Last week, we saw three interesting piece of news about the future of our beloved sector. Yapta, SniqueAway and Hotels.com are in the forefront of a change in the way you have to organize a company.
They are taking the most of the participation of the customers in the servuction process. Not only in the creation of a product but also in its communication and commercialization.
They see the importance of both organize your company and organize and control your chain of value. They use social media, on-line travel agencies, central reservation systems… to get the trust of the customer, to build a relationship with them. In this way they transform hotels in commodities where just the price is the key.
For starters, you go to the internet basically for two reasons:
1) To find a better price. This is the usual reason and it will be, basically because you can take the most of last minute deals, buy together with other “friends” or use the power of big intermediaries.
2) To get customized and reliable content, commerce and community related to your needs which can be travel or a need that you can satisfy through a travel. In this second trend the price it’s not the most important thing but trust, customization of the service and value added are the most.
Internet is a good environment to achieve both things.
Last minute offers and prices for a group is a trend and it is here to stay! These three companies are a good example of this trend.
What about the other one?
What is necessary to create chain of value in the second trend?
• People with vision able to lead and orchestrate a chain of value orientated to specific segments.
• People with knowledge of Tourism Market Structure.
• People with knowledge of Internet technology.
Is there anybody out there? Any Touristologists around?
Anyway, the market is telling me that I’m RIGHT! Long live to Schumpeter Kingdom!!!
Just few examples. The bedrock of the 2nd trend!
Vocationvacation www.vocationvacation.com
Literarytraveler www.literarytraveler.com
Grandparents www.grandparents.com
Gutsywomen http://gutsywomentravel.com/
Archtours www.archtours.fi
DOES SOMEONE REALLY BELIEVE THAT IN THESE EXAMPLES THE PRICE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING??? Or the triumvirate trust, customize, add value is far more important?
I’m sure that when I return from healing my bounds, battling with smartphones applications, enjoying family’s life!!!….there will be more examples to share with you my fellow Touristologists!!!!
Let’s get some motivation from the “Maestro”!!!!
Jun 21, 2011
Are you a real Touristologist?
Can you see the pattern? Are you able to connect the dots?
What do yapta.com, sniqueaway.com and hotels.com have in common?
Read these articles (Ok, Ok I attach a small summary…) to learn a little bit more…
1) Yapta
“…allows travelers to flaunt their airfare or hotel savings on Facebook.” The name of the game? You flaunt I get free publicity!
2) SniqueAway
“The business model for these types of sites are based on steep discounts due to group buying (discounts can only be redeemed if a certain number of users opt into them) or flash sales (products are deeply discounted because the merchandise needs to be sold quickly).”
“In many cases, hotels are required to sell rooms on members-only flash sale and group buying sites at more than a 70% discount! These sites charge fees from 35 – 50% of whatever the customer pays.” Wow! Just the kind of thing that our hotels are waiting for!!!
By the way if you want an invitation I can provide it!
3) Hotels.com
“For the first time, groups can collaboratively choose a hotel without having to sit in front of the same computer together”
Is there anybody out there?
What? Are you kidding me? Do you really want that I solve another of your Study Cases?
OK, OK!!! You can try to solve it OR… just wait for the next post….
Jun 14, 2011
Dealing with multiculturalism and chain of value creation
Last week, we talked about service management. We decided that service recovery and employee responding a guest requests are vital aspect of this topic. We also saw that multiculturality and web 2.0 can become wildcards in this framework.
Let’s talk about how Sol Melia is dealing with multiculturality issues nowadays that, like a lot of international chain of hotels, is looking for his place in the tourism Chinese market.
For starters… it’s obvious that you have to follow different approaches in different countries and cultures, otherwise multiculturality won’t be a source both of problems and opportunities! We can see multiculturality as boon as well as bane.
If you want to deal with China you have to know, understand and respect his win2win /ying and yang approach. I like the way this article explain this subject… “How to win tourists from China? Send them yours!” By the way, ehotelier is also a good website into your toolbox!
How different from other countries! If you want to bring tourist from Britain, unless you want to work with mass tourism, I recommend that you try to make and alliance with a specialized outgoing travel agency.
I usually ask to my students where can you find this travel agency? In Google they reply feeling that they know the right answer.
Ok, can you provide an answer worthy of a Touristologist?
Of course you can look in Google but, what about…
Asking to an international student doing his Erasmus here?
Using the services of your country tourism offices abroad?
For instance in Spain: http://www.tourspain.es/en/TURESPANA
For instance in Catalonia: You can ask for the services of Catalan Tourist Board
Finally, last but definitely not least, you can search in the data base of a travel agency association. In this case, ABTA could be appropriate! You can search and filter your results for destination and activity (for instance, travel for single parents).
You are a good Touristologist not only for the things that you know but also because when you don’t , you know where to look at and have an attitude to never surrender until you get the information needed!
But let’s finish with Sol Meliá’s tale in china.
Sol Meliá is a global company. Does it have to face multiculturalism issues? Does it have to face chain of value creation? Of course it has!
I strongly recommend this article (I also recommend www.hotelnewsnow.com for your toolbox!) I only want to highlight this sentence “To guarantee reciprocal awareness of corporate culture and management systems, in addition to enhancing sales and customer loyalty, Sol Meliá and Jin Jiang will create “mixed teams” in the 12 hotels to ensure the cultural adaptation of the Reception areas, guest rooms, and food and beverage services to European and Chinese preferences.”
Wow! New tourism destinations, new countries of origin, new segments, new technologies that allow us to create, communicate and commercialize tourism products in different and innovative ways…. Interesting times for Touristologists!!!
Jun 7, 2011
Servuction IS NOT production
Servuction is a word coined by Eigler and Langeard aimed to highlight the biggest difference between products and service management. The customer is an input in the process of servuction (the other inputs are the staff in contact and the physical support) while that input it doesn’t exist in production.
This fact has big implications in service management. To me the two most important effects are:
1) You have to be ready to manage service recovery. In production you can implement a quality system that prevents to create wrong products. Even if this happen you can review the product before delivering it and avoid the problem. But in services it is a dream to get 0% defects because the customer participates in the process and as he is not your worker sometimes he will do things in a wrong way or just in his way. On the other hand, if a problem appears you don’t have time to amend it. So, you will have bad quality service from time to time and then you have to practice... service recovery!
2) Subjectivity appears when an employee is attending a guest request. When you are talking about human interaction, quality passes from the objective point of view to subjective.
In servuction we have to create a framework to provide a good service and then we have to select, train and empower our employees and even our customers in order to avoid pitfalls.
When you have employees and customers from different countries and cultures you can multiply these two effects by 10… or maybe 1000! Welcome to multiculturality problems in services!
Empowerment? Subjectivity? Multiculturality? Phew!!! You really need an expert in service management… By the way, have I never mentioned before the necessity of TOURISTOLOGIST?!?!?!
Let’s see this picture to have a visual approach to the important issue of service management.
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