ICT and e-business in the tourism industry ICT adoption ... - empirica

Tourism
Encouraging passengers to travel with less checked-in luggage, also means faster
queues for those who check-in at the airport desk. Ryanair estimates that between 40 to
50% of its passengers will ultimately use online check-in. This will enable them to reduce
the number of check-in desks and other airport handling facilities. The savings in handling
cost are being used to offset other additional costs. The current process is not yet
completely streamlined from the passenger perspective. easyJet for instance allows
passengers to print off their boarding passes at the time of booking 79 . Ryanair
passengers have to log-in again a short time before travel.
Internal communications
As Ryanair expanded across Europe, documentation and internal communications
overheads increased. In particular, managing operational information became more
complex. Therefore, in addition to their well known customer facing web pages, Ryanair
has implemented a web-based internal communications system used by flight crews,
maintenance and ground staff. This supports critical back office systems and internal
quality management. For instance, a record is kept of the various components in each
aircraft and a tickler schedule for their maintenance and/or replacement. Likewise training
records, scheduled courses and assurance of the awareness of changes (record of
individual access to the files) in critical operational information is logged. These
mandatory recording features can also be used to generate exception reports for
attention of the staff and managers concerned. The intranet system has also saved on
tangible costs, including paper and printing costs.
Dynamic packaging and other ancillary revenue sources
Ryanair drives more sales and increased revenue via the dynamic packaging of flights
with discounted hotel rooms and bottom of the range car rentals. In addition after
selecting their flights, all travellers are strongly encouraged via the online payment
process to take out travel insurance. Another option provided via Ryanair’s homepage at
present is to click through to another supplier’s web site such as activitybreaks.com to
buy their products.
Conclusions and lessons learned
The Ryanair approach can be characterised by spartan simplicity and a micro-focus on
the cost base. The adoption of e-ticketing and internal e-business systems has enabled
this low cost carrier to keep operational running costs well in-check, and will remain an
essential element of their operations and strategies.
Achieving the revenue, and hence profit targets, will depend on additional income from
increasing the number of passengers (airfares, onboard purchases) and, more
importantly, through parallel service bundling with related insurance brokerages and
tourism principals at destinations such as car rental companies and hotels. This is
already an important contributor to risk management and revenue respectively. Such
revenues continue to grow at a faster rate than passenger volumes. For the financial year
ended March 31, 2005 their share accounted for 16% of total revenues, compared to
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Easyjet set to roll-out internet check-in for its UK passengers.
www.m-travel.com/news/2006/02/easyjet_set_to_.html
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