HTT106 Health and Safety in Travel and Tourism - Free Samples to Stude

• Analyse contemporary issues influencing the experience with the tourism product.
• Investigate the practices operators undertake in evaluating the tourist experience.

Answer:

Introduction

Tourism is the operation and commercial organization of holidays and visits to places of interests. It includes activities of people traveling to areas away from their typical environment for purposes of leisure, business and other reasons which include exposure and exploration. Furthermore, tourism comprises of a collection of service and other industries that offers traveling experience, eating and draining, accommodation, hospitality services, and retail shop services to people who travel long distances (Krukowska & ?wieca, 2018). In Australia, the tourism industry is an important industry with a significant contribution to the economy. Recent statistics show that the industry has a contribution of 3% to the Australian gross domestic product in the fiscal year 2016-2017. The tourism in the country is categorized into local tourism and international tourism. While some people view Australia as a tourism destination, some issues influence the tourism experience in the country (Travel & Tourism in Australia, 2016). Furthermore, the players in the industry also have practices that help in the evaluation of the tourist experience. This paper analyses the contemporary issues that influence tourism in Australia. It also investigates the practices that operators use to evaluate customer experience.

Issues influencing tourist experience products in Australia

Nations that are tourist destinations all over the world work towards improving the tourist experiences in their countries. This is because the tourists come to consume the experiences. Australia is not left behind in these efforts. However, some issues influence the experience of the tourists in Australia. Some of the issues include low qualifications of service providers, safety issues and natural disasters. 

Qualifications of service providers

The qualifications of key personnel in the tourism industry in Australia determine the quality of the service and products. It is therefore vital to determine how quality standards of the service are set and who sets the standards. Australia experiences an increasing number of tour operators whose main business is to promote their tours. The tours have drivers who also couple up as tour guides. In some cases, the tours have volunteer tour guides accompany the drivers. Majority of the tour guides have no tour guide training, and for those who have the tanning, it is at the minimum level. Despite the tour guides and site guides having factual information about their role in the industry, they are deficient of knowledge on a wider number of issues in the industry such as environmental and cross-cultural issues (Torland, 2016). The lack of knowledge in these areas may lead to inappropriate behavior such as providing wrong information based on their personal opinion rather than facts.

Safety issues

The second issue is the safety concerns of the tour guides and the drivers. Tourism in Australia is in both the urban and rural areas and therefore the tour guides, and the drives have to travel in both settings. The Australian tours are reported to travel long distances to remote areas at high speeds. This affects the driver guides ability to provide a well-structured commentary with accurate information while the main focus in on driving to ensure that they cover all the scheduled destinations. The driver may also be distracted from driving while trying to provide information to the tourists. It put not only the life of the drive but also that of the passengers in danger. The drive is therefore left to choose between answering questions from the tourists and focusing on the road (Kerr, 2018).

Natural disasters

Natural disasters are occurrences that are beyond human control under available knowledge. While the government of Australia makes efforts to minimize the damage done by disasters, the damage extends to the tourism industry. Tourist’s the trips with expectations of exiting and memorable moments. Majority of tourist aim at creating happy memories. When it comes to Australia, the timing of making tours to specific regions must be strategic to ensure safety from any impending natural disaster occurrence. Some of the natural disasters that have experience in the county in the recent past include bushfires, floods, extreme weather events and cyclones (Handme, Ladds, & Magee, 2018). These natural disasters have a bearing on the tourist’s decisions on when to tour certain regions of the country and also creates a comparison basis with other tourist destinations.

Practices used to evaluate tourist experience

Feedback is essential for any business to allow evaluation of strengths and weakness (Fenton, Young, & Johnson, 1998). Given the issues that influence tourist experience in Australia, it is only logical that the service and product providers in the tourism industry of Australia conduct a regular evaluation on themselves to enable them to fill some of the loopholes in the industry. One of the practices that players in the tourism industry in Australia put in place is the use of customer satisfaction questionnaires. The questioners help the service provides capture key information about the views of the tourists on the services they provide. Another method that is commonly applied is the use of online customer reviews. In this case, the customers are expected to leave comments about their experiences on the service and product provides websites. The use of customer complaint registry also adds to the list of the tools of evaluation that are commonly used in the county. The providers use customer complaint registers to capture all issues raised with the management by the tourists during their stay or the tours. The complaints recorded play a big role in ensuring that issues raised are addressed to improve on service and product delivery to the tourists. Furthermore, some of the players in the industry also have well-designed scorecards to help them in self-evaluation. Keeping of the scorecard may not be an accurate measure of tourist experiences it is entirely done by the workers of the service of the product providing entity. It is, therefore, open to bias (Fenton, Young, & Johnson, 1998).

Conclusion

Tourism provides people with opportunities to visit and explore new places during their time of leisure. Despite Australia having attractive tourist attraction sites in the country, local and international tourists make tourism decisions based on some factors. Some of the issues affecting the tourism industry in the country influence tourism experience. Some of these issues include; security concerns, inadequately trained personnel in the industry and natural disasters. With the knowledge of existing challenges in the players in the tourism industry have developed practices that enable evaluate tourist experiences to allow them to make adjustments where necessary and where possible. Some of the practices put in place by the service and product providers are the use of the questionnaire, online reviews, and scorecards. The solution to natural disasters might not be found through these practices. However, the methods are vital for humanly possible adjustments with the aim of making tourist experience in Australia better.

References

Fenton, D. M., Young, M., & Johnson, V. Y. (1998). Re-Presenting the Great Barrier Reef to Tourists: Implications for Tourist Experience and Evaluation of Coral Reef Environments. Leisure Sciences, 20(3), 177. Retrieved from https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=s3h&AN=9970735&site=ehost-live

Handmer, J., Ladds, M., & Magee, L. (2018). Updating the costs of disasters in Australia. Australian Journal of Emergency Management, 33(2), 40–46. Retrieved from https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=129414383&site=ehost-live

Kerr, A. (2018). Rocks, Ridges, And Rivers: Geological Wonders of Banff, Yoho, and Jasper National Parks. A Roadside Tour Guide. Geoscience Canada, 45(1), 63–65. https://doi.org/10.12789/geocanj.2018.45.132

KRUKOWSKA, R., & ?WIECA, A. (2018). Tourism Function as an Element of Regional Competitiveness. Polish Journal of Sport & Tourism, 25(2), 32–43. Retrieved from https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=s3h&AN=131247224&site=ehost-live

Torland, M. (2016). Managing Emotions at Work: Adventure Tour Leaders’ Application of Emotional Labor. Annual International Conference on Human Resource Management & Professional Development for the Digital Age, 14–21. https://doi.org/10.5176/2251-3426pass:[_]THoR16.7

Travel & Tourism in Australia. (2016). Travel & Tourism Industry Profile: Australia, 1–38. Retrieved from https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=113883321&site=ehost-live