The ¨GALT¨ travel agency in Zagreb organizes this particular tour

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The ¨GALT¨ travel agency in Zagreb organizes this particular tour and we, as a part of this travel agency, are going to describe it in detail. As it is obvious, the product of our business organization is a special interest package tour. More specifically, it is a tour that is created for people whose interests, above all, are directed towards experiencing the culture and arts of various destinations. The particular package that we are offering is a cultural tour to Vienna, Austria. The central point of our tour is to better familiarize our clients with the unique Arts and Architecture aspects of the beautiful city of Vienna. Choosing Vienna for our destination for this particular tour was an easy choice to make, since the city is well known for being one of the greatest cultural centers of the world.

The Characteristics of Our Product As we will later mention, the target market for our cultural tour will consist of young high school and college students interested in Arts and Architecture.

As a result of targeting potential clients with limited levels of income, we arranged a low-cost tour. In addition, our target market is characterized by a hectic and dynamic lifestyle, with a limited amount of free time. To meet the needs and wants of our target market and to make our product even more attractive to it, we compacted all the components of the tour in a two-night, three-day excursion tour.

Short Description of Attractions Offered The central attraction of our cultural tour is the Exhibition of Gustav Klimt?s artworks. This art display is to take place at the Belvedere Palace, and it will also include artworks of many well-known international artists, including some French impressionists. In addition to our central attraction, our program will include many other attractions as well. These attractions will include organized trips to various museums and a musical. We will also provide sightseeing trips to historical parts of the city, such as the Schoenbrunn Palace and the St. Stephens Cathedral (located in the center of the city). We will give a more detailed overview of all of our program activities in the itinerary.

Lodging Hostel ?Wombats? is located in the central area of Vienna and it is close to major public transportation. There are three stops by subway to downtown. The hostel is open 24 hours a day throughout the year. Since we offer packages for those who travel as individuals as well as a part of a group, we offer two types of rooms: single and dorm rooms. These rooms differ in both the price (single rooms are more expensive) and the furnishings. We believe that the most attractive rooms for students are dorms because of the low price.

Single rooms that we offer have two beds and a closet. The interior of the rooms has a very unique and modern appearance (as it is evident from the pictures provided), thus making it appealing to young, creative, artistic individuals. Dorm rooms have three to six beds, six closets and a writing table. All rooms have a shower and a toilet and there are free lockers in every room. Guests of the hostel are also free to use the laundry facilities. The hostel provides information about the city?s events, and at the same time it accommodates those guests who want to stay in the hostel. Among many other interesting things offered at the hostel, there is a pub, a pool table and a rent- a- bike and inline skates. The hostel organizes movie nights and offers Internet access to guests. As a warm welcome gesture all guests receive a free welcome drink.

As we mentioned earlier, the idea of including a hostel in our tour program instead of a regular hotel, is to present young people with a more casual atmosphere. In addition, this sort of facility is appealing to our target market because of its low-cost accommodations. Along with previously mentioned benefits, we believe that a hostel will provide our clients with memorable experiences and friendships, since they will be able to interact with people similar to themselves.

Transportation When it comes to transportation, it is necessary to mention that our travel agency owns its own motor coach vehicles, thus saving us time in trying to find an adequate transportation supplier at a reasonable price. Our motor coach vehicle will transport our tour participants from Zagreb to Vienna and back, but will also serve as the only means of transportation all throughout the tour. Since we are not traveling by air, luggage handling will not be an issue we will have to face. In order to make sure that our tour participants are satisfied with our service, we will instruct our tour guide and kindly ask the hostel staff to assist in luggage handling once arrived.

The Meal Plan Throughout their stay in Vienna, tour participants will be supplied with breakfast and dinner everyday throughout the duration of the tour. Realizing that our tour offers a wide spectrum of activities during the daytime, limiting the amount of free time our tour participants will have available; we decided to offer the Modified American Meal Plan (MAP). The meals offered would be traditional of the Austrian culture and would include specialties such as: the Austrian Strudel, Sweet and Savory Knodel (dumplings), schnitzels, sautéed potatoes and tomato sauce, buchteln, tarts and Kipferln (shorted bread-like, crescent-shaped cookies).

Tour Services It is relevant to mention that all throughout the tour our tour operator will be at a twenty-four hour disposal to our tour participants. He/She will take care of things like check ins and check outs, handling any sorts of questions or complaints that may arise, solving any problematic situations that may occur and participating in the tour itself, making sure that everything runs smoothly. Also it is important to note, that the tour operator is in charge of the whole tour program. Prior to the actual tour taking place, the tour operator designs the tour, finds and negotiates contracts with suppliers. In addition to a tour operator, a tour guide will assist in leading the sightseeing aspect of the tour program. We will also provide site guides who are professional curators. These site guides will work to familiarize tour participants with various museums. However, these site guides will only be present during regular program activities, thus being excluded from the optional activities offered to tour participants.

To conclude this section about our product characteristics, we find that our tour has many traits that can be matched with the traits of an escorted tour. We find this to be true because our tour includes a structured program of transportation, lodging, meals and sightseeing. Also, our tour allows for a maximum capacity of forty-five passengers and it includes the services of guides and drivers.

Target Market Our travel agency decided to organize a cultural tour that would mainly focus on the arts (museums, art exhibits) and the architecture of Vienna. After coming up with the tour concept, we realized that we needed to be careful in targeting our market. We thought that the best way to segment our market is by focusing on demographic segmentation. We narrowed this down more specifically and we decided to focus on age and interest characteristics of the existing demographics.

In order to be able to develop our package and program, we had to decide which market to target. After a careful study of demographics, we realized that a target market with the most potential for our product would be young people who are interested in arts and architecture. Precisely, there are different types of segments serving as components of our target market. These are college students who are either studying or showing an interest towards arts and architecture, as well as high school students, which belong to the seventeen to twenty-six age bracket. The main purpose of offering such a tour was to provide our potential target market with the opportunity to get more familiarized with the things they spark their interests. More importantly, we will achieve our main goal ? providing them with the experience of getting familiar with Vienna and its culture.

This particular tour will be especially attractive to our potential market because it presents our potential tour participants with the option of participating in the tour as an individual or as a part of a group.

Promotion and Channel Distribution When we take our target market into consideration, we realize that we need to advertise our product in a way it appeals to these particular demographic segments. To help us in distributing our message, we first need to identify our marketing coverage strategy. We believe that the best strategy for our company is a concentrated marketing strategy because this type of marketing coverage strategy is least demanding in terms of costs and resources. This is a necessity since our company is new to the market and fairly small in size, thus making its resources limited. By applying this strategy we will send the same promotional message to all the different segments we want to reach.

Our first and our most important promotional tool is our tour brochure. It is designed in such a way to make it as appealing as it can possibly be to our target market. The excessive and modern usage of color and graphics reflects the theme of our tour. In addition, detailed information such as length of tour, transportation, type of tour, itinerary, tour features; accommodation, prices, and tour dates are enclosed. Finally, contact information is included. Our potential clients will have the access to these brochures through college and high school offices, and of course through our own travel agency.

As our second promotional tool we will use magazine and newspaper ads to create or expand awareness of our product. Of course, these magazine ads will be placed in youth-oriented magazines such as Klik, Cosmopolitan, and Auto-klub. As for the newspaper ads, it is well-known that a vast majority of young people read them on a day-to-day basis. Therefore, advertising in Jutarnji List and Vecernji List would significantly raise the public?s awareness of our product.

The third promotional tool would be the direct selling of our product. We plan to send our public relations employees to various high schools and colleges (particularly those leaning more towards arts) in order to directly inform our potential target market about our product offering. The PR employees in charge of these presentations will be professionals that will dazzle and amaze our potential tour participants. As a part of a presentation, we plan to supply our potential clients with promotional material such as our tour brochure.

The fourth promotional tool would be our Internet Web Page. By accessing our web site, our potential clients are able to obtain all the information they need in terms of our company, as well as the tour in question. Also, we would place advertisements on the Internet separate from our web page, since we are aware that the usage level of the Internet by young people (17-26) is rather great. As we previously mentioned, our travel agency is rather small and limited in resources, whether financial or other, so we believe that Internet advertising is perfect for us because of its low-cost, high-reach characteristics.

Our last form of promotion would be radio advertising. These advertisements would be placed and heard throughout radio stations whose main target audience is young people. For example, Open Radio and Radio 101 would both serve as channel distributors of our product. Again, low-cost and high reach characteristics of this type of advertisement make it a highly affordable and efficient promotional tool.