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Supply Chain Management Assignment Question

Critical Analysis of the Operational Activities in Heathrow Airport, Tui Travel and the Catering Facilities of Emirates Airline in Dubai

Supply Chain Assignment Solution

Business planning and operation management are the most vital functions in the intense competitive scenario in tours and travel industry. It's imperative to manage the operations of companies irrespective of its size and industry needs, systematic planning since inception along with a regular analysis of its performance with industry requirement. It has gone way beyond the requirement of maintaining sustainability but has become crucial with respect to security, safety concerns along with regulations and meeting customer expectations.

The report is going to discuss and analyze the operations activities of three giant companies of tourism and travel industry i.e. Heathrow Airport, Tui Travel and Catering Facilities of Emirates Airline in Dubai. Each of the identified company shall be critically analyzed with respect to their methods of business planning and operations functions, issues encountered by them and their recovery mechanism that is part of the management problems faced. Operations management in the tourism and travel industry mainly rely on the experience of the guests and visitors, therefore, this report will also highlight the functionality of operations keeping customer-centric approach.  It shall also discuss the operational policies introduced by each of them as and when required along with a brief background of past research done over a similar subject.

1.     Background Information

Operation management is a crucial functional activity that directs a process whereby resources flow in a defined fashion and controlled in a manner that adds value through the policies communicated by management. The two broad categories under which the operations management can be categorized are the Customer Services and Resource Utilization.  The purpose of this function is to create customer satisfaction by utilizing the resources in the best possible manner keeping its priority established in achieving Quality, i.e. the product performance, dependability i.e. the reliability and timely delivery of customer products & services, Cost efficiency, i.e. lower product price and flexibility i.e. responding the fast-changing need and products in the industry (Kumar & Suresh, 2009) .

In order to remain competitive in the ever-evolving scenario of Tourism and Travel where companies are expanding their territories, companies are creating an avenue for international dimensions to stay competitive. Operations management is either directed to plan to move towards new advanced products or employing better and flexible systems. The three companies chosen for analysis were designed functionally to regulate logistics at a large scale, manage tourism activities as well as creating hospitality avenues to create customer satisfaction and enhancing their travel experience (Swain, 2014) .

3. Operational Activities in Heathrow Airport

3.1 Back ground of Heathrow Airport

Heathrow airport was a facility created as an air military base in 1946 in London, it eventually was offered better infrastructure to recreate it as London's main civil airport.  The London airport was renamed as Heathrow airport in 1966 as the demand for air travel grew with time. Starting from the 63,000 hardy passengers the ones, who had just experienced the facilities of basic terminals set up in 1946, most of them ex-military marquees, this airport eventually saw a huge number of more than 66 million passengers passing through in 2009, with almost one third who traveled were on the business trip. On average, more than 180,000 people use the Heathrow airport every day, out of which almost 50 percent arrive while 50 percent depart. It is located on Europe's edge, that invites a lot of European travelers and has a huge scale of operations involving more than 70,000 people every day at work (Otley, 2015) .

3.2 Critical Analysis at Heathrow Airport

The total value of tradable goods that were carried through the UK was more than £140 billion in 2014. As the global supply chain becoming complex and competitive along with the world economy's attention moving eastward; air transport will be more important in establishing access to key export markets for UK firms. In addition, the aviation sector earned about £12 billion of economic revenue in 2013 and employs more than 116,000 workers. Along with that it also provides a valuable source of Government revenue by the collection of air passenger duty, this yield UK over £3 billion in 2013-14.

Heathrow airport is the busiest international airport due to which problems are starting to emerge showing the negative effects of busy as well as constrained airport capacity in London and the South East. The constraint capacity has started to be felt among the customers and logistics movement especially at the biggest London airports (Ares, Barclay, Butcher, & Mellows-Facer, 2009) . Heathrow airport capacity has been effectively fully occupied for many years, and Gatwick another airport in towards the south of central London is operating at more than 85% capacity, which makes it working full at peak times. Heathrow is currently operating with 5 terminals engaging domestic flights; long-halt flights from the US, Asia, and South Africa; lights with the long haul and European destinations and terminal operating exclusively for Iberia and British Airways. This lack of capacity makes it extremely difficult for airlines to operate efficiently, mainly those long-haul carriers who are dealing with high volumes of demand that only country biggest airport can take. This situation has resulted in more delays, reduced connectivity as well as higher fares (Mangattu, 2015) .

The main operational concern of Heathrow is the lack of runway capacity causing to this, the airport is losing the demand for flight as well as route network other European hubs. The expansion of the plan of Heathrow airport has also been put on hold due to the environmental issues observed as well as political constrained (Transport, 2013). Another operational issue of Heathrow airport has been the baggage misplacement due to the huge capacity of baggage transfers among different terminals (Commission, 2015) . Concerning to this, the company has invested huge money to improve and invest in creating improvised technology and infrastructure to speed up the baggage movement by using IT-controlled systems (Regeneris Consulting, 2013).

In order to align the operational functions of Heathrow airport with the demand of the heavy air traffic and demand of capacity the mayor of London Boris Jonson has announced to create a transport hub leading to extraordinary economic opportunities as well as creating more employment opportunities (Telegraph, 2013).

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