Background
Tours & Tickets started as a ticket booth on Damrak in Amsterdam about 30 years ago. Currently it has grown as a market leader on the sales of a variety of products such as, excursions, city tours and selling a wide variety of tickets for museums, attractions, canal cruises and sightseeing. On a yearly basis the company sells about 2.5million tickets. Tickets are sold by Tours & Tickets stores, shop-in-shop stores, hotels, resellers and its own website. Because of this the company has been able to grow together with other companies. Tours & Tickets is partner with World of Delights, which is a cooperation network consisting of the Xtra Cold Icebar, Cheese Factory Volendam, Keytours and Lindbergh. Other labels of Tours …show more content…
Commissioning client
City Sightseeing Amsterdam provides a hop-on hop-off transport service with its red boats and busses that go around the city center. The service allows guests to hop-on and off near the top attractions, museums, monuments and the canal sights of the city. Besides that, it provides entertainment. During the tour there is a GPS system on board where guest can discover more about the city when passing the highlights. Furthermore, there are staff on board that facilitate the guests way around in the city. City Sightseeing consists of 48 employees (Amsterdam, N/A).
Reason for the research
In today’s modern society the importance of online reviews in the purchasing behaviour has increased. More and more consumers are first looking at a products rating and reviews in order to determine its quality. This leads to them purchasing the product or not. In the tourism world it also plays an important role when tourist travel and want to book a tour with a company. The commissioning client “City Sightseeing Amsterdam” provides a Hop-on Hop-off bus service and wants to improve their ratings on TripAdvisor. When a comparison is made between the ratings of the Hop-on Hop-off …show more content…
According to eMarketer report ‘The number of reviews on TripAdvisor, for example, surpassed 100 million in March 2013, bolstered by a 50% increase year over year’. The study also showed that besides TripAdvisor having the most posted reviews, there are also other online travel sites with millions of reviews. Based on a study of TripAdvisor in January 2013 by StrategyOne (Edelman Berland, 2015), which provides a service of market insights and analytics, about 41% of the 15.000 respondents said to have shared recommendations through other channels such as social media and e-mail. Another study of PhoCuWright in 2012, states that two in five travellers of the United States use travel-review websites and one-third go directly to a hotel website. In the travel industry reviews are mostly influential on hotels. The study has analysed that 57% of travellers book a hotel because of the management that has responded to their review, unlike those who do not reply. In addition, more than 60% respond to complaints and negative reviews and 5% ignore them, according to TripAdvisor TripBarometer. One of the hotel brand that participated in the study was Wyndham Hotel Group. The executive vice president of marketing Flo Lugli states that changes in the marketing have positioned the consumer as the one in charge. Also that, ‘When consumers are asked for their opinion, their expectation is that something will be done with