The Use Of Ict In The Airline Industry Tourism Essay

The Use Of Ict In The air duct labor Tourism EssayAbstractThis essay throws light on the use of ICT in the air hose sedulousness and what impacts developments in ICT nominate make on the said industry. The essay highlights the role of ICTs in enhancing airlines capability to move with clients, reducing the working(a) cost, increasing the convenience for making reservations, managing air traffic, administering the corporation and airport mental faculty, up the passengers in-flight experience, maximizing airlines revenue by variable fares, improving security standards, promoting partnerships and entirelyiances among airlines, integrating value added go. It has been argued that automation growings efficiency but military personnel factor out is yet very important in personifying the guest experience. creative activity to the air passage patienceAn airline postdate throughs air transport serve wells for passengers and/or freight. Commercial operations of airlines date back to early 1900s, however, evidence of increase in operations is found afterWorld War I. oer the years, airline as an industry has grown tremendously. It has facilitated economic growth, world trade, international investment, tourism and has played a significant role in globalisation of industries.Full- receipts airlines pass water a high level of fixed and operating costs in order to establish and maintain air service labor, fuel, airplanes, engines, spares and parts, IT services and networks, airport equipment, airport handling services, sales distribution, catering, training,aviation insurance etc. Keeping in view such high costs and multifactorial nature of operations, it is essential for airline companies to take advantage of ICTs to carry show up operations smoothly and optimize expenses.Use of ICT in the Airline IndustryTechnology is dramatic everyy and profoundly changing the nature of services. Technology is besides profoundly changing how services are delivered , and it is enabling both customers and employees to work over and provide better, more efficient, customized services. These changes have significant implications for managing service operations as well as for predicting and managing consumer behavior.Impact of Developments of ICT on Operations of Airline IndustryIn the text below, major operations of the airline and airports have been discussed. It has been study that how the developments in the ICT have impacted the processes of the said industry. The developments in the ICT have significantly influenced the way Airlines act with customer, develop loyalty programmes and implement customer retentiveness strategies. Few developments to call down the passengers in-flight experience have besides been made.Interaction with clientsThe proliferation of earnings and World Wide Web has made it enormously convenient for the organizations to interact with their customers. Internet has provided a very economical way of interacting with customers, has reduced distribution costs, and has increased the profit margin by direct selling. Internet has also served as a purveyor of randomness about spectre off. Carriers everywhere have embraced online tag sales as a means of reducing distribution costs. Travelers straightaway have the opportunity and convenience to compare determine and service offerings of all airlines quickly and efficiently, and to act on those comparisons instantly with only a few keystrokes.McIvor et al. ( two hundred3), present analysis of four airline companies and their use of internet to provide innovative interaction and transactional mechanisms with customers. They state that internet has increased the expectations of customers for the services and service delivery. In fact, the internet has bring essential to the strategic development of the airline companies. They further argue that the scope and boundaries of the airline industry have become less clear as a result of the adoption of internet technologies at the customer interface. The offering of a range of products and services is creating industry convergence. Exploitation of the internet at the customer interface has become a key catalyst in the transformation of the airline industry.In the past, airlines have been selling their product (i.e. an airline seat) through travel agents. The travel agents combative position was based on exploiting the information insufficiency at the customer end. However, in a flashadays, the website of the Airline makes customer autonomous to decide on the fares, routes and various services associated. The internet enables airlines to build a direct and superior kinship with customers.In this era, the airlines site support complete automation of the booking process and limits the get for human intervention. Airlines are extensively investing and utilizing the Internet to further deprave the travel agents which has also resulted in meliorated process efficiency. Furtherm ore, removal of the travel agent layer has reduced transaction costs and has enhanced the relationship with customer through the provision of more detailed and up-to-date information.Customer Retention and Airline Loyalty ProgrammesThe cost of developing a unused customer is several times higher than the cost of keeping an lively customer. With the increasingly fierce market competition, companies would like to retain their existing customers as overmuch as possible. Fan (2007), state that competition has changed gradually from price of products and services to grasping customers. Only those companies that can more precisely pick up customers removes, more quickly respond to the changing needs and can improve customer satisfaction and loyalty can win the competition. Customer alliance Management (CRM) has become peculiar(a)ly important in this age. Data digging engineering science, as the founding base of CRM, can help the airlines to effectively pose valuable information a bout passengers from extensive information available in their informationbases, which is essential for making strategic marketing decisions.McIvor (2003), state that through modern Information Systems available now, it has become possible to automatically inform staff about customer preferences such as aisle seats or in-flight entertainment. Previously, such information may have been collected but not used to enhance the needs of their most profitable customers.CRM and Data mine allow companies to target groups effectively, and allocate marketing resources to best effect. As is shown in 80/20 rule, 80% of sales of a company come from 20% of its clients, it is essential to conduct customer segmentation and find those 20% of high-value customers. Zhang and Chen (2009), state that in order to better ensure keep profitability it is necessary to keep customer satisfied. Through a lot of accumulation of data on passenger satisfaction surveys, using data mining technology such as prin cipal component analysis, factor analysis to identify the main influencing factors of passenger satisfaction, as well as the relative importance of various factors can help airlines make improvements, enhance the overall customer service levels and the competitiveness of companies.McIvor et al. (2003), further state that Airline loyalty programmes have been the major means of keeping customers to a particular airline. Airline loyalty programmes provide significant value to customers. Airlines are now associating their Loyalty Programmes with the complementary products and services such as car rentals and hotel accommodations. In fact, the airlines are attempting to create a one-stop shopping experience for the customer with all the required travel products and services available on-line. With the provision of these complementary services, airlines have enhanced value of the core service.It is, therefore, very important to take just advantage of the data mining and other modern info rmation technology to identify the valuable information about the customers buying pattern and choices and extension them in timely fashion to provide more personalized service which will ultimately improve passenger satisfaction and loyalty.Operations and vexation IntelligenceNegash and Gray (2008), discuss the case of Continental Airlines. They state it as the seventh largest airline in the world with 2300 daily flights to over 200 destinations. An airline, as big as this, and requiring decisions about each take-off and landing, each passengers fare, fundament operations, detecting fraud, security and customer relations, need for a ICT based brainy business model was indispensable.In 1998 they implemented a real time data warehouse and began their climb to existence a top airline. For example, they integrated customer information, finance, flight information, seat inventory, and security to improve revenue. The warehouse data also allowed them to spot travel agent fraud.They m oved forward from there to real-time applications. For example, they began using optimization techniques to design fares based on current demand they gave their gate agents and flight attendants details on customer experiences on introductory flight segments and flights if a connecting flight was late, they used dashboard displays so their high-value customers would be helped in making connections for themselves and for their baggage.To make all this work, Continental built an 8 terabyte real-time data warehouse (called an operational data monetary fund or ODS) that coordinated 25 internal and two external operational systems. These systems include both Web and desktop BI.In-flight EntertainmentThe advancement in technology has enabled Airlines to enhance the passengers travelling experience. Back in early 1920s, Aeromarine Airways pioneered in the digital entertainment of passengers by showing a movie during the flight. Since then, digital technologies have evolved from single sh ared screen to individual screens offering categorization of infotainment stuff such as movies, games, news, flight information, weather information etc.Furthermore, as reported by Nelson (2010), in-flight WiFi internet admission fee was made available to passenger in 2008 by American Airlines after the test in 2005. The capability of providing internet facility during the flight has phenomenal impacts and lets the passenger stay in touch with the world even on the go.SecurityFutureAs discussed in essay, opportunity for in-flight WiFi approaching still exists. Few major airlines, likeAmerican Airlines, have already provided this facility on certain airlines. Provision of the internet and staying in touch during the hugeer hours travel will have considerable implications and will be great source of providing competitive edge.Furthermore, reported by HotHardware, BlueBox Avionics is aiming to integrate iPad into their nigh in-flight entertainment solution. Whether or not they int egrate the iPad to the back of the passengers seat, distributing the iPad among the passengers during a long flight will certainly enhance the passengers experience. iPad certainly provides a much richer entertainment as compared to currently installed display screens.ConclusionThe evidence presented in this article has illustrated how the Internet represents a powerful technology for commerce and communion between customers and airline companies. The Internet clearly enables the customer to move from being a passive participant to that of being proactive and more civilise in their relationship with airlines.