Sinorama Voyages Group

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6. Results

Each interview was conducted either through in person interviews or conference call interviews.

All of the representatives were asked a similar series of leading and interpretive questions to attain data. They will be separated reported and summarized below to show similarities and patterns.

6.1 Sinorama Voyages Group

The first company interviewed is Sinorama Voyages. This is a company has been in the travel industry for a considerable length of time having been established nine years ago in Montreal.

Their main product is packaged tours to different regions of China and their main target audience is customers in North America and Europe. However they have had to undergo multiple changes in order to stay ahead of their competitors. The company expanded fairly quickly within a few years to multiple store fronts in Canada and multiples store fronts in Europe (France and Germany; established in 2012 and 2013 respectively). They create new promotions and new services seasonally to help stay differentiated from their competitors. They have been expanding their package tours to outside of China into other areas of Asia and recently, different parts of Europe as well. They do however instill the values of extending services to customers who have special demands. All of the employees are trained to speak with customers on the phone with courtesy and trained to put the customers as first priority. They have an extensive network of suppliers whom they work with to create packaged tours for customers. These alliances have a

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long term relationship with the company and have been one of the defining aspects of the company; the company has been able to negotiate lower costs for services and has already screened the quality of these services.

During the beginning of establishing the business, Sinorama had used traditional media and traditional promotional tools to attract attention of customers. These included newspaper ads, magazine ads, and television commercials. This strategy was through to be best as their target audience is the older, retired generation. However in October of 2012, the company expanded its services and established a website online. A few months later, they added a new service of being able to order and pay for package tours through their website. This helped boost their sales growth significantly and they soon realized that they may be able to solely rely on their website for promotions. The same year the company found the traditional media promotions to be costly and dropped all traditional media ads and focused on their online presence. In order to extend their online presence, they have established twitter accounts, facebook accounts, and google+

accounts to post promotions and keep their customers informed. Since, they have found that even though the target audience is older; they are still mostly attracting customers through the internet.

Other improvements that have proved significant are the addition of different languages onto their website.

Their main focus is customer service and is focused on keeping their quality rather than driving down prices. Their main advantages are their close relationships with high end hotels and tourist companies in China that are featured in their packages. This has been a strategic move that they

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have been able to sustain for a long period of time. As their main focus has been the quality of customer services, they are implementing procedural improvements consistently through constant feedback from customers. They make sure that they keep a close watch on reduction of customer complaints and how customers rank their services.

Sinorama Voyages has plans in the future to expand even further to try to gain market share and new customers in more countries in Europe. They have been conducting market research to look for another viable region to promote their services. They have seen an easier access to test new markets with the access of the internet and feel that they may even cannibalize one of their store fronts to expand into a new market region and focus more on their web presence and network of suppliers to bring new and high quality products to their customers.

This company has experienced growth in different sectors: they have expanded to four other offices and are located in different parts of the world. They have experienced growth in customers year after year also. The interviewee attributed a rapid growth in customers after establishing a website and a toll free call line after their second year in business. Their growth is also reflected in their additions of different services over a short period of time. They have included cruises and bus tours into their product mix as well as included insurance services for the convenience of their customers. The company has also been quick to adapt to social media;

opening accounts with Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus.

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Table 1: Sinorama Performances in the Four Dimensions

Dimensions Evaluation Score

Focus on Developing New Advantages

-This company has been consistently developing new services to find new

opportunities to gain temporary advantages.

-They have also dropped some of their traditional strategies in promotion although still keeping their store fronts intact.

Medium

Making Small Moves

-They make small changes every month to their promotional packages to help

differentiate themselves from competitors. -They also come with new ways to dress their promotions to boost their customer perceived value.

-They are also consistently gaining a wider online presence through a series of small moves (i.e. updating facebook, google+

account, website maintenance)

High

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-They have been unpredictable in targeting the older generation in France rather than targeting younger generation for their package tours.

-They have also expanded to European markets to gain new market share while still focusing on the same target audience.

-They also have an extensive network of more than 500 collaborations which allows the company to be surprising in movement in the market.

Medium

Misleading the Competition

-The company shows some signs of signaling to competitors with their promotions and descriptions of themselves on their website.

-They have aligned themselves with

associations to signal strong establishment to competitors.

-They have also reported an inflated number of customers to further solidify the

appearance of firm competence.

Medium

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The second company interviewed is called CFA Voyages. Established in 1986, with only 3 staff members to begin with, this travel agency has gone through many changes and experienced a lot of growth in staff and services. CFA Voyages has three store fronts established only in Paris, France. Their main products are packaged tours to different regions in Europe and selected regions in Asia. The product mix and promotions are determined by the best contracts they are able to attain with their selected suppliers. Although this company does not usually have any exclusive relationships with suppliers, they have a selected few whom they work with often.

Many of their supplier relationships are contractual where they promise to meet quotas for the year to gain “super commissions” which bring in the bulk of the company revenue. Their longest and closest relationship is with Thai Airways. Thus their margins for packages to Asian regions are the largest as Thai Airways would often give them exclusive deals.

The company’s target market is Asian residents living in France and countries around France.

This is considered a very niche market that they tailor to. They have been targeting this market strategically as they have only opened store fronts in areas of Paris where there are large groups of Asian residents. They have not expanded much outside of this market which is already highly saturated with competitors.

The company promotes new packages and promotions seasonally but rarely creates changes to their packages. They established a website in 1996, one of the first travel agencies to use a website in France. Although they ran into a lot of problems in the beginning with their website