Operating Environment for Travel Today Airline

Marketing Plan for Travel Today Agency Market segmentation The market segmentation that Travel Today will adopt is geared towards enabling the agency define its target customers and minimize on time and cost by capitalizing on the defined target market. The company will, in this respect, target the holiday goers especially during the summer holidays when the South American coasts and Brazil are famous destinations.

The agency will hence negotiate for group discounts in order to create a bigger customer base among the holiday goers whom would consider it worthy cutting any costs for more money to spend at the holiday destination. Psychographic segmentation will also apply in this aspect as the agency will be covering the Cuban route bearing the recent political developments and the ultimate lifting of embargoes and sanctions to the country. The psychographic factors take into account the social class, personality and lifestyle of the intended target clients (Businesswise Ltd., 2010).

This means that dignitaries and high ranking officials of organization will be traveling to Cuba regularly to establish ties, both business and political otherwise known as diplomatic ties with this nation. Travel Today will hence introduce the plane with the business class section where the fares will be a bit higher to compensate for the comfort that will be offered in this section.

This ability to identify a given segment of the travelers and providing what they need will boost the customer base of Travel Today as it travels to and from the Cuban region. These two will form the bulk of the market segments that Travel Today will be actively pursuing.

The main reasons behind settling for the two market segments based on the behavior and psychographic factors are that, the holiday travelers are regular hence once they like the services of Travel Today, the agency will have a loyal brand community that will form the basis of the repeat purchase of their services.

The Cuban and surrounding regions is also a viable market region since few airlines offer the business class for the VIPs hence once the customers destined for this region identify Travel Today as their airline of choice, it will be easy to have repeat clients using the services of the airline and even introducing other customers of their category. These two market segments will give the agency grounds to capture clients from all ranges of ages and sufficiently provide for people of diverse lifestyles headed to diverse destinations.

Competitive analysis Carrying out a comprehensive competitor analysis is fundamental to understanding the market within which Today Travel operates in. It helps the organization to come up with strategy on how to enter a given market or to change the approach, it is also significant to this agency as it plans its diversification to the Cuban region. Competitor analysis will also enable us to have ability to predict the upcoming threats as well as opportunities hence prepare in advance for them (Management Study Guide, 2013).

The first competitor that will inevitably pose a threat to the agency is the Jet Blue Company. This competitor threat from this organization comes in the form of diversified routes with rock bottom prices. This will inevitably squeeze the profit margins for younger organizations like Travel Today since Jet Blue will be riding on their massive number of airplanes.

The second Competitor is the American Airline that will push the company to work hard to acquire the exclusive plane for a given category of clients since American Airline often has an entire plane set apart as business class plane or economy class, yet Travel Today still has the same plane divided into sections for the business class and the economy class. This makes American Airline to offer the exclusive services to the targeted population. The third competitor is the Cuba that is a local airline operating within the region.

This will present competition in two formidable fronts. First, they have the customer loyalty from the region since it is considered a domestic airline and using it would be tantamount to building their own economy for many people and expanding employment chances for their people. The second aspect would be the home advantages like exemption from some taxes and other incentives that they may receive from the government.

SWOT Analysis of Travel Today business environment Strengths -- the Travel Today has the areas that distinguish it from other airlines that will make more people to prefer it over our competition. The one advantage is that it has a rich history of being an airline that is established by patriots who have strived to put together for a course. This means more people who would like to appreciate the patriotism of these veterans will use the airline as a way of ensuring they are provided for.

The other strong point is the low fares that the airline provides and also the flexible scheduling that will be implemented such that a passenger is able to change their flights to the alternative that is available in line with their schedules. Weaknesses -- one significant weakness of the airline is that it is relatively new hence will have to spend a lot of money in trying to establish the brand loyal customers and enlarging its market in regions that have already been dominated by the competition.

This will significantly eat into the profits that the airline will turn over hence making offering customers some levels.