Two large Travel Agencies are about to merge together. Holiday Seekers Travel Agency and Small
WorldTravel Agency are both public companies (shares listed on the stock exchange).
The Holiday Seekers Travel Agency was established in 1960 and it is a traditional agency with 50
physical branches in the Middle East and 301 employees. Bookings for hotels, air tickets, tours, etc.
are all done ‘physically’ by welcoming the customer inthe travel agency branch and dealing with his
/ her holiday needs.
The Small World Travel Agency was established in 2001 and it is an online ‘virtual’ high tech travel
agency with no physical location or branches. Their headquarter is based in Dubai …. 65 employees
work for this travel agency.
The CEO’s of both companies are extremely anxious (they know at least one of them has to go).
The news of the merger is not public yet. Only members of the Board of Directors know about the
merger. No one else knows. It is a fact, however, that restructuring is essential and ‘rightsizing’ is
inevitable.
It has been decided that the new company (the result of the merger) will still have physical branches
(20 branches), which is much less than the number of branches the Holiday Seekers Travel Agency
currently has, giving customers the choice to use a traditional way to book their holidays or to do it
fully online.
Here is what you are supposed to do:
Imagine that you have been approached by a regulatory body (acting in the interest of all shareholders)
to be a Consultant to offer advice on how to handle this ‘Change’. You will be paid 200,000 AED for
your report. You are, therefore, required to write areport of Maximum 15 pages offering your advice
on how theyshould implement the change.
There are many issues that you must address for example:
- What are the possible impacts of the change on ALL stakeholders and how to deal with these impacts?
- Who should lead the change? Type of leadership style required, Propose a team.
- Prepare the culture to accept the change.
- Propose a change model that they can follow.
- Explain how each phase of the model may be achieved.
- How do you propose to maintain the change? Sustainability issues.
- You are gonna love this – Name the new companyJ.
- In other words, you are required to demonstrate that you can apply what you learnt in this course. The more issues you tackle the more you demonstrate to me that you actually learnt from each lesson.
Rules:
- Your report must not exceed 15 pages including cover page, references, appendices etc.
- Use Times New Roman font size 12 @ 1.5 line spacing.
- The report should look professional. No unnecessary photos or decoration for example.
- The more references you use the richer your report will be and will reflect on the grade. Of course you must use the Harvard style for referencing.
- Be as innovative as possible, but remain realistic.
- I welcome your opinions, suggestions and recommendations but you MUST back them by references in order to strengthen your arguments. For example, if you suggest a way to deal with resistance then back this by a published research paper(s).
- You are NOT supposed to base all the report on a single case study.
- Learn from your mistakes of the first assignment.
- You may use ‘I’ because you are writing a report as an expert (consultant). You are NOT going to have any role in the change management. You are simply offering an initial advice.
- You must submit through the Turnitin System. Only MS Word will be accepted.
- Your strict deadline Friday 11th November, at 6pm. This is a final assessment (equivalent to a final exam) and no extension will be granted.
Viva – Oral examination
Because this is the final assessment of the course, and according to the HBMS’s policy, you are
required to defend your work in a viva.
The viva will take place during the last two weeks of the semester.
Reasons for the viva:
1- So others can learn from your work and each one in the class will be able to add to the learning
experiences of others.
2- We have quality standards in our Universityand it is part of our quality procedures to guarantee authenticity.
I will address the Viva issue nearer to the time, but you may expect me to ask you any question
related to your report, including references sources etc.
The chosen scenario is fictional and names of agencies are totally imaginary and have nothing to do
withorganizations of similar names. Oh, and you will not really get paid L.
TO BE RE-WRITTEN FROM THE SCRATCH
Implementing Merger of Travel Agencies
Holiday Seekers Travel Agency and Small World Travel Agency, large tour agency public companies listed in Dubai Stock Exchange, will merge to create one company where there will be more synergy ensuring the new company is more profitable than both the two earlier companies. Holiday Seekers employs 301 workers in its 50 Middle East branches whereas Small World is an online company where its 65 employees post marketing literature, hotel and ticket booking and tour arrangements to the company’s website from wherever they may be. Most of the employees of the two companies live in Dubai including the company’s Chief Executive Officer.
The Board of Directors are the only ones aware of the impeding merger and they have decided that the new company’s physical presence will be reduced to 20 offices with the online services integrated with the brick-and-mortar presence through restructuring to optimize Return on Investment (ROI).
This report explains how to implement a successful integration so that there are clear priorities and targets, a good organizational structure and leadership that retains and motivates top talent, and quick transition and continuation of the companies’ core business. It looks t the merger’s impact on stakeholders, development of a new corporate culture, recommends the change model to adopt and how to achieve it and has a peek at rebranding the company, specifically with naming the new company.
Stakeholder impact
The major stakeholders in the two businesses are the shareholders who have invested in the businesses by buying the companies’ shares. Revaluation of the new company’s stock could lead to a negative or fluctuating impact on the short-term share price compared to the steady share prices of each of the two companies(Federal Trade Commission, 2014). However the price will steady in the long-term and hence the shareholders need assurance of this fact.
How to redistribute the merged stock may also pose a problem. Nonetheless this needs to be done to ensure value and fairness for all shareholders of both existing companies. Those who wish to opt out also need to have that option available.
The board and the executive of the two companies will be impacted by the merging because there will be one board of directors and one chief executive officer. Selecting members for the new board and the chief executive officer should be guided by the reason for merging and the consequent new mission of the new company (Anderson, Havila and Nilsson, 2012).
These should be people who are best equipped to set the most suitable objectives and strategies to achieve the new mission. Selecting these people, and indeed the rest of the new company’s employees, should be done as quickly as possible since any delay will negatively impinge on the new company via poor productivity, poaching of top talent and loss of customers.
Set an ambitious schedule for filling the positions for directors and the top management based on their biographical information. Once these are filled, quickly proceed to selection of the other positions in the organizational structure of the new company based on how their skills, knowledge, attitudes and experiences align to the new company’s mission, objectives and strategies (Friedman, Carmeli, Tishler and Shimizu, 2015). A quick, fair selection will ensure every director and employee focuses on speedy integration of the brick-and-mortar and the online tour businesses into one business.
Those who are let to go should be compensated appropriately to minimize the fallout from the merger. On the other hand, those employees who are retained for the new company should be motivated and remunerated accordingly.
A quick sorting of the company’s directorship and employment will ensure that the company does not lose customers; customers being another stakeholder group that will be impacted by the merging. The new company should aim at retaining most, if not all, of the customers from the two merged companies. Merging leaves companies exposed to lo…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Holiday Seekers Travel Agency
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