Futurecast on Tourism Destinations –Futurecast on Tourism Destinations –Vision, Paradigm Shifts and Scenarios:Vision, Paradigm Shifts and Scenarios:

Capturing People’s Emotional Capturing People’s Emotional Authenticity through UPODAuthenticity through UPOD22 … from … from Loco Over Local to Augmented RealityLoco Over Local to Augmented Reality

Professor Luiz MoutinhoFoundation Chair of Marketing

University of Glasgow, Scotland

Sustainable development3 dimensions – source of innovation

PROFITPROFIT

Economic dimension

PEOPLEPEOPLE

Social dimension

PLANETPLANET

Environmental dimension

Future Vision ?Future Vision ?

Will mass tourism see overcrowded destinations herding visitors from attraction to attraction on timed tickets? Will technological breakthroughs see virtual travel replace disappointing real life experiences? Will there be new types of fuel or aircraft design, or even a return of the airship?

Four scenarios:

In the “Boom and Burst” scenarios, economies prosper, advances in air travel make vacations cheap and easy, and fuel-efficiency has allowed the industry to stay on target with carbon emissions regulations. But there is a catch – the massive increase in tourism, swollen by the prosperous new middle-classes from China and India, leads to overcrowding in many destinations and the degradation of wilderness areas.

The more dire “Divided Disquiet” scenario imagines that a “toxic combination of devastating climate change impacts, violent wars over scarce resources and social unrest has created an unstable and fearful world. This has made travelling overseas an unattractive proposition,” so most people just stay home. In the “Price and Privilege” scenario, high oil prices make travel the exclusive domain of the rich, while the “Carbon Clampdown” scenario imagines that the government has regulated climate change and educated the public so thoroughly on the carbon price of travel that most people only want to take “ethical vacations” to volunteer or learn about other cultures.

REALITYREALITY

The reality of vacationing in 2023 will probably be a combination of these scenarios, with high oil prices, disappearing wilderness, carbon quotas, and advances in air travel (e.g., biofuel-powered planes).

Paradigm ShiftsParadigm Shifts

Attention economy

Experience economy

Conversation economy

Application economy

Emotion economy

A shift from “telling and selling”

Tourism Marketing Evolves from Selling to Citizenship

Share- and- compare Share- and- compare economyeconomy

Secret EconomySecret Economy

(underground world of P2P (underground world of P2P search – Metrics search – Metrics Vacuum)Vacuum)

Silver EconomySilver Economy

Age of EngagementAge of Engagement

Key Revolutionary Concepts in Key Revolutionary Concepts in Tourism Destination MarketingTourism Destination Marketing

•Simplicity Marketing•Value-based Marketing (… VALUE GAPS)•VALUE T DEMAND vs FAILURE T DEMAND

•It’s all about me? It’s all about us? – VOLUNTOURISM. THE HUMAN TOURISM•The Age of Recommendation

THE END OF CONTROL and the Future of Content!

Transparency, Trust and Technology (3Ts)Transparency, Trust and Technology (3Ts)

People want information/sites to get to the point. They have little patience.Transparency engenders trust.There is a residual distrust that areas (especially) marketed at a national level through a tourist board are simply not going to be how they are presented …The traveller places less trust in brand marketing.Less and less, the consumer trusts advertising.Search, meta-search and price comparisons, user- generated content, dealing with multi-websites simultaneously – and the fact that none of this stuff goes away – had changed the information gathering landscape.

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The “Getaway” Market. As a result of a time-pressured society increasingly seeking relief when it is possible, more frequent, shorter vacations (break-a-tions) are the result. An increase in “cross-over” trips, combining business and pleasure are also evident. While the pattern has been to shorter distance travel, recent trends indicate that people will travel long distances on short breaks that pamper or represent a unique experience.

… and staycationers!

Consumer Attitude ShiftsConsumer Attitude Shifts

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An increased emphasis on “human relationships” may encourage new forms of tourism in which contact between hosts and guests is less superficial. People are becoming as important as places, and the collecting of interactive, novel experiences versus site visits or things is growing in interest.

VOLUNTOURISM: Giving or Receiving?

Consumer Attitude ShiftsConsumer Attitude Shifts

GEOTOURISMGEOTOURISM

Geotourism is a new movement that shows travellers how to improve the places they visit. For example, if 4 billion people decide to see the Mona Lisa, it would take 309 years, even with groups of 25 viewing it for one minute, 24 hours a day … tourism on this massive scale threatens what is special in the world. Spain’s Costa del Sol might be better called the Cost del Concrete. Geotourism is tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place: the environment, heritage, aesthetics, culture and well-being of its residents. It is about building a relationship with the place you are visiting. A sense of place. Geotourism heroes.

Travel with a purposeTravel with a purpose

The 'why' and 'how' of travel will surely become more important. When we travel in the future, it will be with more of a purpose, with not only our own needs in mind, but also those of the destination.

This new way of travelling could be described as 'deep' travel. It will be about getting under the skin of a place. We already seek out authenticity - real experiences rather than fake culture packaged up for tourists - but travel in 2020 will go further. It will be about the appreciation of local distinctiveness, the idiosyncrasies and the detail, the things that make a place unique and special..

Keeping it localKeeping it local

As the cost of flying increases, we'll see the end of the truly low-cost airline. Consequently, the 'local' approach will become central to travel - not only as a new mindset in the quest for local distinctiveness but also as a factor affecting our choice in destinations. Travel in 2020 will be 'geo-local'. In other words, holidaymakers will travel much closer to home. We'll begin to travel more within our own countries and continents, and less frequently beyond them.

Tourism will no longer be dominated by Westerners either. We'll see residents of India and China becoming more mobile than ever before from a leisure perspective.

Keeping it localKeeping it local

By 2020, we'll also see the majority of hotels getting their produce, employees, materials, services and the like from sources within their immediate vicinity. This can be referred to as 'hyper-local' sourcing. We'll see a new type of hotel - 'the ten-kilometre hotel' - for which all food and materials will have been sourced from within a ten-kilometre radius.

NEW IDEASNEW IDEAS

And we're sure to see the implementation of new ideas, such as adding giant sails to cruise ships to reduce their enormous carbon footprint, and the return to old ideas such as using airships for shorter journeys

Everyone will begin to have a say in the destinations of the future, threatening the current monopoly of the 'mega-icons' and 'must-see' sights, whether it be the Inca Trail, Kilimanjaro or the Taj Mahal.

HOLIDAY LABELLINGHOLIDAY LABELLING

Holiday labelling

Labelling will not be limited to the carbon content. A truly holistic approach to responsible tourism would include a rating for the holiday's impact on local communities and cultures, as well as on the local environment.

The emerging consumer. No longer alone, connected, empowered and armed to the teeth with information from the internet and the mobile phone, are digitally connected consumers and brand polygamists, including TDs …..!

The emerging consumerThe emerging consumer

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CrowdsourcingVolatile Consumer BehaviourVolatile Consumption of Products is no longer distinguishable by a certain social statusIrrational DecisionsThe pluralism of lifestyles results in an individualisation and diversification of holiday typesAffiliation with a certain life or holiday style is therefore no longer static but highly volatile and likely to change repeatedly within a short time.

The Multioptional ConsumerThe Multioptional Consumer

Trends in Consumer Behaviour in TourismTrends in Consumer Behaviour in Tourism

•ED2

•Hard on Hard, Soft on Soft

•Smaller Zones of Tolerance (ZOT)

•In control, empowered. Tourists get more power

•Satisfaction? Ecstasy? Limen? NO FUSS?

•A spirit of sophistication and realism of the commercial world.

•iNFOLUST– instant gratification. iNFOVORES. Ready-to-know

•Online oxygen

•Contingency Mentality. Multidimensional, more complex, contradictory. “TO BE IN FASHION IS TO BE OUT OF FASHION”…

Trends in Consumer Behaviour in TourismTrends in Consumer Behaviour in Tourism

•TRANSUMERS

•Vacation as an extension of life

•From relaxation to recharging…

•PROSUMERS (PROSUMPTION) – BY TRAVELLERS FOR TRAVELLERS…

•Consumers will increasingly expect to negotiate hotel and airline rates

•Persona Ecosystems

Experience orientation together with variety seeking are getting more important. The point is, that these experiences and the accompanying emotions are now part of the product, promised by the producer.The tourism consumer is much more flexible than the tourism industry.

Variety SeekingVariety Seeking

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There appears to be evidence for a "self-actualization" dividend (if not a "green dividend") for tourism sales. There are signs of increasing interest in travel for reasons of personal growth, assertion of individuality, human connection, and "authentic experience", among segments of major outbound markets. These segments overlap markets for "luxury experience" and new, "exotic", "individual" consumer goods. These travellers appear more flexible about price ("price inelastic"), when they can be convinced that an experience offers significant additional value.

Self-actualisation Self-actualisation dividenddividend

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It is important to think about tourists in new ways, by seeing them as people and developing a more personal relationship, and to use more involved shadowing techniques, called “Walk with Me”: go and visit people in their homes; live on the budget of a low-income consumer for a week; travel with the tourists’ budget and “sense” the travel experience.

User generated discontent?

UPOD!UPOD!

We live in a world where the little things really do matter. Each encounter no matter how brief is a micro interaction which makes a deposit or withdrawal from our rational and emotional subconscious. Little things. Feelings. They influence our everyday behaviours more than we realise.Under Promise, Over Deliver (UPOD) !

People’s ImaginationPeople’s Imagination

Capturing peoples’ imagination lies at the Capturing peoples’ imagination lies at the heart of successful travel and tourism.heart of successful travel and tourism.

Consumer imprinted researchConsumer imprinted research

To transform tourism research from reactive to proactive, from post-emptive to pre-emptive, from passive data collection to consumer-imprinted research. Information and insight that the consumer truly wants to convey in real-time. Mobile information technology is providing feedback systems which are context-based (e.g., location beacons, wireless motion sensors, etc.).

Exploiting tourism destinations’ knowledge in a Exploiting tourism destinations’ knowledge in a Resource Description Framework (RDF) based Resource Description Framework (RDF) based

P2P networkP2P network

RDF is a family of www consortium (W3C) specifications designed as a metadata data model.Destination Management Systems (DMS) is a perfect application area for Semantic Web (web content based on meaning) and P2P technologies since tourism information dissemination and exchange are the key-backbones of tourism destination management. DMS should take advantage of P2P technologies and semantic web services, interoperability, ontologies and semantic annotation. RDF-based P2P networks allow complex and extendable descriptions of resources instead of fixed and limited ones, and they provide query facilities against these metadata instead of simple keyword-based searches. The layered adaptive semantic-based DMS (LA_DMS) and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) project aims as providing semantic-based tourism destination information by combining the P2P paradigm with Semantic Web technologies.

Traditional Mass Tourism Destinations: Traditional Mass Tourism Destinations: and the rise of vocational diversificationand the rise of vocational diversification

Individual experience and personal motivations are the new asset determining tourist’s flows and as a consequence territorial vocations seems to be the new development driving force. As a result, the collective consumption of undifferentiated tourism products is no more able to satisfy the new tourism demand.

Developing Destinations Developing Destinations and Experiencesand Experiences

Under this tourism strategy, the industry will build tourism “from the ground up”. Tourist destinations will be identified based on natural tourism assets, recognised geographical icons and realistic customer travel patterns, rather than municipal boundaries. Development of tourism products will be based on the strengths of a destination, stakeholder willingness and interest in tourism, and opportunities to bring authentic experiences to the marketplace.

Visitors continue to seek out new experiences and this is recognised as a key travel motivator.

New Trends in Tourism Product PolicyNew Trends in Tourism Product Policy

Concern for issues of biodiversity and sustainability (with its inherent human dimension).Creating and managing value for city destinations. “Slow cities”.Tourism product – service – brand architecture.Managing the detail. The “Determinance Model”. “Small Details Revolution”.Micro-adaptations.

D4SD4S

D4S is an ecodesign concept that has evolved to include both the social and economic elements of tourism production. It integrates the three pillars of sustainability – people, profit and planet, but goes beyond simply “greening” tourism products to enhance how to meet tourist needs in a more holistic, sustainable way. To incorporate D4S into long-term tourism product innovation strategies.

TrendsTrends in Tourism Offer Management in Tourism Offer Management

•Resource- Based Instead of Market-Led. Biodiversity

•Regional Partnership Programmes

•A New Flexible Specialisation Scenario

•Interchangeable Tourism Products (e.g., reversible rooms)

•City-centre Urban Resorts

•Multisensory and Sensual Destinations, Tourism Products and Hotels.

•Carbon-Neutral or Lower Carbon Footprint Hotels. Wind Turbines.

•“Intelligent” Tourism Destinations

•Detailability – Management of the Detail

•Pampering Experiences and Services.

Trends in Tourism Offer ManagementTrends in Tourism Offer Management

TOURISM BRAND STORYTOURISM BRAND STORY

Tourism marketers must get back to creating and telling compelling tourism destination brand stories based on substance, not spin.

Of course, in a service business it is important to look at the people delivering the brand.

Then there is the bigger “story” behind the TD brand.

Brand ButlersBrand Butlers

If consumers value the authentic, the practical, the exclusive, and they are also forever looking to make life more convenient, even save some time, then why persist in bombarding them with one-way advertising campaigns? Instead of stalking potential and existing customers, why not assist them in smart, generous, relevant ways, making the most of your products and whatever it is your brand stands for?

Trends in Tourism BrandingTrends in Tourism Branding

•From Brand Makeover, Brand Cosmetics to

Worthwhile Tourism Brands

•Tourism Brand Activism. Socially Responsible

Tourism Brands (ROI becomes Return on Intention)

•From Mumbo-Jumbo to the fact that the most

powerful brand statements are made human-to-human

•Brands’ Brain Value …

•Tourism Brands as “Category Placeholders”

Trends in Tourism BrandingTrends in Tourism Branding

•Tourism Brand Butlers. Brand Manners•Brandcasting (Private Media – e.g., Sheraton Update – spg)

•Living Brands, Liquid Brands and Brand Molecule•Adoption of Tourism Nationalistic Brands over Global Brands

•From Brand Hyper-Ventilation to Brand Anonymity and Brand Invisibility!•Tourism Brands’ Role Reversal

Tourism ADVERTISINGTourism ADVERTISING

The whole purpose of advertising is to manipulate people. But there is good manipulation and bad.

The idea is, if a message that is pushed onto people does not work, annoying people into buying a tourism product is no longer a valid premise.

The Commercial MessageThe Commercial Message

The nature of the message will change as we move from the mass to the multi-mediated world of interactive communication

Message will become multi-dimensional with interactive advertising pods of product information that can be peeled like an onion

Message will move from an “intrusive commercial” to an “invited conversation”

Message will be less ephemeral and more embedded

Message will move from “glib” intangible style to a substantive, valued-added tangible style

CGACGA

Storytelling that takes place simultaneously in different media such as the Web and TV will become quite common in the future.

Whether the advertising message comes from the cathode ray tube in my living room or the liquid crystal active matrix displayed on my laptop is ultimately irrelevant. The important questions are, is an ad uplifting or alienating? Does it make you feel moved or manipulated?

Technology changes but people do not change. People will always respond to great stories and great storytelling.

CGMCGM

Consumer-Generated Media (CGM)Produced by consumers to be shared among themselves.

Encompasses opinions, experiences, advice and commentary about products, brands, companies and services – usually informed by personal experience – that exist in consumer-created postings on the Internet.

Describes word-of-mouth behaviour that exists on the Internet.

CGM TRENDSCGM TRENDS

CGM TrendsFastest growing media online

44% of US Internet users currently publish or otherwise create content online (Pew Internet and American Life Project)

1.4 billion consumer comments achieved on the Web

A substantial amount of CGM is travel-related

Extremely search-engine friendly

BLOGSBLOGS

BlogsOne of the fastest growing types of CGM

A new blog is created every second of every day

_______________________________________Blogs Tracked by Technoranti, August 2003-April 2006

(millions) August 2003 0.5 April 2004 2.3 April 2005 9.4 April 2006 35.3

Source: Technoranti, April 2006

Virtual Travel CommunitiesVirtual Travel Communities

Search Travel Guides:Example: "Paris" or "Paris, France" [use a comma]

VirtualTourist Travel Guides are made by real travelers like you. 1,190,671 members have added 1,780,084 tips and 3,698,923 photos on over 58,000 locations. You can share your own tips and photos on any of 2.2 million locations quickly and easily.

Browse Travel GuidesEuropeParisLondonRomePragueBarcelonaAmsterdamVeniceBerlinViennaBudapest

North AmericaNew York CitySan FranciscoLas VegasChicagoTorontoLos AngelesVancouverOrlandoSan DiegoMontreal

AsiaBangkokBeijingShanghaiKuala LumpurSingaporeTokyoPhuketSeoulHo Chi Minh CityHanoi

Travel GuidesThe inside scoop from fellow travelers and real localsHotel ReviewsRates, research, & honest reviews on 236,260 hotels Honest Advice on all your travel questions Meet 1 million members from around the world

view more photos

Next VirtualTourist Member MeetingsDinner Meet for Ida Marie (aka VT Dyesebel) March 25, 2010 Makati Dinner In Lisbon March 27, 2010 Lisbon Jo104 is visiting Dublin March 28, 2010 Dublin

Next VirtualTourist Member MeetingsDinner Meet for Ida Marie (aka VT Dyesebel) March 25, 2010 Makati Dinner In Lisbon March 27, 2010 Lisbon Jo104 is visiting Dublin March 28, 2010 Dublin

Next VirtualTourist Member MeetingsDinner Meet for Ida Marie (aka VT Dyesebel) March 25, 2010 Makati Dinner In Lisbon March 27, 2010 Lisbon Jo104 is visiting Dublin March 28, 2010 Dublin

South AmericaBuenos AiresRio de JaneiroSão PauloLimaSantiagoCuscoQuitoBogotáMachu PicchuCuritiba

Australia and OceaniaSydneyMelbournePerthBrisbaneChristchurchAucklandAdelaideGold CoastCairnsCanberra

AfricaCairoCape TownMarrakeshLuxorSharm El SheikhJohannesburgHurghadaAlexandriaAswanKruger National Park

More Africa

WOM-CGMWOM-CGM

Recommendations from consumersRecommendations from consumersBrand Web sitesBrand Web sites

Email I signed up forEmail I signed up forConsumer opinions posted onlineConsumer opinions posted online

NewspaperNewspaperMagazineMagazine

TVTVRadioRadio

Brand sponsorshipsBrand sponsorshipsSearch engine adsSearch engine ads

Ads before moviesAds before moviesProduct placementsProduct placements

Online banner adsOnline banner adsText ads on mobile phonesText ads on mobile phones

““Indicate your overall level of trust in the following forms of advertising”Indicate your overall level of trust in the following forms of advertising”

Trust in WOM vs. CGM

0% 100%80%60%40%20%

Trust “somewhat” Trust “completely”

Base: 470 responses recruited from PlantFeedback.com members.Base: 470 responses recruited from PlantFeedback.com members.Source: Forrester Research, Inc. and Intelliseek.Source: Forrester Research, Inc. and Intelliseek.

Travellers as StorytellersTravellers as Storytellers

Stories are critical to human knowing and understanding.

Stories play an important role in the recollection of travel experiences

Travel stories are fundamental aspects of social relationships

Consumers have always engaged in storytelling to communicate tourism experiences – CGM support the process

Future of CGM

Mobile applications – creation on the go

Linked to maps

Virtual reality applications

CYBER-COMMUNITIESCYBER-COMMUNITIES

•It is possible to set up “virtual” or cyber-communities for each target market niche in the form of news-groups or tribes, through which consumers with similar interests and behaviour patterns can be sent relevant tourist product offerings and other information.

Trends in Marketing CommunicationTrends in Marketing Communication

•Media Neutral Planning (MNP)

•Experience Planning: Advertising’s Newest Discipline. Looking at an array of brand expressions. Brand Communities. Systems of interactions and interfaces. The movement from campaigns to experiences. “Lean-forward” viewing experience. (i.e., Internet > TV)•Haul Videos (YouTube)•Video-in-print

EARNED ATTENTIONEARNED ATTENTION

The focus will shift from the traditional “buying attention” to understanding how purchased media can enhance “earned attention”.

Whilst digital media agencies will become lead agencies, the watchwords will shift from viral, widgets and microsites back to defining the big idea, and more people remember that “branded utility” can also mean being entertaining.

A new creative dynamic will start to emerge with experience planners and technologists.

With 80% of the global economy based locally the importance of local expertise and ability to deliver on the ground will increase.

Experiential creativityExperiential creativity

The concept of earned attention no doubt comes across as a more intelligent budget spend, showing measurable value for money rather than the approach of throwing lots of stuff at a wall and hoping some of it sticks.

Experiential creativity, storytelling and brand immersion is the future.

Micro Ads – Favicon AdsMicro Ads – Favicon Ads

Favicon advertising seems to be gaining in popularity with the design showcase niche sites. A Favicon is a small ad so it would be very non-invasive to readers to display them, like other forms of advertisements such as Google’s.

The fact that they are small also has another benefit in that you can display more of them.

Usually you will find anywhere from four to six of these advertisements on a site.

It is good if your site gets a lot of exposure and actually has the ability to sell all of the spots.

Favicon ads work well in a mobile environment.

Trends in Tourism Online MarketingTrends in Tourism Online Marketing

•Search engines could flag-up trusted sites

•Mobile Web

•Vertical search engines, visual search engines and the semantic Web

•Online Marketing Platforms – e.g., TiSCOVER, a global destination system provider; TiSCOVER05 – content solutions for PDAs and mobile phones

Trends in Tourism DistributionTrends in Tourism Distribution

•The Internet will become the dominant distribution channel

•Diagonal integration

•Holiday Auction Sites

•Mobile shopping

•Pop-up Retail in Tourism

•Dynamic Packaging – a reincarnation, on a higher technology level, of the FIT (Full inclusive tour)?

•The “Commission Override” Model with shrinking commissions (down to 5%) or with flat fees.

Loco Over Local: Four Trends that are Loco Over Local: Four Trends that are Reshaping TourismReshaping Tourism

MobileMobile

Search

SocialSaaS & Web2.0

Local Activities

MOBILE STRATEGIESMOBILE STRATEGIES

Mobile: Relevance, context and location are key to successful mobile strategies. Rapid advances in geo-tagging and GPS-empowered applications, online mapping services, contextual and location-based search and rich mobile applications are finally beginning to provide powerful, relevant services and content to travellers during their travel and in destination. Mobile apps from Priceline, OpenTable, and many others, instantly serve up offers based on traveller location, while innovations such as augmented reality enable travellers to learn about and choose services within their local environment as never before. This is just the beginning.

AR-ATTENTIVE AR-ATTENTIVE ENVIRONMENTSENVIRONMENTS

Augmented Reality is an area of study of VR. It combines the real world with the virtual world, allowing the human interaction with the graphical environment of a computer. The technology adds layers of graphical superimposition to the real world.

Attentive Environments

SOCIAL NETWORKSSOCIAL NETWORKS

Social Networks: In addition to leading mobile social networks, Foursquare and Gowalla connect a user's social network and location via their mobile applications. There is also a bevy of start-ups - NextStop, Joobili, EveryTrail, Trazzler, WhereIveBeen and others -focused on local destination content in a social networking context, enabling travellers to share experiences and get recommendations from others in the network. Twitter recently introduced a geotagging API to its service, opening up location-based targeting for travellers and travel companies alike.

SEARCHSEARCH

Search: Local activities and services are getting a lot of attention from some pretty big players. While Yelp is focused on this domain, Google has been stepping up its efforts here dramatically, soliciting user reviews for just about every type of product and service and introducing new services such as Google City Tours. Online travel start-ups Goby and OpenPlaces are taking a very search-centric model to deliver targeted local destination content and information to travellers

SaaS and Web 2.0+SaaS and Web 2.0+

SaaS and Web 2.0+: New Web technologies and software delivery models, such as Software as a Service (Saas), are finally putting modern technologies within reach of this industry and enabling local suppliers to better market to and engage prospective customers and participate in the broader travel distribution ecosystem.

While still in its formative stages, the convergence of innovation in mobile, social, search and SaaS is already changing how travellers discover and decide what to do while travelling.

SMEs -----OECDSMEs -----OECD

In OECD countries, the tourism growth rate is progressively declining, and this trend may continue over the longer term.

Sustainable development should reconcile economic demands, rational utilisation of biodiversity and preservation of cultural integrity.

SMEs: engines for growth in tourism. Future tourism policies should pay more attention to SMEs, establishing financial incentives and deregulation mechanisms that can promote their competitiveness.

NTAsNTAs

National tourism administrations in a changing policy context.

In the future NTAs would shift from intervention via promotion to co-ordination, thereby ultimately leading to decentralisation and development of partnerships. NTAs should continue to play an important role, especially in areas of market failure, such the country's image and the supply of infrastructure. NTAs do not follow a standard model, although experience has shown that public and private partnerships may be an effective means to address future challenges.

PRIVATE SECTORPRIVATE SECTOR

Growth of tourism cannot be taken for granted.

The private sector is playing a much more active role in defining policy, particularly for marketing.

Trends in Tourism Marketing ProgrammingTrends in Tourism Marketing Programming

•Flexible systems in the tourism product/service/brand architecture

•Hyperflexible pricing

•Direct Interactive Communication

•Hybrid tourism distribution channels

New Strategic Thinking in Tourism MarketingNew Strategic Thinking in Tourism Marketing

•A sense of discovery and discontinuity. Superior Human and Market Sensing. Forward Sensing.•Sense and Respond Models•Creating rather than controlling a market•From Customer-Driven to Market Driving•DIVERGENCE MORE THAN CONVERGENCE …•White-space and tectonic market opportunities. Juxtaposition•Business Ecosystems. Coopetition. Co-evolution•From “Fewer but larger” … to unbundling the corporation (e.g., feeder businesses and self-organising teams).

COMPETITIVE STRATEGYCOMPETITIVE STRATEGY

The traditional “competitive strategy” paradigm which focuses on product-market positioning is greatly and increasingly dependent in tourism firms on human resources management which is an integral part of the value-chain. Therefore, the notion of competitive advantage which provides the means for developing product based advantages at a given point in time (in terms of cost and differentiation) should be complemented with insights into the processes of knowledge acquisition.

DESTINATION VISIONINGDESTINATION VISIONING

Destination Visioning has the twin advantages of adopting the long-term approach whilst also engineering strong community involvement and “buy in” of the future of the destination (Cooper 2002).

FORWARDFORWARD

A clear view forward, not a glance behind in the rear view mirror …..!

IMAGINATION BY REALITYIMAGINATION BY REALITY

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are …

(Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784 British author)