Abstract

Describe about the travel agency and their web-based services implementation?

The paper emphasizes over a scenario of travel agency and their web-based services implementation. Other secondary objectives may be observed as offering many services in one web-based solution, providing dynamic and yet current information about travel location, travel booking online, booking process cancelling or postponing and others. The problem domain is identified as a case study of travel agency organization. The new web-based solution will be designed as a website with several online services. All the organizations are interested over dynamic retail business and online business rather than offering products offline. The existing organizations prefer to implement the website with .net or PHP based application. The navigation bar will have several services options as with travel location booking, travelling location availability checking, checking for available transportation in the location, for better travelling experience sharing; there might be some reviewing options, payment options, contact us page.  The business process is the main factor for the website designing. When the business is about acting as travelling agent, then the travelling location and the transportation type will be central part of the website designing, whereas, for online shopping website several shopping products will be inseparable part. Therefore, in this context, the website will have a dynamic CSS design for different travel location display, top rated location list, rating based location display and discounts. The web services will be travel location booking. Any user can rate the travelling experience as a feedback to the other website. Travelling agency will have discounts in booking price and travel calendar settings. The travel agency website will require a powerful semantic searching process. The website will have dynamic cloud storage for database and data security. In mobile web application, the users will have better experience in travel site booking and location viewing.

Keywords: Online business, e-commerce, travel agency, m-commerce, threats, future scope, recommendations

The paper emphasizes over a scenario of travel agency ad their web-based services implementation. The main motto of the agency is to provide the customers with friendlier and greater experience. Other secondary objectives may be observed as offering many services in one web-based solution, providing dynamic and yet current information about travel location, travel booking online, booking process cancelling or postponing and others (Zeppel and Beaumont, 2011). The web platform based solution will be maintained with server and database configuration and active directory. The active directory will consider the current organization with several constraints. The constraints will be as considering all the employees, segmenting the several departments as their work culture, maintaining quota and limitations on web services appliances (Broder and Tucker, 2011). These department based work segmentation will help the organization about keeping track of all activities and gain advantage of monitoring employees.

First, the literature review will analyze the structural design of any web service and then the review will address the current organization requirements to find the proper design. Later, in the identified solution section, the solution may consider every web aspect of the solution. The solution may have several benefits and risks, threats in the current organization. The analyst will assess all the constraints for the feasible solution selection.

Problem Domain

The problem domain is identified as a case study of travel agency organization. This particular organization currently has no web-based appliance for their business and activity purpose. They require the web-based application development for providing better and more beautiful customer experience in terms of quick and faster responses. The new web-based solution will be designed as a website with several online services. The services will be according to their business activities. Their website will have a registration process for new customer, then the login process and availing several services. For instance, for newer clients, first, they have to register in the website for login id and password. The client himself may select the password, then after the registration, he or she can view the booking orders, available location for travelling, travel scheduling, cancellation process, payment options compatible with different banks. The website will have attractive and interactive design for attracting more users and there may be interesting services as travel calendar selection, discount availing, coupon insertion and others. Moreover, the website must have a state-of-the-art design and operative capability with feedback process. Entire organization will have to select certain security options for both maintaining the server and their services offering.

Currently, the existing organizations are concentrating over e-commerce and online application development. According to Xiang, Magnini and Fesenmaier (2015); all the organizations are interested over dynamic retail business and online business rather than offering products offline. Online retail business is always customer’s first preference, based on some available features and services. Portal is viewed as a special way to introduce the organization and its information to the newer and former customers. As Rodriguez-Molina, Frias-Jamilena and Castaneda-Garcia (2015) discussed that the portal is also an application for providing another related sites access to the users. The electronic commerce in tourism industry offers more scalable and dynamic online portal management and secures services. Portal helps to maintain all the services in one webpage for accessing.

The existing organizations prefer to implement the website with .net or PHP based application. However, Salavati and Hashim (2015) opined that the PHP-based website is designed with more design inclusion as dynamic CSS addition, JavaScript usage and others. The interface of the PHP application is much more attractive and better than the .net developed application. Hernandez-Mendez and Munoz-Leiva (2015) suggested that .net based applications can have better application features however, the interface design may not be interesting and as well as PHP applications. The dynamic CSS design is the best options for navigation bar configuration in the website. The navigation bar will have several services options as with travel location booking, travelling location availability checking, checking for available transportation in the location, for better travelling experience sharing; there might be some reviewing options, payment options, contact us page. Murphy, Dang and Chen (2015) demonstrated that these are the primary yet necessary services for any travelling agency to offer. The customers will have to register first time, the customer will be notified with successful registration ID and registration link forwarded. The customer will have open mail browser and click on the website home page link for confirmation purpose. Mohd-Any, Winklhofer and Ennew (2015) confirms that this confirmation process is important for maintaining several customers with registration completion. In the payment section, there will have to be several different bank accounts’ management for different payment type’s choice. On the contrary, the website will be having more offers and discounts for increasing craze for travelling yet observing their terms and conditions. Roger-Monzo, Marti-Sanchez and Guijarro-Garcia (2015) prioritized that there will be a terms and conditions section for customer policy maintenance for instance, the customer will have to travel once he or she has confirmed the journey. The journey can be cancelled before confirmation from the client side; if cancellation is confirmed then half of the clients’ payment will be refunded. Sigala (2015) opined that the policy maintenance is significant for both organization loss incurrence and yet maintaining the travelling process.

Literature Review

Studies on the part and effect of the Internet have been directed as of late, especially in the zone of publicizing and marketing. The Internet has ended up being a powerful method for promoting, marketing, conveying products, and data administrations. Shouk, Lim and Megicks (2013) have affirmed that for the promoting business, the Web is both the greatest test and the greatest open door in quite a while. Moreover, the travel and tourism industry is an extremely divided and a data rich business, which makes it particularly open for the advantages that the Internet offers. One of the qualities of tourism items is that it is impalpable, as it were; they cannot be examined before the buy choice is made. The data based nature of the tourism items implies that the Internet, which offers worldwide scope and mixed media capacity, is a perfect correspondence vehicle for advancing and dispersing tourism items and administrations. How the Internet changed conventional travel industry in created nations has been considered. Aldebert, Dang and Longhi (2011) investigated the level of uptake of the web as a marketing apparatus by organizations in the territorial tourism industry segment in Australia. The Chinese tourism industry has built up its online administrations and got some beginning background. China, as a creating nation, has an alternate tourism Ecommerce improvement environment in which boundaries and difficulties are proliferate and are demonstrative of a creating nation. Kimbu and Ngoasong (2013) argued that nevertheless, there are just some example of scrutinizing into the arrangement and assessment of tourism sites in China. Despite the fact that because of general site evaluation, a few productions of results do exist yet they do not particularly address tourism sites in creating nations.

Numerous specialists have utilized substance examination to assess the sites of related commercial enterprises. Bradbury (2013) utilized five web indexes to hunt lodging sites in Florida and distinguished 32 distinct components from 36 hotel sites that gave on-line reservations. The 32 components were partitioned into four classifications: advancement and showcasing, administration and data, intelligence and innovation and administration. Chiou, Lin and Perng (2011) utilized substance examination to assess the official tourism sites of each of the 50 states in the United States. Chiappa (2013) introduced a Data Quality Assessment Model for measuring the execution of lodging sites. The model was produced on the premise of a theoretical structure which comprised of five noteworthy lodging site measurements, including offices data, client contact data, reservations data, encompassing zone data, and administration of sites.

In connection to the above, Fotis, Buhalis and Rossides (2012) has portrayed that business site improvement normally starts essentially and advances after some time with the expansion more usefulness and many-sided quality as firms addition involvement with Internet innovations. The augmented model of Internet Commerce Adoption (eMICA) created by Huang, Yung and Yang (2011) over this idea. They utilized the eMICA model to assess the level of site improvement in New Zealand’s Regional Tourism Organizations and highlighted the utility of utilizing intuitiveness to quantify the relative development of tourism sites. From that point forward, the eMICA model has been utilized much of the time. Jacobsen and Munar (2012) utilized it to assess the level of refinement of the sites of 20 US expresses/regions’ tourism associations. Jensen (2012) has additionally utilized the eMICA model to study the electronic trade application level of visit endeavors.

Business process

The business process is the main factor for the website designing. For instance, if the business is about online retailing, then the products will be main part of the website design. When the business is about acting as travelling agent, then the travelling location and the transportation type will be central part of the website designing, whereas, for online shopping website several shopping products will be inseparable part (Wbdg.org, 2015). Therefore, in this context, the website will have a dynamic CSS design for different travel location display, top rated location list, rating based location display and discounts. Navigation bar will have certain list of services of booking, cancellation, postponing, availability checking and payment (Simister, 2015).

Figure 1: Work Flowchart

(Source: Created by author)

The website will need to be designed with PHP and CSS, JavaScript for navigation bar, dynamic image marquees. The web services will be travel location booking. Booking process will show a box with inputting some information for instance, traveler name, mail address and date of travelling, exact location, duration of travelling, transport system selection and payment selection. After the user completes the booking process, then the website will send a mail in the inserted e-mail with confirmation link for travelling (Shaw, Saayman and Saayman, 2012). Once the user has confirmed the link, furthermore the journey cannot be cancelled. Again, if user has not yet confirmed he or she can cancel or postpone the journey. In both cases, the user will have to click on journey cancellation or postponing button and in case of cancellation; half of the booking money will be refunded. The availability checking will be performed as per the booking list on a particular journey starting date. If the booking process can be possible then the website will show ‘complete booking process’ notification prior to the booking. Any user can rate the travelling experience as a feedback to the other website. Travelling agency will have discounts in booking price and travel calendar settings (Abou Shouk, Lim and Megicks, 2013). For regular travelers, the calendar will be helpful for putting the location and automatically booking will be completed and portal will seek confirmation from that customer. 

The travel agency website will require a powerful semantic searching process. For instance, in the booking process page, there will be internal searching process of location and transportation availability. In the offers page, the searching engine will show the particular journey selection with duration and period (Aldebert, Dang and Longhi, 2011). Again, in the ratings page, the locations will be visible according to the ratings of the website users. Most of the cases, when one user searches for available trip location, then the website will provide images, visiting places view and hotels’ information.

Figure 2: Semantic Web system

(Source: Kuhn, Spies and Petzer, 2015, pp. 68)

The website will have dynamic cloud storage for database and data security. The registration data will be stored in cloud backup database. The cloud server will be deployed for scalable development of the website as well as the portal service addition (Chiou, Lin and Perng, 2011). The cloud backup server will be better for dynamic data handling with as well as website development.

Now in the era of m-commerce, the portal will be developed as it can be accessed in both personal computers and mobiles. The users can have several advantages for portable accessing of the website (Fotis, Buhalis and Rossides, 2012). In this dynamic age of online retailing, the users will appreciate mobile device access of website and they would prefer dynamic travel location booking. In mobile web application, the users will have better experience in travel site booking and location viewing. Mobile applications must be compatible with notification process and users will be notified as per the location availability (Huang, Yung and Yang, 2011). The travel agency organization will have to understand simple customers’ lifestyle and their demand to provide them discounts.

The significant threats in the Information based website will be the following. The threats are discussed as per the threat importance and severity.

One of the most common issues in case of online marketing website maintenance, the privacy is portrayed as primary security concern. The travel agency will have to maintain certain measures for privacy and protection (Shaw, Saayman and Saayman, 2012). The improper access of web portal, customer information collection, analysis, monitoring and confidential data storage will need to be maintained from the website design. The technological design will have purpose of improvement with increasing knowledge and responses. The beneficial usage of database will be holding privacy rights and public policy will need to be challenging as well as complex for privacy preservation (Simister, 2015). The customer will at least have to follow the policy rules for safety and privacy.

Trust issue is another concern for the travelling agency and henceforth the proposed web service will need to take trust issue as primary priority (Wbdg.org, 2015). The factors are identified as internet shopping, one-to-one trustworthy transaction, external manifestations and others. The customers have to trust the organization for better quality, secure transactions and product offering security (Kuhn, Spies and Petzer, 2015). The organization will have to gain trusty by their services and products.

The portal will have to ensure advantageous role and better protection of customer travelling information. The customers’ data and sensitive information will be kept secured in database servers. The data will either be protected with encryption or cipher text configuration (Li, Wang, and Yu, 2015). The digitized data and information will need copyright rule to protect from other sites. The websites will have to maintain suitable domain choices. The domains will need to be trademarked as to minimize the counterfeiting vulnerability (Xiang, Magnini and Fesenmaier, 2015). The domains will be trademarked for affiliating it with their business agency name.

The websites are mainly affected with several threats as identity theft, web cookie poisoning, cyber terrorism, phishing and others. The websites will have to mitigate the risks as well as to development safe and secure payment system to maintain confidential transactions (Xiang, Magnini and Fesenmaier, 2015). The websites will need to mitigate common attacks as SQL injection, denial of services attacks, viruses and worms. The infected spywares will be affecting the internal data and information sharing threats. These spywares are designed for tracking the sensitive information retrieving from a multi-layer database. The portal will require certain effective protection mechanism to secure them from unwanted consequences (Li, Wang and Yu, 2015).

Figure 3: Security threats for website

(Source: Murphy, Dang and Chen, 2015, pp. 770)

Some researchers have depicted that customers’ knowledge affects adoption process and engagement with e-commerce. Others demonstrated that consumers experience is a significant factor in electronic retailing (Salavati and Hashim, 2015). Some of them have discusses that customer lifestyle is more progressive and associative with leisure activities increase internet usage more frequently. They prefer searching information through search engine semantics every time. On the contrary, the evidence of portal management added personal development of knowledge as another general characteristic for shopping (Rodriguez-Molina, Frias-Jamilena and Castaneda-Garcia, 2015). The researchers have examined the effectiveness of search engines in view of new objectives and role revision.

Figure 4: Use Cases

(Source: Created by author)

Any user will become satisfied when he or she informs the service provider with additional reactions and positive or negative opinions for further modifications. Online information is less effort consuming than seeking offline for any product (Murphy, Dang and Chen, 2015). Some researchers have demonstrated that online users have availing several alternatives for brands and as well as the products rather than offline retailing business. For instance, online service availing is less time-consuming and smoother than visiting offline retail shops. In electronic commerce, this is the main motivation to users for being satisfied (Mohd-Any, Winklhofer and Ennew, 2015). 

These are the main threats and risks in the current website designing whereas, the similar threats may be psychological effect of product search, self-motivation and other situational factors are avoided in this context.

In spite of all points of interest of Internet as another circulation channel, there are still individuals who lean toward conventional shopping as they feel a solid requirement for the travel operators’ recommendation (Kimbu and Ngoasong, 2013). The hesitance towards Internet shopping is not just because of the absence of human contact, additionally because of the mindfulness portraying individuals in embracing innovations in purchasing travel administrations. By and by, these individuals use Internet to get data, to study offers and to assess options, concluding the purchasing procedure disconnected from the net (Kuhn, Spies and Petzer, 2015). One conceivable reason could be the twofold way of the danger saw when purchasing online not just the danger connected with the administration obtained additionally the danger originating from the innovation (the Internet). Seen danger has been characterized in the writing as a subjective danger that radiates from the instability of negative results (Kirschenbaum, 2013).

There are diverse sorts of outcomes that can be connected with the buy and utilization of items or administrations. This is the reason saw danger can take various features, for example, money related, social, mental, physical, execution chances or time hazard. The already depicted aspects of saw danger can be both related to conventional and web shopping. At the point when considering the particular instance of web shopping, a tri-dimensional perspective can be fitting: dangers connected with the item itself, dangers connected with the Internet as the buy mode, and dangers connected with the webpage on which the exchange is made (Mills and Law, 2013). Examining the online setting by a specialist proposed that few saw dangers are particularly or more grounded connected with internet shopping: financial danger, social danger, execution hazard, security hazard, and protection chance, the last two danger measurements being further point by point. Security danger is pretty much joined with the budgetary one that essentially alludes to the likelihood of losing the cash paid for an item due to item blames or low execution (Aldebert, Dang and Longhi, 2011).

Figure 5: Security in M-commerce

(Source: Jacobsen and Munar, 2012, pp. 42)

Security danger can really be considered as a budgetary danger with a bigger stake. At the point when paying with charge card over the Internet the purchaser dangers losing all the cash in his financial balance as his own data can be stolen by programmers (Orlov, 2011). A safe exchange is the thing that most shoppers are worried of, security issues in buying online travel administrations are accounted for as significant purposes behind not performing any electronic business exchanges (Ye, Law and Chen, 2011). Concerning danger (likewise called closeness hazard) originates from the way that e-shops for the most part enlist all individual information of their clients, not just the information they are willing to give when finishing the buy frames, additionally information with respect to their action on the site, making a profile for every client. This would not be such a major issue if the e-shops utilized the information just for their own particular hobby (Thaler and Tucker, 2013). Yet, client databases are sold to outsiders all the more oftentimes, presenting purchasers to undesirable promoting messages. Despite the fact that prominent as an essential obstruction to e-trade utilization, saw hazard does not appear to prevent individuals from purchasing online travel administrations.

As the online websites are surging with exponential rate, how the attraction factor for every website is becoming more critical to this context. According to this paper, the travel agency website can utilize following recommendations for further recognition and establishment.

In general, the customer demand must be the central website designing tool. This tool is often avoided while designing and most of the cases the implemented websites suffer from lack of basic demands. Most of the cases, the websites were filled with more history and information with lack of online services. Therefore, the website designer will need to consider important information as well as main preference will be centered on website activity.

Some travel agent websites attaches flash videos with their information and tour experience, which is not much appreciated. Every time, users suffer from website loading failure, flash video is the main cause for this incident. On the contrary, the search engine semantics cannot detect the flash videos therefore, important websites are often overlooked by the users. Most of the cases, the flash videos cover the effective information of the front page of the website. As per the general research outcome, the user’s 30% ineffective clicks on websites often decreases the user motivation of travelling.

As per the other websites’ design, the main factor effecting the website will be the user expectation and experience of online application. The websites often turn out to be unsatisfactory for lack of expected services. The users evaluate the website as peer the updated information with corresponding ratings and reviews. The users mainly follow the popular and famous destinations as per the ratings and reviews. Therefore, the main task for any website developer will be to assessing the user expectation analysis, location review, short description and rating addition facility. Hence, the users have traveled the particular location or good hotel facility experience can add the reviews and ratings for the location. Then other users will be automatically motivated to book for the location or the hotel soon.

These are the outlined recommendations in the travelling agency website development. The website will have to balance all the users’ requirement, expectations, as well as maintain constant attraction for availing services in that particular website.

Conclusion and Future Scope

For any country, the tourism acts as economical backbone and stands out to be economic support. The new travel agencies are now upgraded with online website and yet newer services’ addition. Most of the hotel and travel agencies have incorporated electronic commerce as the main business strategy as well as their business performance measures. The online travelling booking, payment and even journey cancellation, postponing facility are making tourism industry dynamic and flexible. 

Electronic commerce process is not easy for every business to inaugurate with every aspect consideration. Some of the organization may need to change their business strategy as the electronic commerce implementation. For attracting the customers, they might have to adopt certain content addition with information and services for better visibility and access to the customers.   

Several benefits as well as numerous difficulties for incorporation of e-commerce for tourism and travel agency are present. The advantages are low operating costs, customer interaction, and product choosing over internet, prompt and quicker services. Besides, easy to find better business partnership, users coordinate with customers during off-sessions in case of issues and however, key difficulties are huge investment, lack of human resources practices, customer confidence and loyalty, e-commerce and government policies. For e-commerce in travel agency business, the customer nature has been changed, they are indifferent toward the company it is usual for them to switch the company preference within seconds. To regain customer loyalty, companies have to prove themselves with services incorporation and offer bigger services with customer preferences.

According to this paper, the researchers have found the e-commerce benefits in the current context. E-commerce will require several constraints’ consideration for any organization as well as travel agencies. Although the website development for them may be sufficient to reducing costs, make the services timesaving, get worldwide brand recognition. However, the main limitation will be that the company always has to maintain customer touch as well; companies have to trust on their loyalty. The customers have lesser hesitation in switching companies as they have several variations in travelling organization choices. The electronic commerce is important yet consistent business solution for any organization as well as travelling agencies.

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