Touring is a discipline that every young tourism specialist should know. This is due to the fact that all the "stages of life" of the tour are registered here, such as analysis of the prices of tour packages in the market, registration of agreements with hotels, the choice of suppliers and airlines, etc.
The concept of touring
Touring has received a significant role in tourism recently - it all started from the moment when general knowledge ceased to be enough for the sale of tourism products. After that, it was decided to introduce a new science - touring.
Touring is the activity of organizations that provide consumers with a range of travel services in the form of a specific end product - a tour. As a rule, this type of activity is carried out by tourism organizations that sell tours both independently and with the help of other organizations.
Kinds
There are 3 types of touring:
- Exit - involves the design of tours for residents of their country beyond its borders. Outbound touring requires maximum effort and capital investment from tourism organizations. The complexity of arranging tours to another country lies in the possible time difference, the presence of features of the work of foreign organizations (for example, the beginning of the working day), etc.
- Entrance - registration of tours to the territory of their country, intended for foreign citizens. Inbound touring is the most profitable activity. For this reason, the amount of foreign exchange earnings, the development of infrastructure, the situation on the labor market depend on it.
- Domestic - the provision of tours designed to move tourists from one part of their country to another. Internal touring, as well as entry, plays a significant role in the development of the tourism industry. All due to the fact that most people prefer to travel precisely within their state.
The main stages of touring
As mentioned above, the main task of touring is to create a tour. Creating a tour, in turn, is a rather complicated process, in connection with which it is divided into the following stages:
- Planning. At this stage, the tour operator coordinates the organization's capabilities with the needs of the client. After that, the search begins for a tour that would meet the requirements of the client, but at the same time would bring the maximum profit to the travel company.
- Design. Here the tour operator collects and prepares all the documentation for the found tour.
- Organization. At this stage, the company sells the tour to the client, after which it begins preparing services during the vacation (hotels, relocations, etc.).
- Stage of control. At the final stage, the tour operator summarizes: calculates the profit and decides what work needs to be done on the tour in the next season to improve results.
It is worth noting that the time for several stages may coincide. Especially this often happens if the work goes with a wide range of tours.
Types of external factors
External factors of touring are primarily characterized by their unpredictability, but they have a great impact on touring and tourism in general. Depending on how they influence touring (directly or indirectly), they are divided into macro and microenvironment factors.
Microenvironment factors include tour operators, dealers, various agents, competitors, suppliers and consumers. Macrofactors imply various laws, economic stability of the state, religious and demographic factors, etc.
Traits of factors
It is worth noting that the following features are characteristic of touring factors:
- Interconnectedness (for example, a change of government can cause a crisis in the country, which subsequently affects the demand for tourism products). For this reason, tourism organizations must anticipate changes in external factors and try to maximally prevent their negative impact on the trade in tours.
- The complexity of external factors. There are a lot of factors influencing the development of tourism. There are frequent cases when a minor change in policy leads to global changes in the market. For this reason, the tour operator should not only monitor external factors, but also select (and also analyze) those that may affect his company.
- The dynamism of the environment. The external environment is quite mobile and requires the manager to quickly respond to its change.
Features
Touring is a type of activity with a number of distinctive features:
- It is directly related to the development and compilation of tours and their implementation.
- Requires interaction between the tourism organization and the supplier of tours.
- The travel agency operator does not have the right to provide their travel services to individuals.
- The operator takes part in the creation of the tour, as well as in the implementation of all services included in its package.
Also, the features of touring include the presence of stages of creating tours, which were described above.
Economic functions of touring
In total there are 5 economic functions of touring:
- Production. Represents the creation of a tour by the employees of the organization and the means of production.
- Providing employment. Touring has both direct and indirect effects on increasing employment. The direct impact is the provision of jobs in travel agencies, the indirect impact is the provision of jobs in organizations that influence the development of tourism (trade, catering, etc.).
- Revenue creation. Tourism plays an important role in the development of the country's economy.
- Smoothing. Often tourists go to rest in undeveloped regions of the country that have a primeval landscape. This, in turn, provides an opportunity for such regions to receive additional income, which helps to accelerate their development.
- Balance of payments leveling. The costs of local tourists abroad are opposed to the costs of foreign tourists.
The interaction of touring and railways
Few people know that it was the appearance of the railroads that gave a huge impetus to the development of tourism.
Today, most of the tours being created involve movement by rail, as:
- Rail transport is excellent for traveling over short distances (up to 800 km), as it has a fairly high level of comfort (when compared with road transport) and a high speed of passenger delivery (high-speed trains reach speeds of up to 300 km / h). In some cases, the speed of delivery of tourists to a vacation destination by rail exceeds the speed of delivery by plane.
- In most countries, railways are at a high level of development. Thanks to this, the passenger has the opportunity to get to almost any region of the country.
- Rail transport is considered much safer than road or bus. In addition, there are far fewer people who are afraid of trains than people who cannot tolerate airplanes and flights.
- Traveling from one point to another by train will cost a tourist much less than overcoming the same route by plane or bus.
The disadvantages include only the noise of the knocking of the wheels of the train, but it is available only in economy-class locomotives.