While there is no studies on Chartered bus business which is the main stream of local tourism and is no alternatives to the development of local tourism, With those premises in mind, this study is to provide marketing strategy for the local charter-bu...
While there is no studies on Chartered bus business which is the main stream of local tourism and is no alternatives to the development of local tourism, With those premises in mind, this study is to provide marketing strategy for the local charter-bus tourism which has severe managerial difficulties.
In this regard, this study has analysed and classified documents issued by the government through 17 firms which is running in Kimcheon area, like Sangju, Kumi, and Kimcheon and has analysed the results of the 12 firms out of those which we have interviewed.
Followings are the results of charter-bus tourism in Kimcheon area though data analysis and interview.
Firstly, the level of expansion of tourism in this region differs by region. Tourist of Kumi city has increased while that of Kimcheon city has decreased. So many tourist firms have came into being as the starting a tourist firm has changed from a return system to a registration system.
Secondly, the number of charter-bus firms and charted buses has rapidly increased. As of today in 2000, the number of charted buses has doubled and almost tripled compared with that of 1990. Because of this trend in tourism, Charter-bus firms have more than enough buses and even shows overheating in the established market.
Thirdly, the oversupply of chartered bus is evident when local population stands almost still and the poor increase of tourists outside of this area. The rate of chartered buses a in proportion to the local population has decreased and in turn, brought about the managerial problems for the local chartered bus firms.
In this situation where managerial environment and management are getting worse, following are the results of the research we have done to figure out what strategy the local chartered bus firms exercise so far.
First, with regard to market segmentation, the grasp of comsumer's change and local suppliers is mediocre and business-wise, they have found a target market but they haven't made any specific efforts for the target market aside from other market.
Second, regarding product and service mix, they exercise relatively high quality product and service strategy and try to maintain customer preferring vehicles and make substantial effort to enhance the firm's fame.
Third, in regard to price mix, they apply a prime rate or a reduced rate and for the regular customers, but they don't adopt many different ways of settlement such as credit card, deferred payment and relatively low price comparing with competitors.
Fourth, in regard to distribution mix, though they are located where customers can find with ease, they don't have customer friendly reservation system.
Fifth, in regard to promotion mix, they put quite few advertisement in newspapers, and they don't host any explanatory meeting to attract potential customers and they don't hand out any give-away to customers or the general public.
Sixth, in regard to the process mix, they actively accept customer's proposals and they allow the customers to change or cancel the schedule for customer's convenience. Also, they provide schedules for the sake of customers.
Seventh, in regard to the marketing of customer relation, they try to keep in touch with customers consistently, show earnest appreciation to customers and try to be sincere irrespective of the size of reservation. However, they don't provide enough information to customers for the long run and their efforts to judge in customer's place rather than in firm's place is not so much.
As mentioned above, the most prevailing strategy of local chartered bus tourism in the region of Kimcheon, Sangju and Kumi is product and service mix and next one is distribution mix, relation marketing, and process mix. Though frequency of excercise is a bit low, market segmentation is used more than average. But, promotion mix is used less than average and the use of price mix is just average.