me too” player at the moment, but . Travel Service Company 15 1.6 Company analysis 17 1.6.1 Company profile 17 1.6.2 The operation process 18 1.6.3 Smileviet customers 19 1.6.3.1 Smileviet Company target market 21 1.6.4 Company. 22 1.7 Smileviet Company SWOT 23 Strengths 23 Weaknesses 23 Opportunities 24 Threats 24 Chapter 2: Improving travel service of Smileviet Company 25 2.1 Strengthen the professional of current. bankruptcy. The proper way of positioning is that Smileviet Company can pursue is positioning itself as a high quality travel company. What Smileviet Company offer is a travel service, an experience