Operations research and information systems in the South African tourism industry

Abstract

Sunset Safaris and Tours is an inbound tour operator in South Africa that offers escorted and self drive tours of South Africa and also safaris further afield in Botswana Namibia, Tanzania and Kenya. There are however many variables associated with such escorted tours and to evaluate and optimize these variables can save money, hence can the tours be conducted for less and this can give the company the competitive edge. Some of these variables are: 1) logistics management (collection of tourist, transport and destination of tourist); 2) the optimal collection and destination strategy (route planning) to be followed to minimize travel time of the tours and optimize vehicle usage; 3) proper information system to manage all tours in operation. The main objective of the project is to minimize the cost associated with travelling between destinations by using logistical methods, operations research and also better management of information associated with tours conducted by the company. There are currently none of these systems in place to optimize the company’s operations. This presents immense opportunities for improvement by implementing industrial engineering methods, theory and techniques. This project aims to identify the methods of Industrial Engineering applicable in the tourism industry and how to implement them in the right way. The methods used in this project require extensive research on how to apply them optimally in the tourism industry. These methods and techniques are identified and studied to better apply them in the design phase of the project (Appendixes). In this way the requirements of the company will be best achieved. The design segment of the project will consist of an information system and a route planning formulation. This will be done to minimize logistics cost associated with a company of this nature.