Pricing policies in travel agencies and factors affecting pricing decisions a survey on the travel agencies located in Izmir

The basic objective of this thesis is to explain the factors that affect the pricing policies and decision. Price, in tourism sector, is one of the most important economic factors affecting tourism demand both in national and international tourism market. Therefore the price of goods and the service that are produced by the tourism operations and inter relationship between tourism supply and demand determine the importance of price and pricing policies in tourism and travel industry. Travel agencies are the organisations that facilitate purchasing of the goods and the services by the tourist. In travel agencies, pricing is defined as the operation made by adding a profit share to the total cost after calculating the costs of tourism products that are sold by these operations stating of the price of a good or a service by travel agencies determines the level of the sales and the profit of the organisation. The structure of demand, the size of tour groups, the number of customers and the seasonality are taken into account during pricing procedures. Tourism demand is extremely sensitive to price changes, the intensive contatives in international tourism market, keeping touristic goods and services affect the pricing policy. Therefore, setting up of the pricing objectives from the viewpoint of the organisation is necessary. Objectives depend usually on the legal structure and the dimensions of the organisation and the time needed to reach the goals. Setting up the objectives are directed to profit, sale, competition and operational cost. In order to reach these objectives, the pricing policy to be carried out by the operation must be flexible, steped, consistent with the life-cycle of tourism product. It also must have a tendency for discounts, and must enable the clearness and the stability of price.