The travel agency Vítkovice Tours has been active on the Czech market for 11 years now and at present is the most important among travel agencies that specialise in Croatia and Montenegro as the final destinations. During its existence the company offered package travel to more than 400,0000 customers.

Interest of Czech tourist in Croatia continues to grow as evidenced by the increasing number of clients. The country has already stabilised and, after the armed conflicts it experienced in the first half of the 1990s, it is again a territory very attractive to tourists.

In 2001 the European Federation of Journalists in Tourism, F.E.S.T., principal office in Roma, granted Vítkovice Tours the prestigious "Credit for Tourism" award. The award is only granted once in four years and thus constitutes a very distinguished appraisal indeed. Vítkovice Tours is the only travel agency in the Czech Republic so honoured. Another award received in 2001 - 2nd place in the contest "Rhodos" organised by the weekly "Ekonom" - underlines the company's success.

To meet its strategic objectives Vítkovice Tours needed a suitable corporate information system. PEAR, selected in a demanding tender as a system that provides input data about actual seasonal sales, constituted an important tool for the company to attain its strategic goals and enabled its successful development.

The dynamic character of the environment, combined with increasing competition, however required a substantial improvement of the sectoral planning process. Moreover, the broadening scope of services rendered forced the company to sell products for the coming season, and check the fulfilment of adopted plans, the attained economic results, and the decision-making processes during the product selling period. The management of Vítkovice Tours thus was in a position where it needed a system that would provide information necessary for improving the above processes and, at the same time, enable various risks to be diagnosed and consequences of managerial decisions to be simulated.

The objective of BNS implementation was to offer Vítkovice Tours an information system that will enable the above processes to be handled. A preliminary study was therefore devoted to a detailed analysis of the existing situation and a proposal of appropriate planning processes. The latter map the existing customary compilation of the annual business plan and, at the same time, owing to their comprehensive character, enable all components of the managing process (compilation of the sales plan and the coverage contribution plan, the planned managerial profit and loss plan, modelling individual versions of the plan, control of fulfilment and continuing decisions adopted during the season on the basis of established deviations between the actual situation and the adopted plan) to be integrated. The process of implementation was supported by an expert team appointed from among Vítkovice Tours staff, a feature prerequisite for the success of the undertaking.

A detailed time schedule of the implementation process and the price of supplies were prepared in advance. The two indicators were closely adhered to and, accordingly, the whole system was commissioned in time and for the agreed-upon price. The benefits and importance of the BNS system for Vítkovice Tours are evidenced by the fact that the customer has already ordered an extension of the system by additional modules.