The tourism industry in Sweden has expanded in recent years and the increasing industry has meant that customers are in need of a reseller for their trips abroad. Today there are three types of retailers available. These are : Traditional travel agencies , tour operators and online travel agencies.Online Travel agencies are the most modern online option for customers. Their existence has made it easier for the customer and reservation can be made anytime and anywhere. The competition has intensified between the three retailers and the traditional alternatives must find new ways to survive.

Purpose:  The purpose of this paper is that from the physical travel agencies perspective try to see how they perceive their future, knowing that the booking on Internet has increased.Problem: What are the prospects for future development of the physical travel agency? Has the technological development affected the physical travel agency and forced it to change its role and meaning?Method: This paper has a qualitative approach. Interviews have been made with employees on physical travel agencies to try to reach a deeper understanding and thereafter be able to give us an understanding of our problem.Conclusion: The physical travel agency has been given a new role as the employees are no longer seen as sellers but more regarded to as consultants. The travel agency has become more of an information bank than just a shop where travels are being sold. Despite this change, we believe that customers will continue to visit the physical travel agents because of the unique knowledge and services they can provide that Internet not yet can offer.

Normally when purchasing a trip, an airline, a travel agency and a traveler is included in the purchasing process. Mostly a travel agency acts as an intermediary between the airline and the traveler. The travel agency is not considered to have any major part to the contractual relationship, usually the purchase agreement is considered to be covered by the airline and the traveler as the main parties. This is essentially the view shown from a legal perspective on the specific area. The application of legal provisions on the travel agency?s legal status may nevertheless bring a certain amount of ambiguity in the interpretation.

The travel agencies exist on a market that is distinguished by increasing competition. A majority of the travel agencies offer different services that all satisfie the same customer need. However,one major difference in the market aspect is the service quality, this making it an important mean of competition. There are several acknowledged methods of measurement when it comes to service quality and it is important to use an instrument that takes into consideration the fact that charter tours is a complex merger of several services. The purpose of this essay is to establish if the SERVQUAL method is a suitable instrument for measuring service quality in the travelindustry.

Purpose: My purpose of this study was to examine the factors that motivate Swedes to travel to Egypt and Thailand. To answer the question, I have used two questions.What are the factors that motivate Swedes to travel to Egypt and Thailand?What is the motive for Swedes choose to travel to destinations such as Egypt and Thailand?Method: The method I am using  is the qualitative method. The qualitative method has been processed through interviews of Swedish travelers, the Swedish travel agencies as well as Egypt and Thailand tourist agencies specializing in trips to Egypt and Thailand via phone and e-mail.Theory: The theory I am using are motivators and push-pull factors in achieving an understanding of the factors that influence choice for Swedes to travel to destinations such as Egypt and Thailand.Empiricism: The goal was to get a much more qualitative data from the response from the Swedish travel agencies, Egypt and Thailand tourist agency and Swedish travelers who have traveled to both of these destinations.Result: What I have come up with in my study is that the factors that motivate Swedish travelers to travel to Egypt and Thailand, is the warm climate, sun and sea, culture, variety, the cheap price situation and that there are activities for different age groups. This has led to the heat in both Egypt and Thailand has attracted Swedish travelers to travel to both destinations.

Bachelor thesis in Interaction Design by Håkan Carlsson, spring term 2007, Malmö University, School of Arts & Communication. The climate for video sharing online is somewhere in the border of becoming a place for only the big companies to distribute material with general interest, or small communities with genre-specific interest to attract a larger audience. In this article I will look at the travelindustry to see what possibilities can be implemented into communities with interest in planning and travelling. I will argue that the importance of collaboration with different media can create a bigger picture so that more people can use and discover each other?s travel videos and experiences. I have also taken a closer look at social interaction at online communities such as MySpace and YouTube.

The purpose of this study has been to examine online travel magazines as an information source and as a virtual service scape. The traditional travel magazines are facing a change due to the technological development and the web has become an important platform for both customers and companies. The virtual service scape opens new opportunities for interaction and we found a great interest in examining which possibilities and limitations travel magazines are facing. This study is based on a qualitative approach because we wanted to gain a deeper understanding and a complete picture of our chosen subject. We have completed six interviews; three of them were consultants, one publishing director, one editor and a research student.

Tourism has been an expanding market since the first travel agency started in the middle of the 18?Th century, and today it is a global industry, with intensified competition and high demands from the customers. Product development is therefore one of the most important aspects for successful companies, and scientists also agree that the first stages in product development are the most critical. This essay is focusing on those stages, regarding product development on travel agencies, and the research question is as follows: How are new tourism destinations developed and what is the difference in working process between small and big travel agencies? The empirical research consists of qualitative semi-structured interviews with two big and two small travel agencies.

Due to a globalised world business travel is flourishing. This paper examines how middle level executives, travelling a lot in their work at a multi-national company, feel about their travel. It looks for links between business travel and work satisfaction among them. A short presentation of the patterns of business travel and relevant motivational and stress theories is given. Data for the paper is collected using a survey (78 participants) and interviews.

AbstractThis degree project is about having meetings in The Swedish Social Insurance Agency, which is awide organisation. This work will concentrate on one of the projects going on within theorganisation which is travel-free meetings, where they are building a video meeting system thatallows the employees in the organisation to be able to meet with each other through the use ofvideoconferencing instead of physical meetings.In this work we will show how Kaikaku (radical system changes) along with Kaizen (continuouschange) can support an organisation to become more efficient and reduce wastage. We have donethis work in an organisation that is present in over one hundred locations in Sweden.The Social Insurance Agency has over 13 000 employees at over one hundred locations inSweden.The organisation has to be close to their customers and provide the best service aspossible. To be able to work in a uniform way, the employees get together and have meetings.Some meetings are just progress meetings and takes perhaps no more than two hours to complete.However, if seven employees from seven different locations need to have meetings, in the worstcase, they all have to meet in a common place.This is expensive for the organisation in travel costs, time and absence from work, but thetravelling also contributes to environmental pollution if the employees are travelling by a fuelpoweredvehicle.A whole day could go lost for having a meeting in about two hours if all sevenemployees went from their own cities to e.g. Stockholm for the meeting.Muda (wastage) of travel created several different types of Muda, namely:? Wastage with anticipation when the employees had to wait for e.g.

AbstractThis degree project is about having meetings in The Swedish Social Insurance Agency, which is awide organisation. This work will concentrate on one of the projects going on within theorganisation which is travel-free meetings, where they are building a video meeting system thatallows the employees in the organisation to be able to meet with each other through the use ofvideoconferencing instead of physical meetings.In this work we will show how Kaikaku (radical system changes) along with Kaizen (continuouschange) can support an organisation to become more efficient and reduce wastage. We have donethis work in an organisation that is present in over one hundred locations in Sweden.The Social Insurance Agency has over 13 000 employees at over one hundred locations inSweden.The organisation has to be close to their customers and provide the best service aspossible. To be able to work in a uniform way, the employees get together and have meetings.Some meetings are just progress meetings and takes perhaps no more than two hours to complete.However, if seven employees from seven different locations need to have meetings, in the worstcase, they all have to meet in a common place.This is expensive for the organisation in travel costs, time and absence from work, but thetravelling also contributes to environmental pollution if the employees are travelling by a fuelpoweredvehicle.A whole day could go lost for having a meeting in about two hours if all sevenemployees went from their own cities to e.g. Stockholm for the meeting.Muda (wastage) of travel created several different types of Muda, namely:? Wastage with anticipation when the employees had to wait for e.g.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the organizational buying behaviour in the purchase of travels abroad. We have conducted a case study of two companies, one medium sized and one larger. Our empirical studies have shown that the companies? buying process is divided into two types, the process of recruit a new travel supplier and the process of a straight rebuy of a regular travel service. In the recruiting process we found that the evaluation process of the purchase is an ongoing process that contradicts estab-lished theories.

AbstractThe purpose of this study has been to provide a deeper understanding of how companies in the travel industry works with social media and electronic Word-of-mouth (eWOM) by analyzing and investigating social media and eWOM and how it effects customers? expectations on the companies service quality. In connection with the purpose we have chosen the following research questions: 1. In which way can companies in the travel industry interact with their customers participation on the Internet through social media. 2.

The purpose of this essay was to examine class-travellers experiences of having done the class-travel and when they realised they had done it.My questions were: when did they start the class-travel? How do they experience themselves after going through the classtravel? How do they change as class-travellers in their relationship with their surroundings?The study was based on interviews with six classtravellers, trained social workers who have made their journey through studies. In the essay I have analyzed and compared the interviews with relevant litterature/theory.My conclusions are that the experiences of the class-travel are different. The lass-traveller of this study are recognized of being/have been part of two worlds or cultures. How long the class-traveller has been in one of the worlds is of big importance.

The purpose of this study has been to investigate the virtual world that people are part of on online dating sites. To do this we have investigated two different research questions, which are the following: What functions do the online dating sites provide? Why and how are the online dating sites being used by their members? In order to gather information about these matters, we have used a qualitative method consisting of participating observation, scrutinizing and single person interviews. Our results indicate that people have different goals with their usage of online dating sites; some are looking for love, a long-term relationship while others are looking for sexual contact. There are many different online dating sites to choose from depending on the users? objective.