Supervisory Meeting 22/3

I prepared a 5000 word piece for the meeting on CSR.
Looking at history, development of CSP, and the relationship between CSP and CFP.

I was unsure where this was going to lead to and was keen for some strong guidance.
I suspected Harrold might provide this.

The idea of some sort of reputation index for tour operators did seem flawed. I struggled to see the link between 'most admired' and consumers or profit and felt this was probably beyond me or anyone really. How could you measure this? Do consumers really care? TOs are made up of dozens of small companies and products range from cheapy to 5star - what consumers care about is the individual product.

So - new focus.

One way in which CSR/Responsible actions can impact tour operators is through repeat bookings. If they can win customers over through non-price, they can save money and keep customers. The focus of soft-adventure companies on non-price competition has grown hugely - why?

So, the study of consumer trends to tell us why this has happened is required.
Mintel and the Co-op produce some stats - secondary data.

The overall trends in consumer behaviour should give a good indication of what has changed over the past 10 years. There are some key articles that can hopefully back this up.

This should provide the link to how soft adventure TOs have identified this change and are marketing around it.

On an advanced train of thought I think there are huge options when looking at the primary data collection. I am going to look at Egypt until someone tells me otherwise, looking at tours going through Cairo or Dahab. But I feel the big advantage could be the access to small groups with some time on their hands. I feel this could give much richer data-sets than just emailed questionaires. We shall see.

Writing

I started writing yesterday and found that it threw up more questions than answers. I was hoping to get 1500-2000 words out, just as an overview, but the subject is so vast, I had done about a 1000 word and had covered nothing.

I did stumble upon a good timeline feature in excel, the question now being how to use it.

The start

I have been at this for about 6 weeks now, since the end of January and I feel I am beginning to make some progress in many areas. My initial meeting with Harrold and Xavier was odd and I felt it threw me a bit. The various options of Gambia, Lonely Planet, FTO, were not really discussed, but thrown at me. I was quite excited by the options, but I didn't quite know how to process them.

The Hannover trip to the Reisepavillion was very useful and gave me a great insight into how these organisations work. I got to meet some influential people including Chris Thompson from the FTO. I felt he was a guy I could work with.

Back to the drawing board with CSR. What is CSR - why am I looking at it?

I have been fairly methodical over the past month or so. I have searched out a number of articles and have got something of a system going now. Almost everything I have is detailed in Endnote and filed.

The current focus is on the relationship between CFP and CSP with no focus on Tour Operators.
I don't know if it has been done, but I hope to look at a reputational index for TOs and rank them. This way more accurate measurements could be taken of CSP in relation to CFP.

The first step is to look at the CSP/CFP literature and pinpoint why a single-industry approach is needed. My chosen industry will be tourism. Rather than looking at CFP, I will focus on the CSP measure, and try to break it down.

This might mean a serious analysis of the current measures, like Fortune.

Over the next week I need to write a couple of thousand words on where I am up to. I have only really looked up to about 1988, so I have plenty to get through.