Singapore's bustling Tourism with F1 Night Race, Building of Casinos and Hosting of Youth Olympics
Singapore is an island nation with no natural resources. Singapore's current economy focused on electronics manufacturing, petrochemicals, tourism and financial services alongside traditional entrepot trade. However, as China's rapid economic growth erodes the island's traditional manufacturing base and fast-growing cities such as Bangkok vie for tourist dollars, Singapore have increased its efforts to re-mould its economy into a services hub.
With Singapore's renewed emphasis on tourism and service-based industry, there are great business opportunities for Gogme's online community of entrepreneurs to act upon. In Singapore, the first Formula One Night Race is slated to debut in 2008, the completion of integrated resorts with casinos in 2009 and the hosting of Youth Olympics in 2010. How can entrepreneurs take hold of these business opportunities? What are the business opportunities that arise from such development? As more and more countries reinvent themselves, it is very likely your home country will face such a transformation. Learn how to take advantage of such opportunity and profit from it.
Proposed Small Business Venture: Travel Agency
Setting up a travel agency is a great way to capitalize on the booming tourism. The proposed travel agency can operate through the internet and via brick-and-mortar outlets. Travel agency does not really need a lot of startup capital. Niche markets such as adventure travel, gift experiences and specialty travel can be explored as well. A lot of small-scale travel agencies offer comparable services just like the big boys.
Entrepreneurial Learning Opportunities
Learn how the travel industry works. Follow the blogs and twitters of starting a travel agency. You will learn how commissions are earned from travel suppliers, hotels, airlines, cruises, tourist attractions, etc.
Franchises and Business Opportunities
Depending on collective decisions made by co-owners, the original intention of Gogme Learning Alfa is not to create a large corporation dealing on one industry but a business entity that creates a wide array of sustainable small businesses. This will allow Gogme LA to venture into a wide variety of businesses and continue to provide co-owners with entrepreneurial learning. If the travel agency grows too big, individual co-owners will have problem buying over the business. The travel agency will remain a small business that can be easily franchised or takeover by co-owners. Franchise opportunities will be rewarded to co-owners once the travel agency becomes sustainable and profitable. The advantage of winning the franchise is that the franchisee will have the support of entrepreneurs in the online community and the parent entity.
Your feedback needed
Share your thoughts and ideas with the community on the proposed travel agency. You can also comment on the various industries that benefit from the growth of tourism.
The industry of peace....
Tourism has a lot of benefits to any country, city, village...etc
What does the location offers? is there clients for that?
I think that this are simple questions that will answer to alot of problems in a short term, and may sugest ideas to be made in the future.
If there are already hotels, and you have a good public transportation network as also good places to eat; have fun; visit or explore...then gather all that information, make deals with that places and companies and start by making an online reservation portal. Internet nowadays is the ultimate place to book a travel.
Offer online booking in real time, having voice operators speaking many different languages. Offer travel guides as well, and if theres a chance, make your own "travel bus" for your clients operating in a 24/7 basis.
Dont be afraid to outsource your local deals to other booking travel websites, because they will be advertising your products as well.
Everyone will benefit from these deals because if you make a reservation to an hotel, those clients will have to eat, go to places....whatever they want to do. So you will have to have the structure to make them happy about it.
Now, this is for what you can offer right now. In the future, and not knowing much about the location :(( here goes some ideas to the air.
Is there golf courts? they call so many tourists
Is there theme hotels? (like a soccer hotel, a jazz hotel, an art hotel...etc)
Is there theme restaurants? (the same as the theme hotels)
What about the sex industry? (its a huge market with many different things to be made)
There are alot of things to be made in many different areas and i think that i dont have enough space to write it here, but i hope that this may be a start of conversation to all the comunity :)))
The golden age of travel agencies has passed
While I like this idea, it is pretty focussed on just one place: Singapore.
While I will not debate that Singapore will be a hotbed of investments for the near future, I am not convinced that this is the best idea to leverage this community. I guess it would have to be more global and a lot less local.
Travel agencies used to be a good business, back when commissions were high and there were few players. Now-a-days many airlines don`t even pay commissions any more. Some hotels are going the same way. Check out this article published in the NY Times in 1989: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE3DE1E30F931A35755C0A...
Many agencies that didn`t take that rout ended up going out of business... Now-a-days there are travel agencies for all types of tastes and desires. There are the adventure agencies, wine agencies, surf agencies, etc. It is a highly competitive market with many players and a lot of segmentation.
The only way I see this working is if it were to work like a huge system of referals on a fee based system. Many times, when you are visiting a place you don`t know, you try to talk to people who have been there in the past. You try to get the best restaurant and bar references possible, so that you can enjoy your visit more. My last trip came out of a conversation I had with someone at an airport. We got to talking and he gave me many recommendations of places to go. I later followed up with him and got some great recommendatinos that I absolutely loved! I had the "local`s advantage", where I avoided all the bad places and only went to the best.
This type of service that I mentioned above, kind of already exists in several travel sites on the Internet. But I don`t have the patience or the time to keep going through all the posts to get to something good. I would love to call someone up and ask where should I go and what should I do there. Having connections all around the world can really help comming up with suggestions and alternatives. Plus the "company" would provide the best places as directed by locals.
My guess is that this service would have to be fee-based. But it needs to be thought out A LOT MORE.
branding
Hello everyone.
I'm a new member and this is my 1st comment on the subject of tourism.
There may be scores of travel agencies in singapore they almost offer the same standard itineraries. I've work with travel agencies before and have even done tour coordinating for some of my own groups from all over the world.
Referrals are good source for business and thats why branding is very important to sustain the flow of business.
Commissions from shops or agencies are only part of the income. You can earn by sales of tickets to attractions and transportation.
The selling point is to personalize the tour and not follow the standard itinerary.
If we have contacts all over the world let them sell singapore as one of the tourist destination. It'll be like one agency with so many branches all over the world.
The best thing is that we don't really need much capital to set up this lucrative business.
Think about it.I've done it and don't mind sharing it wit all of you.