An Analytical Template for Tourism Disruption and Travel Swings – from Bleisure, Self-Configured Travel and Just-in-Time Travel to Personal Informatics and the Glass-Savvy Tourist.
Professor Luiz Moutinho
Foundation Chair of Marketing,
Adam Smith Business School,
University of Glasgow,
Scotland
We live in a new Renaissance era, we live in a period of unparallel mutation but also opportunity, which is always changing in different ways we cannot begin to imagine.
Part of the leadership challenge is to be certain we have the answer to an important question: how do we de-couple the benign impacts of what has become the world’s biggest industry, not to become the biggest destroyer of natural capital? How do we make sure we achieve this de-coupling effect?
Global Growth• The IMF predicts global GDP to grow by 3.8% (2014).• BRICs are expected to drive economic performance, 2015-2017• Americans – demand is likely to outpace supply• Europe – arrivals and incoming receipts have started to pick up• Middle East – shift away from Egypt, Syria and Lebanon towards
the Gulf Markets• Africa – business tourism plans, rising incomes and urbanisation
are driving domestic travel• Asia – remains the leading global region for economic growth• India – travel and tourism are rebounding
Megatrends Underpinning Tourism to 2020 – Political Trends• The USA is likely to remain an important influence but with its relative
power position eroded.• Enlarged Europe will increase its weight internationally.• Japan faces an ageing crisis which could challenge its regional status.• China and India will emerge as new major global players and transform
the geopolitical landscape.• Russia has international potential due to its gas and oil, but will be
limited by social and political challenges. • Issues and fallout from heightened security and terror will continue.• Stricter border controls creating barriers or deterrents to tourism.• Gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ will widen without support
policies.
Eastern Centricity
With China’s 500M strong middle class burgeoning and travel barriers diminishing, Western and Eastern cultures meet and feed off one another, shifting global norms away from Western standards.
Environmental Trends
The new ‘carbon economy’ is set to increase the demand for energy efficiency and investment in renewable forms of energy.
Other HUMAN Values and Trends in Tourism• Eco Chic• Tech-Free Travel & Digital Detox• Framilies• Communal Leisure
Other Societal Trends Impacting on T&T(1)• Millennials More and More - + international travel, urban, organised groups,
with family/friends• Unstoppable Elders – 1.3 – 1.6 billion worldwide, off-peak travel ,wealthiest
and demanding, tourism security, good airline service• Millions of Millionaires – U.S. – 20.5M in 2020, U.S., Japan and Europe
dominate luxury travel.• Conspicuous Leisure – signalling social status through consumption of
experiences rather than material goods (i.e., freedom to work from home, exotic vacations, extended time off work).
• Gay on the Go – LGBT spending on tourism – US $200 billion (2014); Welcoming destinations – France, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, UK and New Zealand
• Multi-Generational Travel – 40% families; Milestone events; Grandparents travel 25% more; memories, convenience and value
Other Societal Trends Impacting on T&T(2)
• Active Adventures – luxury travellers; 65% growth rate; value - ≥ US$ 345 billion; nature, culture and physical activity; younger
• Wired and Wireless - ≥ 40% of all online research for travel came from mobile; Millennials; 46- to-65s catching up.
• Bleisure – 72% business travellers take extended executive trips with leisure component.
• Shopping Tourism – tourists spend around 1/3 of their total tourism expenditure on retail purchases; Growing middle classes – Brazil, Russia, India and China.
• Creative Tourism – Engaged and authentic experience; Participative Learning;Living culture;Interaction with local people.
Whole Living – Balancing work with play; indulgence with discipline; good living with wellbeing; luxury with simplicity. Whole Journeys.
Other Societal Trends Impacting on T&T(3)
Culinary Tourism – one of the most dynamic and creative segments of tourism;88% of destinations consider gastronomy strategic in defining their brand and image; culinary tourists – cultural and affluent.
Going Green? – one of the most dynamic and creative segments of tourism; tourism accounts for 5% of global emissions – 4%for transportation (40% air travel – 32% car travel); 1% accommodation sector; and 16% affluent U.S. travellers rate eco-friendliness as an important factor; Visits to Beijing dropped around 50% (2013) because of pollution; Vancouver's “Green Capital” campaign – world’s greenest city- 2020.
Fast Casual – the new eating out
This is the vogue for dining out at restaurants that provide a fast-food type service, offering a short menu, combined with décor and ambience that one might associate with a full-service restaurant. This adult fast food trend is growing in popularity, as exemplified by the success of restaurants such as Tortilla and Vapiano. They benefit from the same efficient process that makes fast-food so profitable, yet which allows the customer a longer dining experience.
Other Societal Trends Impacting on T&T(4)• Athletic Events – Spectator sports & participatory sports.
Legacy• OTA Power – (online travel agencies) – travellers may
visit up 38 sites before booking (Expedia); OTAs capture 47% of websites while DMOs – 6%; younger travellers.
• DMO vs DMMO (+ management / regional) .Create a sustainable environment. Related industries ;visitor “quality of experience”; product “start-ups”.
The Collaborative Economy
Also known as the peer-to-peer (P2P) movement, we are now seeing individuals taking steps to creating their own travel ecosystem. Many have heard of AirBnB, HoweAway, Wimdu or Couchsurfing, yet there are countless sites now enabling people to rent out a room, a sofa or the whole apartment or house, either through home-swapping schemes or via transactional sites. Vacation rentals are one of the hottest segments in the travel sphere, with listings increasing both in the key markets as well as emerging economies, demonstrating its universal appeal. But while this opportunity (or threat, depending on your point of view) its often associated with accommodations, truth is it impacts every aspect of the travel experience once at the destination:
The Collaborative Economy (continued)Transportation: Through sites like GetAround, Parkatmyhouse or Zimride, people can share a drive, find a place or even rent out your own car to someone else who may need, i.e., RelayRides
• Restaurants: New platforms such as Cookening allow locals to host travellers to home-cooked meals, thus bypassing the traditional restaurant scene, while tapping into the “do it like local” vibe that is a growing trend worldwide. Then there are review sites such as Yelp, Chowhound, Foodspotting or Forkly that will also connect with user reviews about favourite spots to eat & drink.
• Experiences: Are you familiar with the concept of “greeters” in a city? Born in New York City during the 1990s, we are now seeing more and more of these volunteers show you around the city, in particular in France and within French-speaking Europe. Then you have services such as Vayable, Universe, or GetYourGuide that basically address the core of your trip, that is: the experience once at the destination. Would you prefer to hop on a classic 3-hour GrayLine Tour by bus, or spend a couple of hours with a local who will share his or her favourite spots?
Thus, the collaborative economy presents as much potential as it is a threat to the DMO model right now, since none of these players will tend to become members and partake in marketing efforts for the destination.
The rising importance of user – generated content (UGC) and social platforms
Conversations about a future, ongoing or past trip are taking place simultaneously on numerous platforms. Leading DMOs have embraced sophisticated tools to monitor the chatter, with an active presence on all key platforms: Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, Google+, Linkedin, Foursquare,Tripadvisor ,Facebook, Twitter, not to mention various forums where a brand may be mentioned,i.e.,WikiVoyage,Google Reviews,etc.But a majority of destinations are struggling with this challenge,where monitoring these conversations is a daunting task, let alone trying to chime in and engage with potential travellers or those at the destination having questions or complaints.
Challenge of the more demanding and unpredictable consumer
• “What you do” more important than “where you do it”: “Experiences” not “destinations” count.
• Authenticity: travel – savvy visitors expect more than earlier generations.
• Fly in on Ryanair, stay in a Hilton, grab lunch in McDonalds: no neat segments.
Youtility
…..is Marketing so useful, transparent and commonsense…. that tourists would pay (more) for it! Is it about help, not hype. To be useful. INVERTED MARKETING. The build-up of intrinsic high value. Youseful! To know and find…… “What is hidden”!
• Authenticity Branding. Brand Brain Value.• Feedback 3.0• Youtility insource. Consumers trust more employees, market –
facing staff, not managers (…who design the communication and provide the information).
Self-configured Travel
Instant access to peer-to-peer recommendations create opportunities for new collaborations and information-sharing that change the dynamics of the travellers/provider relationship to the individual.
KLM, Royal Dutch Airlines have announced plans to trial a “meet and seat” service that will link travellers’ Facebook and LinkedIn profiles to the check-in process.
The Heat is On: Three Travel Trends Set to Explode
1. Get ready for a mobile-only world
By 2015, smartphone sales will reach 982 million and we should anticipate an even greater rise in the same-day mobile booking trend. Expedia reports that 65% of hotel bookings within the last 24-hour window are via mobile, and 15% for flight bookings. The opportunity this creates for mobile revenue growth is both staggering and largely untapped.
2. Four ‘C’s to think about: convergence, commerce, content and how these impact customer behaviour will be an ongoing theme. Getting the right balance with content – both user-generated and curated – will be another ongoing theme.
3. Big data, personalisation and being relevant is key in marketing’s future.
When it comes to marketing being relevant and understanding the travellers ‘intent’ is the new holy-grail. One of the most interesting emerging trends is that of the device responsive website – one where the information architecture, navigation and content transforms to the best suit the screen it is being viewed. Device responsiveness.
Technology as Lifestyle Accessory
There are indications everywhere of the recognition that technology has become a lifestyle accessory. Few holidaying consumers want a complete break from being online – with the travel industry responding with “bleisure” (combine business/leisure trips)
Mobile, mobile, mobile
A great example of a travel destination that went mobile is Singapore, with its Handy project. By providing a smartphone for a small daily fee, the destination is giving value with what travellers seek out the most: wifi connectivity, unlimited and local international calls, and apps answering most sought- after queries, i.e., maps, translation, currency, showtimes, transportation details, etc.
Recently there has been a huge jump in “just-in-time” travel – something defined as trips booked within three days of departure. According to Expedia, 50% of all bookings made through its hotel app are for same day lodging.
But while travellers may be jumping on the “just-in-time” behaviour bandwagon, travel marketers for the most part have lagged, and are thus missing an enormous opportunity.
Personal Informatics
• Hybridisation of the digital and the physical (“blending”).• Records of people in interactions (intentional or implicit) enable to
quantify behaviours and create new indicators.• These digital traces lead to lots of opportunities: detailed analysis
of tourists experience (marketing & evaluation tool) and create tourist activity/infrastructures accordingly and design real-time information applications for tourists.
• Both for tourists and services providers and public bodies.
Personalised Environments
The proliferation of sensors, data and automation are creating reactive environments that can sense anything from weather patterns to user behaviour,and automatically adapt the space and service experience.
Flexible Spaces
Rooms and public areas are used in more flexible multifunctional manners and so become reconfigurable and easy re-accommodated to suit different need states at different times of the day.
Loss of Anonymity
Pervasive people tracking, ubiquitous sharing and open collaboration as the norm erode personal privacy, but greater awareness around managing personal data mitigates the momentum.
Brands Reengineering Randomness
• Greater emphasis is being placed on randomness and discovery as an antidote to our world’s becoming more personalised and niche.
• “Travel is calling you” campaign (HHonours) Hilton place a large gold rotary phone in a pedestrian plaza in Chicago. Some who picked up when the phone rang were offered a weekend trip to Miami, provided they could find a travel companion and leave the next day.
• Think new markets, think new customers, think ‘glosolomo’.
Data is Destroying Insight
We are forgetting what insight is. As more and more data reaches tourism managers’ desks you’d think that we would see more insight, but unfortunately that does not seem to be the case.
Tourism Managers are so busy crunching the data they do not seem to have time to be insightful. The word insight is now so misused that perhaps it should be replaced with some other word which actually means what insight used to mean…… Futurecast?
Unfortunately more data does not necessarily mean more insight.
The Future of Tourism Through New Technologies
Augmented Reality (AR), Touchwalls, eMotion Walls, Sensor Tiles, Interaction for new user experiences, natural language, real-time translation, weather and travel services of information, green technologies, usage of 3D, new user interfaces, H-C interaction, travel guide communication, voice prints, biometrics, voice recognition, facial coding, communicating objects, interactive electronic papers, RFID, VR, NFC, fingertip, eye scan, DNA scan, QR codes……
Augmented Reality-Powered Search
This feature is going to very useful for tourists. Travellers can shun the guidebook to look up details of a location, information appears right in front of the eye. And, in the blink of an eye, users can also photograph what they see.
Monmouth in Wales- This entire town Is Plastered with QR Codes Thank Link to Wikipedia
They have painted a whole town with QR codes. There are literally over a 1,000 QR codes scanning this entire town. To “do a whole town” in QR codes, took six months of work, thousands of codes, 500 new Wikipedia articles in 25 different languages.
Monmouth was finally able to declare itself the first Wikipedia town in the world. People who visit Monmouth can scan QR codes which are literally everywhere and learn more about what they’re seeing on Wikipedia. It is like a next-gen amusement park, a full-fledged tourism experience. Can you imagine a QR code ruining Florence? Monmouth even attempted to class up the codes with ceramic plaques and started to offer free Wi-Fi to the entire town so people can actually use these QR codes.
Google Glass – the next big thing in the travel industry?
Consumers will soon start moving away from being “mobile-savvy” to “glass-savvy”. That paradigm shift is not so far. Users no longer have to key-in destination addresses or pitch-zoom a map to see accurate directions. They just talk to the glass and the directions are shown within the view. Let’s face it, directions cannot get any better.
Portable Place-Based Research Tools
Wearable motion sensors. These small, comfortable, and low-cost accelerometer devices can be easily worn for days or weeks and used to collect data on what tourists are doing. MIT algorithms have been developed to automatically detect specific activities, such as walking, moderate physical activity, and body posture. In combination with a mobile computing device (e.g. PDA or phone), the sensors can be used to detect specific activities of a person in real-time and provide or collect context-specific information.
Portable Place-Based Research Tools• Context-aware experience sampling. Software has been
developed for standard PocketPCs to acquire data and context specific feedback from tourists. Sensors may be used to trigger questions and data capture. For instance, the computer can monitor biometrics like the heart rate and ask questions based upon variation in heart rates itself.
• Tape-on sensor kit. MIT algorithms can also be used to study data and automatically detect certain tourist activities in real-time The tape-on sensors can be used with computing devices such as computers, phones, or PDAs to develop and test technology that automatically present information based upon a tourist’s activities.
Whatever next? Guiding tourists around a city by remote control!
Tourism Victoria, the official tourism board for Melbourne, has taken destination marketing to a whole new level with its Remote Control Tourist initative. Google Street View is one of the best thing that has happened in the travel industry to experience a place before even going. So, how about making Street View a LIVE environment? This is exactly what Tourism Victoria’s Remote Control Tourist (RCT) is all about.
There are two real people (“tourists”) by name Tom and Lucy in the city, equipped with helmet-mounted cameras, microphones, GPS and some mobile live streaming technology, who then take instructions from users on where they have to go, and what they have to do in the city. On the RCT website, users will login via Twitter or Facebook to send instructions, such as, “Take a picture with the artists in the bar”, “taste the green tea and give your feedback”, “walk on a particular street”, etc.
Are we entering the Golden Age of Tourism Marketing Research Technologies?
……Oh, can anyone recognise the Marketing Research industry anymore? Are they technologists or researchers? We have data collection automation, social media listening platforms, facial coding technologies, panel platforms, routers, online communities, text analytics and sentiments analysis technologies, big data, dynamic dashboards, mobile research platforms,….. And the list does not end.
Sacred Cows in Tourism Marketing Research that will become obsolete quicker than you can imagine…..
1. In-Person Focus Group
2. Online Surveys. Micro-surveys….. Modular data – fusion techniques. Geofence-driven in-the-moment mobile feedback. Indirect Measurement. Facial sentiment recognition….Mobile neurofeedback that is the future.
3. The Quant / Qual Duality. Sequential and compartmentalised. Time compression. The words will collide…..Both will occur simultaneously. Reset: Deeper, Faster and more insightful research.
4. The Rational Frame. Respondents forces to use rating scales to explain behaviour. This is not the way humans operate… Behavioural economics. Creative disruption.
The Future of Search Marketing for the Travel Industry
Over the past couple of years we have been subjected to a relentless barrage of major algorithm updates and technological changes in the way that search engines organise and prioritise websites in their results pages. There is also the wider online ecosystem, and the introduction of social search with Google+ and the Facebook-Bing alliance. A paradigm shift is taking place right now in the fundamentals of how search marketing works. The paradigm shift in question is the gradual but unstoppable move towards the concept of content performance as the major signal of websites’ relevance and authority.
Whereas the search engines of the past relied on various quantitative signals to estimate a site’s value to the user (inbound links, basic content volume, on-site SEO methods, etc.), the search engines of the very near future will be making qualitative assessments of the quality and usefulness of content, and will use that subjective value judgement to determine the rankings and exposure of each website.
Their logic is irrefutable: SEO is a fundamentally spammable art. You can buy links, publish junk content and give a website the pretence of being authoritative and valuable.
Personalised, social-inspired search is the future, and it all revolves around high content performance.
So, the successful travel website of the future is one that is packed with useful, informative, entertaining and valuable content; content that is so extraordinarily good that it can generate the positive content performance signals that search engines are looking for.
Corporations do not speak in the same voice as new networked conversations. To their intended audiences, tourism companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.
What do companies sell that matters? I will tell you what: Belief. Belonging. Mattering. Making a Difference. Trust. Relevance. Cohorts/Tribes.
Social Media is becoming a boring me-to, similar to Web 1.0 ten years ago when everybody started to imitate everybody else, essentially killing all sorts of innovation and failing to address the opportunities.
Human centricity and connections – identify how people connect with people, whether these are employees, customers, tourists. Build the community, feel and engage everybody in positive interaction.
Harness the collective power and knowledge of the community to share solutions for all. Facilitate co-creation at all levels: consumers with business; consumers with employees and consumers with consumers.
Stop being paranoid on Return on Investment (ROI) in Social Media and focus on value generation and co-creation for all involved.
Experimentation is the New Planning
Let’s be honest: You have no idea what’s going to happen to the tourism industry. That’s why you build your organisation into an engine of possibility.
Technology is chaotic. It affects every industry, often in ways that are difficult (if not impossible) to anticipate.
An evolving portfolio of strategic experiments.
Emergent strategy is an organic approach to growth that lets companies learn and continually develop new strategies over time based on an ongoing culture of hypothesis and experimentation.
Why the Destination Marketing Organisation will not be around in…… 5 years.(1)
• The Marketplace is now focused on direct relationships, controlled by the consumer.
• For destinations, which do not truly own any of the products they represent, the impact is significant. Without ownership of the product the relevance in the relationship is void.
• Destinations are a middleman at a time when the consumer is actively ignoring the middleman.
• Local businesses-Do they need a collective brand?• The challenges that oppressed the ability of the small business to
promote effectively, and therefore require a larger organisation to promote on their collective behalf, are systematically being destroyed by organisations, such as Google, Facebook and GroupOn.
Why the Destination Marketing Organisation will not be around in…… 5 years.(2)
• Tourists expect more information than they can provide.• The consumer now has the ability to find unbiased information
about anything on the planet.• Tourism stakeholders can strategically act as ‘future makers’
rather than ‘future takers’. This requires tourism stakeholders to ask, not ‘what will the future be’, but rather ‘what should the future be’?
