University of Greenwich ID Number: 001281184

Module Code: 1633

Module Assessment Title: BUSI1633 REPORT 31/03/2023

Lecturer Name: Pham Duc Viet

Submission Date: 31/03/2023

Introduction 3
Part 01: Strategic position 3
PESTEL Analysis 3
Porter 5 Forces 4
VRIO Analysis 5
SWOT Analysis 6
Part 02: Strategic choices 7
Strategy in action 8
Conclusion 9
Appendix 01 10
Appendix 02 11
Appendix 03 11
Reference list 11
Introduction
This report will focus on a case study based on Greece's tourism industry.
The essay will evaluate the industry in 2 sections which will sum up the
company's position in the industry and its suitable choices. Firstly, we will
analyze strategic positioning and to be able to do the task we will use the
Porter's 5 Forces model, SWOT, VRIO and PESTLE models. Then we will
look at the strategies that can be implemented for Greece's tourism. Finally,
we will look at strategy in action which is how this industry can use these
new ideas and implement them in a real scenario.

Part 01: Strategic position

PESTEL Analysis
Abbreviated from six elements of analysis: Political, Economic,
Socio-cultural, Technologies, Environment, and Legal, PESTEL is a tool for
examining the external, macro-environment surrounding the organization in
question. PESTEL enhanced the efficiency of strategic analysis by
identifying the key factors that are having or going to have critical effects on
organizational operations (see Appendix 1 for full PESTEL Analysis of
Greece's Tourism industry).

Based on PESTEL analysis, it can be seen that political-related factors are

having a significant influence on the industry, many of them come from
neighboring countries' situations, such as the social instability as well as
terrorist attack risks in Turkish and Egypt have redirected the tour operators
attention toward Greece, resulted in a noticeable increase in arrivals,
occupancy rates and revenues in some prefectures of this nation as much
as 70% compared to the same date in the previous year (Smith, 2017).

However, besides newly presented opportunities, Greece tourism is also

plagued with countless cases of visibly unethical practices, many of them
coming from the tourists themselves, such as exploitation of official staff,
substance abuse, fraud, guide mistreatment or vandalism of heritage sites,
which resulted from the incompetence of the administrative departments as
well as the weak law against these crimes (Papathanassis et al., 2017).

For a country with special geography like Greece, the tourism industry is
also affected by environmental factors, especially the two closely related air
transport and maritime transport industry, which demonstrated by 77%
contribution to annual GDP from the tourism sector thanks to over 90
thousand tonnes transported by all Greek’s airports in 2017 (Ikkos and
Koutsos, 2018). On the other hand, maritime transportation while
decreased in the number of cruises arriving due to securities issues in the
intermediaries' ports, but it has seen a boom in the number of cruises
departing from there as an intermediary destination as well as more and
more foreign cruise companies choose Greece’s ports as the home port of
their operation thanks to the government decided to lift the cabotage rules,
which main purpose is protecting the domestic cruise industry (Kassotaki,
2019).

Porter 5 Forces
The five forces framework of Porter is also a suitable tool for analyzing
Greece tourism in a strategic manner, which mainly deals with relevant
parties' threats such as new entrants, existing competitors, buyer, and
supplier power, and finally substitutes (Porter, 1980).

Based on the PESTEL analysis above, it can be seen pretty clearly that
Greece's tourism industry as a whole will be greatly affected by the service
suppliers like airlines as well as cruise companies, which are the two most
beneficial transportation methods to the country; just by raising their service
prices.

Furthermore, as far as the Turkish and Eastern Mediterranean social

instability progress, Greece is not the only country that benefited from the
redirected tourist stream. Other countries like Spain, Italy, France, as well
as Britain also recorded a sudden boom in tourists arrival, and these
countries have been major competitors to Greece in the tourism sector
(Smith, 2017).

The customers or the tourists also exercise some power toward the
industry, as usually, there are two main kinds of customers that Greece
tourism usually deals with independent tourists; who are now empowered
by digital tourist channels, and the tour operators, which are usually known
as travel agencies. The high taxation policy of the government such as
income tax and VAT during 2014 - 2016 has made tour operators, as well
as travel agencies, suffered a crash in sales and revenue drop, resulting in
a less competitive status among the businesses, which means that they are
becoming less inactive and attract less tourist to the country (Mihail N
Diakomihalis and Nikolaos Mougios, 2018).

These factors above have demonstrated the high risk which made them
necessary to add to the strategic analysis

VRIO Analysis
With the external factors that have been considered, internal factors are
also elements that need analysis, to gain an insight into the resources, and
capability of the organization under the criteria of value, rarity, difficulty to
imitate, and finally organizational support (see Appendix 2 for a full
analysis).

In this case, the resources of Greece's Tourism industry can be identified

from the case study as the long coastline of Greece, which greatly benefits
the maritime activities of the country. Being a nation that consisted of many
islands and coastal regions, maritime was one of the main transportation
methods of the country before the advent of the airplane. The coastline of
Greece can’t be imitated, nor is it common even when compared to other
coastal countries. The government has invested in the coastline by building
docking ports as well as other maritime facilities, which greatly support
nautical tourism like marine cruises, yachts, and the shipping industry
(Chen et al., 2016).
Similar to the maritime network, the air transport network of Greece is also
a high-value resource of the nation, with over 40 airports around the
country, they allow Greece to quickly dispatch a transport plane to other
regions, regardless they are inland or out on the sea. Furthermore,
because many airports are built near the attraction, they also significantly
increase the number of tourists to those areas, which in turn results in a
more diverse tour idea and revenue for the industry (Marinakos and
Poulaki, 2019)

SWOT Analysis
Based on all the analysis above, the SWOT analysis will further
complement into giving the insight of current positioning of Greece's
Tourism industry through identity, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,
and finally, threats (see Appendix 3 for full SWOT Analysis)

For Greece's tourism industry, it is clear that the two maritime networks and
air transport network are very strong pillars of the sector, however, Greece
is also famous for its cultural, as well as natural attractions visited by
people nearly year-round, as well as the flexibility of service providers by
the tour operators and travel agencies (Sotiriadis and Varvaressos, 2015).

Together with this strength, we also have respective weaknesses of quality

infrastructures for both transportation and business events, which are
crucial for developing the industry as well as the country further, as well as
the plaguing seasonality and human resources management, which
exemplified above with the story of staff abuse and exploitation from tourist.
Marketing is also a weakness of Greece's tourism due to the government
policies and business competitiveness (Stefanos and Nedelea, 2009)

On the opportunities, Greece's tourism industry opens a chance for

complete digital transformation, as well as further development of
transportation service and infrastructure (Dionysopoulou and Tsakopoulou,
2021). Furthermore, they are also supported by other international
organizations like the EU

In respect, there are also threats to the sector, such as environmental

degradation from exploiting the nature spot as an attraction, as well as
political crises within the countries and with other countries in the same
area (Kassotaki, 2019).

Part 02: Strategic choices

Based on the analysis above, there are several strategic choices for the
industry and the government to choose from.

The first strategic choice that the Greece government can utilize is to focus
on the development of transportation networks, from inland roadwork to air
network and finally maritime network as well as their attraction sites and
utilize both traditional tourism and cultural religious tourism as their unique
selling point for Greece tourism brands, where the customers can quickly
visit a destination to another due to their high-quality transportation
networks and the fact that these destinations are near the transport station.
The reason why Greece tourism will greatly benefit from this is that this is
an easy approach to the situation, and it can be quickly put into action
because most involved factors have already existed and they only need to
be improved upon (Kassotaki, 2019).

Another idea would involve the Greece government investing in the overall
infrastructures related to tourism, however, the difference between this
option and choice number one is that this one requires the government to
focus on developing the housing system and business event structure. This
can help Greece attract foreign partners to come and invest in their native
market, thus creating revenue for the local government and developing the
domestic market (Kassotaki, 2019).
The third strategic choice for the government would require the government
to reduce the tax on tourism products and encourage native tourists
businesses to compete with each other by attracting and providing the best
service as much as possible, and at the same time, promoting low-cost
service in the industry to gain loyal customers. This helps the tourism
business to develop in the long term and reinforces the stability of cash
flow from the sector (Kassotaki, 2019).

The final strategic choice for Greece's tourism industry would be investing
in human resources, tourist law digital transformation. As it is mentioned
above, the country suffered from ethical practices mainly come the tourists,
so an investment in human resources will raise the quality of tourist staff, at
the same time, the investment in the law, as well as digital transformation,
will help Greece's tourism reduce unethical practices which happened
mostly from the customer side (Papathanassis et al., 2017).

Strategy in action
5=best, 1=worst

Strategic Suitable Acceptable Feasible Total Score

Choice

1 4 3 4 12

2 2 4 3 10

3 3 4 3 09

4 4 5 4 13

Suitability – Choice one and four are the most suitable for Greece's
situation since one is improving upon the existing strength of the native
tourism industry and the other is addressing an existing issue with the
sector human resources, and also the flaw in the present legislation
system. Other choices are less desirable because the situation is just not
ideal for their condition to be effective.
Acceptability - Both choices two and three are long-term investments not
just for tourism but other industries so the government might be willing to
spend on them. Choice 4 is a pragmatic choice because Greece will be
able to serve better customers in the long run
Feasibility – Choice one is feasible because it is what the government has
been doing before and they have high experience with them, choice four is
because investing in human resources usually have lower cost but have a
long term effect, so they can focus on the resources, digital transformation,
and law. Choice two and three simply require a huge investment in real
estate and businesses, which can be hard to monitor the effect
Total - Choice 4 would be the most suitable option, considering that it
would be better for Greece to serve better behavior customers in the future
and convert them into industry base customers.

Conclusion
In summary of this report, the tourism industry is a complicated sector, but
for a country like Greece, tourism can be the backbone of the economy.
This is an inspiration for coastal nations as they will serve as an example
for other countries to develop their tourism and increase the transportation
between countries, thus increasing the rate of globalization. This essay has
somewhat covered an analysis using Porter's five forces, PESTLE, VRIO,
and SWOT analysis of the industry. Next, the focus was on strategic
choices and elimination for the best option possible. Overall, with the option
suggested, the industry can be saved for sustainable growth

Appendix 01
Factor Impact
Political ● Social instability in Turkish and Eastern Mediterranean
● Sanctions and financial penalties imposed by international
organizations on other countries
● Government approach to the industry
● Administrative corruption/ unethical tourism practices
● High levels of taxes imposed on the tourist-related products

Economic ● Complicated and prone to change the tax system.

● Seasonality income from the tourist flow
● Global financial crisis

Socio-Cultural ● Seasonality of tourist flow

Technological ● Encouraged digital transformation in tourist SMEs

● Development of air transport infrastructures

Environmental ● Lack of inappropriate infrastructures for large-scale events,

both political and non-political.
● Potential in some tourism sub-sectors (Medical tourism)
● Quality issues regarding some key infrastructure such as
airports, ports, roadworks…
● The long coastline for ports and maritime facilities, at the
same time, short distance to the city and tourist destinations

Legal ● Lift of cabotage rules for maritime cruises.

Appendix 02
Resource/Capability Valuable Rarity Difficulty to imitate Organizational support

Air transport network Yes Yes No Yes

The long coastline for Yes Yes Yes Yes

maritime activities
Appendix 03
Strength Weakness

● Natural and cultural attraction/ tourism ● Key infrastructures for business

resources
● Air transport infrastructure
● Maritime activities
● Tourism services provider flexibility
events
● Management and Marketing
● Seasonality
● Transportation infrastructure quality
● Human resources management
● High tourism product tax

Opportunities Threats

● Digital transformation ● Environmental degradation

● Transportation service ● Political crises
● Infrastructure development ● Infrastructure
● International organizations support ● Political intervention

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