Travel Agency & Tour Operator

I/ TOUR OPERATOR

A tour operator, is the term commonly used to designate a tour operator or a tour operator. It is an organization responsible for organizing touristic form of "packages" in which everything is included (flights and other means of transport, hotels, restaurants, entertainment ...).

The tour operator assembles services purchased independently negotiated prices (depending on number of participants, the fame of his agency, the season ...) to airlines, hoteliers, restaurateurs and other providers on site, to create "packages "or" packages "for its customers.

However, the price differences between tour operators are explained by the different ways they have to negotiate rates.

For example, regarding the theft, they can either rent a plane or joint charter with other tour operators for a period and a destination (charter) or create their own airline (much more frequent abroad), either rent or purchase a number of firm place on scheduled flights (one of the most expensive solutions).

Increasingly, tour operators purchase their own airlines, hotels and restaurants to be sure to have availability at unbeatable prices.

Also, return quality is better and faster.

With the development of e-commerce on the Internet, the number of tour operators online has increased significantly and has changed their market.

Where even 10 years ago, tour operators resell their services to travel agencies (BtoB business to business), today they also sell directly to the final consumer (BtoC: business to customer).

There are different types of tour operator, to give some examples, when I type in the search engine "tour operator" it gives me different brands such as:

- FRAM

- TUI

- Opodo

- CETO

- Etc ...

But recently, due to the crisis, the tour operator FRAM, is preparing to eliminate 67 jobs at the end of a bad year, which has seen its revenue decline by 8% and the deficit climb by 71%. It is not the only one in the same case, it must be said that each tour operators and somehow affected by this crisis, some like Thomas Cook with colossal debts of € 1 billion to the point of selling their eleven aircraft (20% of the fleet) and five hotels in Spain.

The origin of this debacle tour operators, first by natural disasters such as the Icelandic ash cloud, avian flu in Asia ... but especially the Arab Spring countries FRAM realized almost half of its activity, which undermined to tourism abroad.

To these natural phenomena that is grafted to the economic crisis, which emputer the purchasing power of holidaymaker, from pushing less and less far and it is the middle classes who are most affected by the crisis and are major customers of tour operators. Departures are therefore 80% in France.

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