Global Adventures Continual Review Paper

Global Adventures has recently established a Board to provide governance to the organisation. This is a change to the previous way of working, where the three owners were the only directors. The CEO is responsible to the Board, and has two direct reports, a Chief Financial Officer and a Director of Operations. The subsequent reporting lines illustrate a potentially odd grouping of functions, which could form barriers to effective operations if lateral communication and collaborative work is not the norm (Spillan, Mino, & Rowles, 2002). This could be reflected in the declining performance as functions are not coordinating well for example the marketing team are not providing Sharon, the Director of Tour Planning with relevant market trends.

Such shifts include more authentic trips, food experiences, adventure tours, socially responsible tourism, and growing numbers of youth travellers, alongside an aging population (Demeter, Bratucu, & Palade, 2015). These shifts will continue to occur, and the tour offering that Global Adventures will not remain relevant, and needs continual review. Sharon, as Director of Tour Planning may not have had this information, nor understood the change occurring ’on-the-ground’ due to the period since she last guided a tour. If Sharon, chooses redeployment to either the Tours, Director, or Planning Manager roles in the proposed structure, she will benefit from relevant industry and customer insights. This is the purpose of the Insights Manager role to assess the changing market conditions, test hypotheses, and aid the Customer Team to ensure their offering is fit for purpose and customers can access how and when they need

To this end Global Adventures must embrace the digital marketing age, and take advantage of online adverting and social media. These technologies allow excellent customer segmentation allowing Global Adventures to put the right products in front of the right people to make sales. Increasingly people are making their purchasing decisions online and Global Adventures need to have their product information on this platform, and use the data that can be gathered to understand their customers better and increase retention rates (Ryan, 2016). The digital marketing landscape is an exciting tool that can enable the right products to be created for the customer without them having to provide any additional information, which makes purchasing decisions easier than ever before, increasing the possibility of sales. A digital marketing strategy is required that can encapsulate all of the opportunities the technologies provides, and define exactly what Global Adventures can subsequently offer. This will require significant interaction within the Marketing