Airports are the primary infrastructure facility that a country has to offer to the international tourists. It would be surprising to note that renowned tourists destinations like Jaipur and Goa do not have an international airport. Foreign guests, who constitute more than 60% of the tourists destined for these cities, currently have to travel via Mumbai, unless they are ready to charter a flight. This makes things cumbersome and time consuming, thus discouraging many time conscious tourists from visiting these places.
Similar is the case of cities like Agra, Udaipur and Varanasi where foreign tourists account for approximately 50% of the total tourists arrival.
These facilities decide the status of a place in a tourist’s portfolio. They on one hand attract tourists to a particular destination and on the other act as a major demotivating factor if they are unable to fulfill the expectations of the visitors. So the major bottlenecks to this industry are to be found here. In the subsequent pages an attempt to SWOT analyse some of these services and detect areas that need attention.
To find our the present status of this industry we have done a strength, weakness opportunity and threat (SWOT) analysis. This will help us in understanding this industry and also identify the weak spots
S.W.O.T ANALYSIS OF AIRLINES INDUSTRY
Strengths
- Airlines is the most preferred mode of transportation by the foreign tourists as the convenience provided by the airlines is higher.
- The savings in time that this mode of transport offers is immense.
- Manpower costs in the transportation in Indian hotel industry is one of the lowest in the world. This provides better margins for Indian hotel industry.
- India offers a readymade tourist destination connected by air. Thus the magnet to pull customers already exists.
- Low cost carriers have brought boom in airtravel.
Weaknesses
- Inefficiency of the domestic airlines – there are number of instances of flight being cancelled or delayed. Secondly frequent strikes by the pilots and maintenance problems are a major cause of concern. This is one of the reasons that make a tourist disheartened
- Lack of basic facilities at the airport. When international airports offer such services like free transportation facilities, private lounge facilities at airports, food etc, it sometimes become impossible to find a clear toilet in our international airports.
- Government does not allow the capacity of existing airports to increase and private and foreign operators are not given clearances to operate in the country.
Opportunities
- As the tourism industry expands the airline industry is also in for a boom.
- Development and up gradation of the present airports, India’s geographic location makes it an ideal location to serve as a link between the East and the West.
Threats
- Domestic airlines (Air India and Indian Airlines) face major competition from other transnational airlines.
- Under cutting in for their existence and then go on to business.
