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This HC1041 impact of IT on business assignment help is going study about the impact of IT in the tourism industry. The report will analyse required factors by taking a tourism organisation named ‘Thomas Cook’. It is UK-based tourism company which implementing IT tools and software into the business environment. This study will find role of IT in business environment, advantages bring by IT for company, which elements are required to implement IT into business, risk occurrence due to IT in business and factors which are using for monitor risk.
Information technology has special significance in the tourism industry. In the present scenario, the tourism industry is using various high technologies for communication and information all around the world. ‘Thomas Cook‘ is a UK based Company which use Information technology for marketing, training of tourism, provide services through IT channels, service development and their distribution. Information technology is essential in order to undertake ever changing demands in tourism services. In this way ‘Thomas, Cook Company provides modern services to their customer by enhancing their services through current technology (Hjalager, 2010). The company is attracting the customer by its services and offers in order to accommodate modern technology. The customers also get advantages such as they gain more information about the product, it provides ease of purchase tourism services and decision-making process is also very convenient for them (Hjalager, 2010). The industry also attracts the customer by directly dealing with them.
Nowadays Thomas Cook travel and tourism organisation are undergoing various cancellations and booking so these tasks are not so easy without the use of information technology. The demands of customers are various and ever changing. They expect more and more facilities from the tourism industry. IT provides some special tools to handle conflicting resources and fulfil the expectation of customers. The movement of people is not bound to the internal region only as they are going for the international tour, domestic tourism and national tourism (Evans.et.al. 2012). Therefore, the company need to face various tangible and intangible elements. Information technology provides rest, relaxation, and opportunity to meet customers to growth their business. Thomas Cook Company is now able to avoid damaging and expensive mistakes. There is some external factor which affects tourism services like some disaster can happen, these factors are controlled by Information technology (Evans.et.al. 2012). In this way, it saves the future of Thomas Cook Company.
Information technology requires Thomas Cook is required to interact with different transportation means like- air, water and surfacing. The guests want to stay in hotels, caravans, Motel and Guest houses. Apart from this, some visitors are satisfied by educational theme or some other are satisfy by recreational or aesthetic etc. All such needs are properly fulfilled by implementing information technology tools. Thomas Cook Company requires proper planning to accommodate technical tools in their scenario (Aldebert.et.al. 2011). Planning stage overlaps employees acceptance, customer and organisation acceptance. Cost estimation is needed to be undertaken by considering the budget of the company. IT is mainly implemented in company environment by installing software and tools. Before going to this step the company should be a model design plan according to their services and the model should present what are the product of the company, what are the key features wants to install, security criteria, payment gateways, user login, LAN or WAN etc. These software and tools have required some equipment like the personal server to avoid threats and attacks. Such new software and equipment are handled by staff and worker (Law.et.al. 2014). In this way, a complete training program must be planned by the organisation so that they are able to use equipment efficiently. Training programs must improve skills of employees and under control by top management.
The staff and employees of Thomas Cook use IT components in their workplace. They are used to find the requirement of the customer, find more consumer, booking and cancellation easily on newly developed technology. The staff directly contacts to consumers and offer them services and products. The marketing criteria are also enhanced and straight forward by using IT tools. Now, they are able to advertise offers on social media in order to closer with people. This lead to provide relaxation to employees of the company and their salary structure is also improved according to profit gain is also increases of underlying company (Law.et.al. 2010). Implementation of IT tools also improves flexibility to customers and suppliers. Customers are able to find complete information about the product, update with latest offers and discount, flexible to choose services. Their critical decision-making process is also going to convert easiness by using IT tools and techniques. Now the customer can perfectly plan their journey and make successful plan for meeting, health, leisure or relatives. Apart from this supplier can directly present their services without using a middle party (Law.et.al. 2010). It is very easy to find clients by using information technology. Clients and requirement are drawn out rapidly and suppliers are enabling to take more orders.
IT brings limitless benefits and advantages for Thomas Cook. The company is able to contact with suppliers and distributors at any time and any place. The technology overcomes obstacles cultural and geographical boundaries. The company need to acquire inventory from various suppliers from all over the world so in this way they bring better price services. In this way, it reduces purchasing cost (Reigadinha and Cravidão, 2012). Apart from this information technology allow the organisation to simultaneously communicate with both external and internal factors like- employees, customers. They are becoming closer to customers and able to provide fast repose of their query. This would increase customer satisfaction and lead to increase overall revenue of company (Reigadinha and Cravidão, 2012). The company is more flexible to choose efficient marketing tools like- most popular social media. The organisation is able to recruit tourism staff on the basis of online application form. Therefore, IT reduces cost and enhances flexibility. This would also helpful to find out needs for tourism business and exactly what customer wants. The organisation is now flexible to handle thousands of customer and flexible to replay queries of the customer. In this way, it presents relaxation and efficiency of work.
The Thomas cook company may suffer security and confidentiality risk. Online market raises sophisticated criminals. They act as fraud supplier or distributor and it can also illegally access sensitive data of the organisation. The attacker may also damage transaction process due to security weakness. In this way, consumers may suffer from fraud and illegal entity. This would lay down customer satisfaction and trust. This would affect the business badly. Generally is has been seen that database is more vulnerable to attack where attack damage important details and images of the company (Kim.et.al. 2011). These details are considering most important for business as it represents what organisation offer. Therefore, such damage leads to loss of attraction and trust of customers. In this way, organisation does not ensure that presented data to customers is actual one or not so there is confidentiality risk. Apart from, the customer need to book tour by providing details of his/her credit card. The customer may suffer from security risk (Lepp.et.al. 2011). The privacy of data is under risk due to online attacks. Sometimes it also can be happened that attacker sends high volume of data and traffic to the network in order to degrade service provider to the customer. The attackers are trying to engage the system in handling invaluable data packet so many customers losses data connection and do not get the response.
Thomas Cook Company maintains a strategy against such IT risk. The company is now using strong internal policy against security, privacy and confidentiality issues. In order to undertake these issues, Thomas Cook is using updated antivirus and antispyware software into IT environment. This would avoid entry of worms and viruses in IT business environment. They also implement a firewall to improve security and attacker is not able to hack sensitive information of the company. The firewall monitors data access and allows only authenticate the user to access personal information (Bigné.et.al. 2010). This would also avoid unwanted packet flow in the system and make system congestion free. Apart from this, Thomas cook also establishes cyber security premises like encryption on hardware. Hardware data include images, details of product and customer information. However, they are well protected by encryption technique. Therefore, the attacker is not able to find information.
The system also encourages choosing a strong password like mix it with number capitals and lower case (Pantano and Di Pietro, 2013). Cyber criminals mainly damage trade, economic growth of company, innovation and competitiveness. This will be laid down the revenue of the business. In this way, the company now also hires security expert in their IT environment who will monitor and check security aspects and find regions where security programs are required to establish.
This report concluded that information technology overcomes the distance between customer and service provider. The company is now flexible to handle various requests of booking and cancellation. In this way, it tools and software’s is necessary to be installed in the present system. The company need to define cost estimation and designing plan and hardware into the system. However, there is some risk like- securities, confidentiality, and privacy. All such issues are handling by using cyber security mechanism.
Books and journals
Aldebert, B., Dang, R.J. and Longhi, C., 2011. Innovation in the tourism industry: The case of Tourism@. Tourism management, 32(5), pp.1204-1213.
Bigné, E., Sanz, S., Ruiz, C. and Aldás, J., 2010. Why some Internet users don’t buy air tickets online. Information and communication technologies in tourism 2010, pp.209-221.
Evans, N., Stonehouse, G. and Campbell, D., 2012. Strategic management for travel and tourism. Taylor & Francis.
Hjalager, A.M., 2010. A review of innovation research in tourism. Tourism management, 31(1), pp.1-12.
Kim, M.J., Chung, N. and Lee, C.K., 2011. The effect of perceived trust on electronic commerce: Shopping online for tourism products and services in South Korea. Tourism Management, 32(2), pp.256-265.