國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
3. Services
3.1. Value Propositions
The company is run by and for sport-lovers. From accommodation, meals, products and services are all sport-centralized. The two founders, Mr. Fu and Mr. We possess broad knowledge regarding sport training. They have very good network with the other event organizers and famous sport brand companies. Since they grew up locally, they also have strong local connections with school and other public sectors. More than a decade experience hosting local, national and international events, they are famous for their ability to organize small and big events. They enjoys sport events themselves as participants as well as organizers. Running a B&B in Guanshan is just an opportunity to extend their enthusiasm and experiences to profitable services. As Simon Sinek says, “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” (Sinek, 2011) Their customers are not only here to find a place to stay. They stay her because Fur’s B&B fulfills their needs to participate sport event more convenient, to gain more knowledge, to enjoy more out of sport events and to extend their network with same group of people with similar interest. Fu’s B&B business serves as a platform to match service providers and users. His connections help link them together.
Fu’s B&B doesn’t consider itself as a competitor to the other local B&B. Instead, the founders want to create business opportunities for all the local businesses by very unique business model.
By organizing medium and big events, they attract more visitors to Guanshan. The economic values are shared among businesses that provide accommodation, meals and other tourism-related services. For travelers, they get the services they need. For local business, they enjoy the revenue increase as well.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
11
3.2. Key Activities
To create new values for its customer, Fu’s B&B offers varied service and products to distinguish the company from the other service providers.
Instead of purely providing accommodation, Fu’s B&B positions the company as travel agent and sport event organizer. By adapting Blue Ocean Strategy, the company looks for opportunities to eliminate, create, raise and reduce factors that generate new value to his target customers as illustrated in figure 3 below.
Figure 3: Four Actions Framework, Blue Ocean Strategy
To combine different roles in one company, Fu B&B doesn’t have enough resources to cover all aspects. Inevitably, the company needs to tradeoff between different “factors”. For example, the company will eliminate most of common services that the other accommodation place provided. The customers are happy serving themselves, while enjoy the companion with the other people sharing the same interests.
‧
Table 1 below demonstrates how they conduct the exercise of ERRC.
Table 1: Eliminate-Raise-Reduce-Create (ERRC) Grid, Blue Ocean Strategy Eliminate special services for athletes such as selling of sport gears and provide As travel agent, they will use IT system to replace most of the customer services. They not only provide tour arrangement, but also to facilitate the registration to race events, both for local and oversea races. This creates special traveling experiences for sport lovers. As sport organizer, they no longer provide prize like most of the other races. It features with ultra-marathon event, which has distance over
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
13
enter. In 2014, they are going to organize a very special event. Participants can run 9 full marathons in 7 days. That is about 380KM in total – only for people who train seriously.
In specific, at the initial phase, the following services are provided:
Local tours: day tour to local tourist attractions
Race events: race event to attract visitors who love participate in festival kind of events.
Training camp: with its rich nature resources, which include one of the best cycling routes in Taiwan, the various running tracks and open water for swimming, Taitung is the best place for endurance sport training
Sales of sport gears: the relationship with brand company helps them to get good discount while their reputation in sport field guarantee the sales profit
Coffee shop: coffee and drinks are not the selling points but the atmosphere for sport lovers to get together in the place
Accommodation: conventional services for B&B
Therapy: for seriously trained athletes to recover from injuries and relieve their stiff muscles
3.3. Future Services
Besides serving incoming visitors, Fu’s B&B also like to serve his fellow citizens in Taitung.
To organize travel group not only for sightseeing, but to attend race outside Taitung or even oversea is one of the services Fu’s B&B can offer. Mr. Fu had been working in travel agent for more than 2 years, he has no problem at all to play the role as a tour leader. Most people enjoy attend races outside their hometown. What prevents them from attending such event most is to go through the hassle of arranging accommodation and other logistics, such as signing up event
‧
economic of scale for him to batch handle all the logistics for event participants.In the long run, Fu’s B&B can also consider franchising their brand to duplicate the same business model outside Guanshan. However, this is not likely happening in the first 5 years, we will not discuss franchising in the plan.
To be a sport activities expert, Fu’s B&B will also consider to provide events like bike-fixing course for profession athlete with the skills to maintain their own equipment. For non-professional, especially family of the athletes, event such as mountain hiking, bike ride class to teach young kids how to ride bike are good alternative activities to make Fu’s B&B a place for family.
Table 2: Summary of Services and Products
Roles Services Products
Travel Agent Organizing oversea race -
Local Tour Day tour Souvenirs
Event organizer Race events -
Training camp Guided Training Program
Personal Trainer
Meals for Athletes
Sport shop Product Advice Bike maintenance
‧
In this section, we will look at the macro market trends in both tourism and sport industry as background analysis of our business.
4.1.1. Tourism in Taiwan
Thanks to an ever-increasing number of tourists—Taiwan has welcomed a record number every year since 2006—tourism is a growth industry in Taiwan. In 2012, travelers from overseas made a record-high 7.3 million visits to Taiwan, an increase of 1.22 million (20.1 percent) compared to 2011. Around 4.7 million (64 percent) of these visits were by tourists, which is 11.95 percent more tourist visits than the country had the year before. (Figure 4)
Figure 4: Visitor to Taiwan by Purpose
The total revenue from tourism industry has grown over 600 billion in recent 2 years. It appears that tourism is a booming industry. (Figure 5)
business