Escape Tour Travels Performance

where they would open a new store front for intimidation purposes. However, this seems to be a one off incident and the company does not consciously use this approach to gain advantages among their competitors. Therefore they have low performance in this dimension.

With low and medium performances in each of the four dimensions, CFA Voyages receives a low-medium overall score reflecting their struggles in survival in the hypercompetitive environment they are facing currently. They have already shown signs of stagnation and lack of seeking innovation for new opportunities would only hinder their progress as the technological age creates a fast paced changing environment. Observing their website and social media accounts, they do keep information up to date with these accounts to properly inform customers.

However, they have adapted to these online tools of promotion later in the game. This caused them to lose time and advantage within the playing field. Thus, they have a low performance in adapting to an online presence and adapting to using online tools to implement effective strategies.

7.3 Escape Tour Travels Performance

Escape Tour Travels showed different levels of performances for each of the four dimensions.

For the first dimension, Escape Tour Travels performs highly in focusing its efforts on developing new advantages and shedding old advantages when realizing it has become costly.

This company is constantly in search of new opportunities to gain temporary advantages and does not hesitate to implement new advantages when found and drops its old advantages that are no longer sustainable. This quick movement and flexibility has been seen clearly in the company’s

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history of decisions to add new services. An example of its quick movement in this dimension is when the company realized that using paid public advertisement was no longer creating the advantages it once did therefore became costly to keep up without reaping the returns. Escape Tour Travels moved fast in stopping payments on this type of advertisement and turned to using social media alliances with other established companies in different travel sectors to attain new advantages and reduce the cost of promotions.

In the second dimension, the company also scored high in making small moves rather than big moves to maintain its advantages in a hypercompetitive environment. Escape Tour Travels demonstrates clearly sequential strategic thrusts in successive additions of new services and creating alliances with companies in different sectors of the travel industry in a quick manner which boosted the company’s specialized knowledge and expertise further and positioned the company for speed and surprise when faced with changes in the environment. The company was able to sustain their strong advantage in being experts on traveling to Ukraine by maintaining and offering services that the competitors were able to offer outside of specializing in Ukraine travel.

Escape Tour Travels was also able to further differentiate its services by partnering with a dating service company; continuing its advantage position with its competitors.

Escape Tour Travels however did not show as strong of a performance in the third dimension; it was less clear how the company was able to be unpredictable to its competitors nor was it clear whether its competitors looked to imitate the company’s approaches and business models.

Although some actions did seem to be unpredictable and would potentially confuse competitors

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and be hard to imitate. For example, the decision to partner with a dating service company seems like an unlikely route a travel agency would take to gain an advantage. As the company partnered with a dating service (Dream Connections) that also happened to specialize in making connections between men and women from Ukraine, it would be hard for competitors to imitate this symbiotic relationship that two companies have.

The company falters in the last dimension as there as lack of using the approach to mislead the competition. Therefore, the company has a low performance in this area. The owner of the company mentioned that save for looking online through forums and reading customer feedback, she has little knowledge of what her competitors are using as strategic tools to gain advantages in the industry. Therefore, it is assumed that the company does not have any pressures of competition following closely so the need to mislead or confuse competitors is lacking.

With high performances in two of the dimensions, but one low performance in one of the dimensions, the overall score for Escape Tour Travels is a medium-high performance score. This reflects the strength and potential that the company currently has in surviving the hypercompetitive environment it faces today.

This company also shows high performance in its ability to adapt to creating a strong online presence and its ability to utilize online tools for effective strategic approaches that can maintain advantages against competitors in the market. Escape Tour Travels has been able to position itself highly in the hypercompetitive settings of the travel industry that it seems to have high potential to be able to respond quickly for any changes in the environment. In fact, currently with the

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instability of Ukraine the company has been faced with the issue of customers canceling tours and flights to Ukraine. As the company has set up multiple alliances with companies in different sectors of the travel industry, this disruption has not completely deterred the growth of the company. The company still has a base foundation of return customers from its alliance with the dating service company and has been able to maintain sustainability to survive.