Marketing

Plan
Flight Center
 Executive Summary
Customer is the ruler of the society and marketing plan is prepared to attract the customer.
Marketing is the knowledgeable field and developing concept in this period, without marketing
no one can think to progress and enlarge the business of the organizations. As it is known that
marketing only take place with the indirect cost only however also supports to progress the
organization over the universal concept. Flight Center is founded in 1981 as an Australian based
travelling corporation. It manages over 20 different brands internationally regarding travelling
products. Its international operations contain stores in NZ, United States, United Kingdom and
Canada, and many stores in Asia. Largely two thousand stores were set all over the world by
Flight Centre. They are the developing business moguls in travelling industry.

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 Table of Contents
Contents Page Number
Introduction 3
Marketing Objectives 4

Environmental Analysis 5

SWOT Analysis 7

Matching S to O / Converting W and T 9

Marketing Strategies 10

Marketing Implementation 12

Conclusion 15

References 16

Flight Center – Marketing Plan

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 Introduction
Flight Center is a service based company and delivers the services to the customers and produces
the income with these services. Flight Centre is founded by two persons which are ‘Graham
Turner and Geoff Harris’. They opened their first office in Sydney, Australia. Currently, this
company is developing progressively (Flight Center, 2016). In order to maintain a continuing
growth, an efficient marketing plan is required for the company (Chris, 2015).
The airline industry is dominated by the major carriers. It is an industry characterized by merger,
acquisition, and consolidation. Like so many other industries it has quickly evolved into an
industry that has room only for major players and smaller "specialty" or "niche" participants.
There are two specialty segments that have characteristically been exploited by new entrants.
One is the "price" niche and the other is the "route" niche. One focuses on charging less, the
other on providing either the only service between two given points (the "commuter" or "feeder"
concept) or else superior or more convenient or less costly service between heavily traveled
destinations.

Mission
Flight Center has a mission to provide safe, efficient, low-cost consumer air travel service. “Our
service will emphasize safety as its highest priority. We will operate the newest and best
maintained aircraft available. We will never skimp on maintenance in any fashion whatsoever..
We will provide friendly and courteous "no frill" service.”

The keys to success are:

 Obtaining the required governmental approvals.
 Securing financing.
 Experienced management. (Already in place).
 Marketing; either dealing with channel problems and barriers to entry; or solving
problems with major advertising and promotion budgets. Targeted market share must be
achieved even amidst expected competition.
 Product quality. Always with safety foremost.

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  Services delivered on time, costs controlled, marketing budgets managed. There is a
temptation to fix on growth at the expense of profits. Also, rapid growth will be curtailed
in order to keep maintenance standards both strict and measurable.
 Cost control. There are only three airlines with lower operating costs also operate older
and less reliable equipment.

Marketing Objectives
- It is expected that in 2015, the number of tourists (including domestic, inbound and outbound) is
about 20000 visits - increases by over 40%, the revenue reaches over 100 billion, increases by
100% compared to 2014 (David, 2010).
- In 2016, the number of tourists (including domestic, inbound and outbound) is about 30000 visits
increases by over 70%, the revenue reaches over 170 billion, increases by 70% compared to
2015.
- Maintaining and development the brand, regain its position in the vanguard of the tourism
industry.
- Exploiting new markets, creating a variety of products.

Environmental Analysis
Microenvironment
Customer: Normally the business will be affected by services, potential or current products
scale, expected benefits, tastes or solvency of the customers. Firms often interest in these
information to orient the consumption.

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Price pressure: The more development of society, the more consumers have more options in the
procurement of goods, food, or services. Everyone want to buy more products with less cost
because of limited income. Therefore price is always their first concern. They prefer good quality
products with reasonable price.

Pressure on product quality: Consumers’ demand are increasingly high, they desire to have
services’ money‘s worth. Thus, goods quality is always the most important factor.

Supplier: They assert their prestige and power through products quality they provide. The
concerned objects are: suppliers of materials, equipment, banking credit organizations, labor
organizations.

Price: Because of long-term brand and prestige, Flight Centre can negotiate the price easily with
loyal partners, therefore they apply the competitive pricing strategy.

Current and potential competitors: As Australia is the biggest tourist country, there are more
and more travel companies growing in, included the private companies. Thus, price competition
is undeniable.

Macro environment
Population: The first factor is needed to analyze is the population because people make up the
market. Australia’s population now is over 50 million people – a large consumption market.
Moreover, migration trend from urban to rural area will affect consumer’s habit in the next few
years. GDP in 2015 is about 10000 USD/person/year (Dorf, 2000). Today people have more and
more choices in procurement, entertainment.

Economy: GDP in 2013 is 8.6%, which leads to 600 billion USD of economic scale. It is
expected that GDP in 2014 increases to 9.5% and 2015 will be 10%.

Besides that, Australia tried to dominate inflation, from 2011 to 2013, it decreased from 18.13%
to 6% – the smallest number in the last 10 years. This is one of the outstanding achievements in
operating the macroeconomic stably. Investment rate in economy depends on the level of
inflation. Inflation maintenance encourages economic investments and stimulate the growth of
market. These indicators allow firms to estimate their market size and market share (Hubbard,
2004).

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Increasing or decreasing trend of GDP directly impacts the size and nature of the market in
future. For example, when income increases, consumers not only care about the product quality
but also service quality. Hence, firms have more technical improvements, create the new
products as well as improve the quality of services to meet the increasing demands of the
consumer.

Technology: Technology is indispensable in modern life today. If a firm is lack of modern or

updated technology, it is so difficult to competitive in the market. It is confirmed that today most
of employees in our country are not trained with standard process. Especially, there are not many
management staffs who have high knowledge, high level of foreign language to acquire science
and technology process on over the world.

Political-Legal:

Stable political environment, perfecting law system facilitate to the business of the firms.
Australia has created diplomatic relations with over 170 nations, is one of members of 63
national organizations and make relationship with over 500 NGOs.

Socio-culture: Australia has many kinds of religions. The higher life standard people have, the
more they interest in spiritual life.

Target Markets
Currently, Europe and Asia is the main target market, which brings the most revenue for Flight
Centre Travel Company.

The second target market is domestic, beside the tradition products such as Kayak tour, heritage
tour, central tour of Australia, there also has Eco tour, which focus on customer who has average
income, young people or back-packers, and pilgrim tour, treatment tour, discover tour.

The markets which company tends to exploit is China and Europe: the number of customer in
these market is still small and company is going to implement promotion strategies, introduce
their products, make relationship with more partners in order to attract customers.

Current Marketing Objectives and performance

Current strategy is to maintain and attract more and more loyal customers:

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- Exploiting domestic market: beside traditional tours, it is necessary to develop competitive
products, more creative products, product differentiation.
- Focusing on promotion strategies to Europe and USA markets, sending emails, advertising,
joining too many tourist exhibitions in order to pull customers in those markets for company.
- Maintenance brand Flight Centre travel through the best product with the best service.
- Focusing on competitive price strategy.

SWOT Analysis
Strengths
Being one of the strongest brands in the Central of Australia, Flight Centre is known as a reliable
partner, providing the best quality with the best services. The best way to develop the business is
maintaining the brand effectively (Lancaster and Massingham, 2011).

Brand: The influence of brand Flight Centre: long term prestige and reliance.
- Supplier: A durable association with the main supplier has produced shares knowledge of the
product‘s necessity, devotion to quality standards, as well as a common vision through the
growth and production procedure.
- Staff: After converting business model, a new staff has been replaced the one before: younger,
enthusiastic, innovative and they have good knowledge base.

Weaknesses
Since converting business model to One Member Limited Company, there are some changes in
business situation as well as human resources of Flight Centre travel:

- Staff: There has a staff transference (most of manager staff moved to another company and the
new leadership has been replaced), thus company needs much more time to get stability. In spite
of the enthusiasm of new staff, they are lack of experience. In addition, their foreign language
skills are not high and professional, therefore, it is difficult to operate company effectively.
- Market: Lost the key staff means company also lost the some important inbound markets –
which contributed significantly to total revenue of company.
- Partner: Ability to make relationship with domestic and international land tour of Flight Centre
travel is still weak.

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- Profit: Most of the main target market of company is neighbor countries, which do not bring high
profit.
- Finance: not abundant as before, it is easy to get risk or crisis because of these factors: weather,
diseases,

Opportunities
In recent years, the politic and economy situation in Australia is quite stable; living standard is
increasingly high, which creates favorable conditions for the development of Australian tourism
industry in general.

- Many opportunities of global economic integration have been opened when Australia
participated in WTO.
- One of the members of JATA, PATA, ASTA, VITA.
- Being a tourist country, the budget for development tourism is so large, which brings tourism to
become a spearhead economy of Australia.
- The infrastructure systems in recent years has been upgraded to develop tourism industry,
especially international tourism: reconstruct international airports, strong investment for
Festivals.
- Besides that, more intensive training facilities for tourism have been opened, which provides
good staff with stable knowledge base – serving in the future.
- Currently, some neighbor countries like NZ who has instability political situation, therefore the
travelers tends to turn to Australia and another countries to visit, it is expected to bring more
revenue for Australian tourism.
- Today, tourist trends of the world are: Eco tour, green tour, heritage and culture tour, discover
tour, It creates great opportunities for development of Australian tourism in general.

Threats
- Australia focuses on development of tourism, thus there are obviously the growth of many travel
companies, which creates more competitors in the market.
- Most of tourist products is quite similar, they become saturated and it is difficult to compete.

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- Weather is the huge threat of Australian tourism in general and travel company in particular: in
the rain season, it is so hard to operate many tour products effectively. Besides that, there are
others factors such as flood, drought, and diseases.
- The echo of the global economic crisis has affected the development of business (Myers, 2006).
- The political instability of neighbor countries leads in decrease of outbound tours.

Matching S to O / Converting W and T

- Maintaining and development the brand and image of company, positioning them in the
customer’s mind.
- Being a member of many tourist associations, company should actively participate in trade fairs
and exhibitions to enhance cooperation, create relationships with domestic and foreign partners.
- Building the product strategies, human resource plans which conform to the policies of the state
in the coming years.
- Developing the products matching with global travel trends in the future, such as eco-tourism
combining environmental protection, discover tour,
- Linking to the prestige training facilities to get the good staff for tourism in the future.
- Company owns such a prime location will attract more free independent travelers, hence they
should create more strategies to get high revenue from this kind of travelers.
- In low season, it is necessary to show promotion strategies to stimulus: sale off, organize some
events to grateful for loyal customers, and try to develop non-seasonal products.
- The state or Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism should invest more budget to organize grand
festivals, where many international partners join in, therefore business in Australia can develop
their images, making more relationships with another countries.
- Trying to exploit and cooperate with Europe or USA markets – who brings huge revenue and
profit for company.

Marketing Strategies
Marketing Mix
Products

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Many kinds of domestic and international tour and some services accompany: Domestic tours:

Eco tour, Green tour: homestay at home of local people, living as a truly fishermen or famer,
riding a bike through the villages, Kayak tour: tourists kayak by themselves to visit some
historical sites, imagine the living once upon a time, Sightseeing tours (visiting the heritages,
beautiful sites, famous attractions,), relaxing tours (treatment tour, spa,) Religion pilgrim tours:
visits many ancient pagodas and temples. The typical tours of 3 areas in Australia: South, Centre
and North.

Indochina tours: Laos, Thai, and Cambodia. In which, Thai is the main target market of
company, some specific tours such as: caravan, visit the Central of Malaysia, or Viet Nam –
Cambodia impression tour. China: shopping tour, sightseeing tour. ASIAN area: Beauty tours in
Korea, treatment tour in Singapore. European, North American tours: most of them are transplant
tours with other partners. Company also business some services accompany such as: ticket
airlines, visa procedure, hotel booking, and transportation.

Product strategy

In common, Flight Centre travel is known as a company with Indochina and traditional domestic
tours. Flight Centre always tries to create products with increasingly high quality with
competitive prices to meet all the needs of the customer. Recently, thanks to advertisement,
promotion plans, there are more types of tour applied to attract more new markets, increase the
product differentiation to the competitors. The package tour services are increasingly perfect.

Price

Development the competitive price policy with the commission: 10% for domestic, Indochina
and China markets, 15-20% for European and American markets. Because of long-term prestige,
it is quite easy for company to negotiate the reasonable price. In addition, company gets the
support in competitive price from the members in Flight Centre Corporation.

                                                                                                  
Distribution:

Broadening the distribution system: linking with tour agencies to promote products or making
relations with another partners to send customers, combine the transplant tours together, and

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build mutual benefits. In addition, putting some brochures, tour information in ticket airlines
office or advertising them on two websites of company: FlightCentre.com

Promotion:

Advertising the products of company on the mass media, hanging panos, leaflets, pictures on the
street, especially on festivals; joining in many exhibitions, roadshows in domestic and
international areas,

Discount, promotion plans about 10-20% on low-season, upgrade the websites to make them
more interaction, easier to communicate. Company should regularly organize events like grateful
event for loyal customers, introduction new products.

Marketing Implementation
Marketing organization
Compliance with the management of director, marketing department plans the marketing
strategies for each market segment as described above. Each segment is taken responsibility by a
group, each group will be headed by a sales manager who have to reports the process and result
to director. With the specialization of marketing department, company hopes to bring good

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results in positioning company's products on customers ‘mind, helping company increasingly go
up.

Activities
Domestic tours

Beside the completion of traditional products: eco tour, kayak, sightseeing. Company is going to
create the different products, which have high competition.

Making more occasions for the staff to survey, visit, study in some destinations, attractions in
order to raise their enthusiasm, hardworking and making friendly office environment.

Investing more on advertising, promotion by hanging panos, posters about the image of company
at the fairs or exhibitions.

Rebuilding the websites to make it more interact, easier to communicate for customers.

North areas:

East – North West: the harmony between the natural condition and the ethnic living in highland,
which is strong resource for the exploitation of state and tourist business.

Maintaining the transplant tours with Airlines.

Creating more special city tours and sightseeing tours there.

Central areas:

Maintaining and refreshing traditional tours: “Central Heritage Road”

Tours of visiting hometown.

Tours of attractions in Sydney city: Festivals, Eco tour.

Development linking tours: Beaches, Golfs, community tours.

South and highland areas:

Focusing on tour programs: Flower festival, community tour with ethnic minorities, beach
festivals.

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Cruise ship tours

Exploitation new programs:

Taking advantage of southern tourism: tours with fruit gardens, rivers, lakes, floating market.
Focus on the product line in Southwest

Developing and refresh cities tour and open tours.

International tours

New Zealand – Africa – USA: Linking with other travel companies to promote the outbound
transplant tours.

Malaysia – Singapore – China: Exploitation new attractions in Malaysia and Singapore.

Asian areas:

Creating transplant tours for GIT (Group Inclusive Tour). Tourism trend today: Beauty tours,
shopping in Korea, sightseeing tours in Japan. Golf tours in Korea, Malaysia. Sending e-mail
regularly to loyal customers and giving those thanks gifts to keep contacts together. Joining in
domestic and international exhibitions to advertise company’s products.

Europe

Joining in at least 1 in 3 international tourism fairs in Europe: WTM in UK, TOP RESA in
France, ITB in Germany, the estimated cost is about 400 million (participation fee booth,
accommodation, travel, visa procedures.

Sending regularly emails in order to introduce new products as well as maintain relationships;
exchanging business cards, CDs, brochures with other partners through international tourism
fairs.

Creating nicknames to sign in the forums or social networking sites to search for the tourists.
Sending documents, publications, CDs characteristics about the products of the company to
embassies in European countries in order to advertise, increase more access to resources.
Continuing to promote European tour programs with VISTA, France - Germany - Italy –
Belgium- Netherlands - Sweden - Greece – Turkey. The new vibrant destination in year: the
thematic tours, transplant tours to global events like Olympics, World Cup.
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 Conclusion

Flight Center is an emerging Company progressively moving towards development. Therefore,

the effective marketing plan can lead the Company towards huge success. Flight Centre should
increase its operations in the developed countries such as US and UK which can produce greater
revenue for them. The effective marketing strategies as described in the report are very
significant for the Company in the Upcoming years. The management of Flight Centre should
consider the marketing of a Company as a top priority in order to progress well in the future.

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 Dorf, R. (2000 ). The Marketing management handbook. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

 Hubbard, B. (2004). Marketing management. Maidenhead, Berkshire, England:

Pergamon Infotech.

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