STA Travel
Originally, reaching their customers through retail locations, located close to allege campuses, the Internet made way for new competition.
Competitors Included student focused companies as well as Traceability and Expelled. Not only was this make way for competition. It could also be considered an advantage. Just speaking for the united States, SAT Travel couldn’t possibly have a location at every institute and online would expose students that may not attend an institution that was close to an SAT Travel. Not to mention, the fact that now so many universities and Colleges are online.
It was predicted that 2007 would produce more online bookings than offline retail bookings.
With the rise of the Internet era, SAT Travel had to reconsider their information system and have more responsibility closer to the action. Each major country was responsible for their sales and marketing arms, keeping the company as local as possible. Keeping a consistent feel with the website, each country was free to design their own marketing campaigns. To me, this is a great concept because each country is the expert for that country and make their own deals.
I could never create deals or write about a country that I’m not familiar with nor, have visited.
Leaving that to the “professionals” of that country was a brilliant idea. Also, having designed and maintained several websites, it would be more convenient and resource efficient to have each country responsible for their content. This would break the cycle of each country sending their edits to a web developer, whom might have to get them on the site by a certain time. Alternative 1: Second Life Second Life, was founded in 2003 by a privately held California firm.
In this global AD world, the users first experience of the game would be an orientation, on Orientation Island; where you could create your avatar and get some additional information about the world you’re about to enter.
While creating the avatar, the user has the opportunity to be as reserved or creative as they want. The users view is from the back of their avatar, where you can read signs, talk with people, and transport to different islands. The game is free and can be downloaded from the Second Life website. Members are able to setup businesses. Resulting in many members doing so.
This gives other users information about the businesses. Many recognizable brands have setup business within the widely popular game. Advantages By creating destination islands in the Second Life game, SAT Travel is hoping to attract prospective travelers. With millions of users on Second Life, SAT Travel would have a large community of prospective clients. They could possibly have advertisements for SAT Travel on other islands. Users of Second Life, could tell their friends, family, work colleges about the deals or information that SAT Travel has provided online.
Second Life gives the business the ability to host events and SAT Travel could use that as an opportunity to discuss a deal or to get users involved in what they’re trying to accomplish. The way that Second Life is constructed includes several islands that users can telephoto to. SAT Travel could setup different islands based on their locations and give users a glimpse at an experience at a real life destination. Everything for students today is offered online. It makes perfect sense to me, that a student travel company would post information about their company through an online simulation game.
It’s also an advantage for Second Life that SAT Travel would want to partner with their company.
Marketing materials, created by SAT Travel, could contain information about their location on Second Life. This could result in more users being intrigued about their company and becoming members. Thus, the member would also be exposed to other businesses that are associated with Second Life. As a gamer, myself, I look to simulation games for the outer body experience, this game might start out as a fun way to escape and turn into an actual vacation plan.
Disadvantages With so many social networks available today, is Second Life the right one to spend when I was in college back in 2004.
I haven’t heard much about the company since then. I never see advertisements for them and didn’t even know they still existed. It seems like the appropriate company to do business with, considering you can rate destination islands. It also seems like you would get more users looking for that experience online and not being so serious about their travel plans through a gaming stand point. When you look at gaming, you don’t necessarily think about travel.
With Second Life not being so popular on campuses, you could wind up with a negative impact on your company. Lots of people make fun of the Sims games and those same people could make fun of your company for being on a simulation game similar to the Sims. Alternative 2: Pinsetters Pinsetters is an online content sharing service. They have several categories for a user to look into: Everything DID & crafts Popular Food & Drink Home Decor Pinsetters is a fun online location that allows you to look at images or videos, click on the image or video and go to different locations.
Users upload the images and videos to the site and they’re categorized based on the content. Users are able to search through the categories and spend hours looking for ideas by searching images and videos that spark their interests.
SAT Travel could create a Pinsetters board for travel, uploading images and videos of destinations from around the globe. Vive seen and clicked on beautiful images of places that I’d love to visit. Pinsetters also allows users the ability to follow someone or company, that they like. When following someone, his or her pins show up in our Pinsetters home feed.
Advantages With approximately 48 million users, SAT Travel would get a lot of traffic from Pinsetters. Pinsetters, as a social network, has been getting a lot of recognition lately.
Their site is available on a vast amount of mobile devices and tablets, something that SAT Travel wouldn’t have to worry about as far as what device is being used to view the site. Also, the site is available in a variety of languages. SAT Travel, being a global company itself, seems like it would appreciate this. When a pin or video/image is uploaded, it adds a link to the original location.
SAT Travel would get lots of recognition for this.
They could create a pin, from an image, and if a user likes the pin, the user can pin it again. Disadvantages I haven’t known many men to use Pinsetters. Several of my girlfriends post baby ideas and party themes on Pinsetters. It also seems like it’s marketed for an older crowd. Where Backbone may be more for all ages, Pinsetters seems to be more for moms and Dryers. Pinsetters already has a vast supply of travel pictures and I’m unsure if any travel companies have caught on to the pinning trend.
Pinsetters was only founded in 2010, and it will take some time to see if this is a trend or if the site’s here to stay. Alternative 3: Marketing to the Alumni So many students have used SAT Travel and should now be graduated. The use of a database to keep track of the students that have graduated would be beneficial. SAT Travel could use email marketing to send to students that have already make sure to keep in contact with my customers that may have booked a few years go. If SAT Travel doesn’t have the means to do email marketing, partnering with a company would also be a great way to contain and get new customers.
Sending or showcasing their competitor rates on their site or by email would also be a great way to get customers to book. Group deals for alumni also seems like it would do well. Say you have 20 some students that booked a trip to Cancan, Mexico in 1999 and now those 20 some Alumni would like to book the same trip with their families. SAT Travel could give them a discount because they already booked that trip with them years ago. This loud keep the customer from going to another online travel site.
Advantages If an alumnus is married and has a family, there are more people to travel resulting in a more expensive travel plan than a single traveler. SAT Travel could start a frequent travel discount program, where customers could get discounts based on the amount of travel plans booked. Print marketing campaigns result in delayed delivery whereas, email marketing are real-time messages. Disadvantages Keeping up with the most up-to-date email and physical address for a customer would be hard. If you display your competitor prices and they’re less expensive, you loud risk the chance of losing your consumer.
