Touristology breaking mental limitations

Touristology is the art and science of travel motivation promising improvements in quality of life, international contacts and broader perspectives for the tourist AND a way to take care of culture and create richness and employment for the tourist destination.

Tourism is an exportation BUT instead of sending products away we bring people around here. You freely can change “away” and “here” for any place in the whole world.

Well, the world at this moment, but wait for space tourism. You can get information about it here and some advice to succeed in this race here.

As you know I love tourism games: Help to create new tourism enterprises and organizations, create them myself, assess about how to dynamize a tourist destination… doing these activities, from time to time I get this question…

My sector (Culture / Wine / Business …) can help tourism BUT how can tourism help my sector?

Wrong question! You misunderstand the concept of Tourism. Tourism is NOT ONLY the enterprises and organizations usually related to travel (hotel, travel agencies….) Tourism is also the activity people (tourists) do when they are travelling. So, when you attract tourists from around the world using Touristology methodology you are not doing tourism’s enterprise any favors, you are using them as a part of your chain of value!

If you want to be a leader in tourism, you’d better learn to improve the tourism sector, learn how to use Touristology to dynamize other sectors, and educate your inhabitants with these skills. Leadership in XXI century is a Bottom-Up result not a Top-Down one!

Get ready Touristologist soon OUR science will be a bright start! Because as Salvador Paniker said “Every interviewee is reduced by the mental limitations of the interviewer” and every year mental limitations of people working in the tourism sector, education, public administration, journalist… are more and more fragile.

We just need another successful Touristologist, another entrepreneur proving that international and specialized tourism is the way to go, another scholar embracing Touristology… 
Do you want to be this intellectual warrior? I will be here waiting for you!!! Willing to win this battle against mental limitations!

Are you special or an average Touristologist?

As you know, human begins are logical, emotional and gregarious. Some of my Touristologist liked to be average at the beginning of their studies. At the end almost all want to be special!

There are many things in life where the normal attitude is to get along, just wait until things fix themselves. I would like to give three examples.

1)To me the best economists ever is Schumpeter. Their theories about creative destruction and the idea that economical cycles are a fundamental part of capitalism system are the brainchild of a genius.

Economy in capitalism means ups and downs. So, up now? Sooner or later it will be down. Now it is down? Sooner or later it will be up. At the end of the housing bubble in 2007 people said the prices would be up for ever. If you paid attention you could hear Schumpeter laughing! Nowadays when everybody says that this crisis is forever… pay attention and you will hear Schumpeter laughing again!

So, you have economical cycles ups and down, downs and ups. Will you wait for the change of course OR you will provoke this change. Are you average or special as economists, as a politician, as a leader in your country?

2) Relationships ending in divorce.

You fell in love. You think “That’s it! This is forever” It could be… BUT only if you are special. Love is like a drug, when its effects disappear the relationship goes down. Unless you stop it, unless you find strategies and tactics to reinvigorate it. I don’t want to go into details here. I’m just a Touristologist not Dr. Love! I only want to say that it is possible… for instance using Touristology!!! Have you ever heard about Divorce Tourism? Maybe you don’t want to travel? BUT through travelling you can get what is important to you! I Love when Touristology helps Love!

I’m not talking about settling down. I am talking about how to give a boost to any relationships (with your couple, your children, your friends…)

3) Hotel’s prices up and down

We can get a similar figure for REVPAR (revenue per available room) for hotels. A well known indicator of hotels’ performance. My question to you is the same as before. When prices are down what will your reaction be? Will you mark down the prices as well? OR maybe you will decide to thing as a Touristologist does? Looking for new segments, new opportunities, new chains of value, new ancillary products, new ways to add value…

Are you able to stop the downs? Are you able to provoke the UPS?

Are you able to say “To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.” like Bruce Lee did?

Are you able to think “Circumstances - what are circumstances? I make circumstances.” like Napoleon Bonaparte?

Again are you special or an average Touristologist?

Average people are always good at making excuses..

1“It is not possible to bring international tourists here, we don’t have hotels”

2 “We don’t have airlines companies bringing tourists here”

3 “We have a strong competitor nearby”

Touristologists are good at finding solutions..

1 Maybe they can stay in a near village, maybe you can find apartments…

2 Create something so unique that tourists will come anyway!

3 Nobody can be the best for everybody, find your segment, find your own niche and create your own space in the market!

We can see an example in this article: I summarized it with a couple of graphics:

Are you only good at making excuses? Sorry, but you will have a great deal of competitors!

Become a Touristologist and be good as a solutions provider!

 

Web Scraping for Revenue Managers

Ferrater Mora was a well know Catalan Philosopher one of his famous ideas can be summarized in this way “extremes are not for situating yourself they are for knowing your situation” I love to use this idea when I introduce frameworks to my Touristologists.

For instance, Top-Down versus Bottom-up approach you can put them at the extremes and see your situation in a lot of topics.

We can apply this in Touristology as we saw in this post or in Web-Engineering as we discussed here.

Yes Jordi, BUT… How on earth is this useful for a revenue manager?

You must be kidding me!  Just remember Abraham Maslow saying "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"

So, Web Scraping is an useful tool and I can provide thousands of examples!

For instance… Wait a moment! I think it will better the other way around!!!

YOU provide YOUR examples and I will grade them and then I will provide mine!

OK, OK, I will provide a few clues, deal?

My example 1….

Go to your competitor’s web site. Remember you only have competitors if they appear in the mind of your customer. The new segment, new strategic triangle idea, remember?

Go to Data Aggregators, On-line Travel Agencies… and get their prices.

Learn if they are doing any kind of opacity or customization with the prices…

With all this information… get knowledge…. make a wiser decision!!!

I LOVE TOURISTOLOGY!!!!

My example 2…

Wait a moment, can you use the same approach in order to value my/your/their on-line reputation? In order to know what my customers (or potential customers) are saying about my hotel and the competitors.

Which website will you choose (epinions? tripadvisor?... You name it!)

There is an evolving and very interesting methodology to classify opinions both objective and subjective. It is called sentiment analysis.

You can see and example here.

You also can enjoy Semantic Web for tourism enterprises made easy in this video as I tweeted...

With all this information… get knowledge…. Make a wiser decision!!!

I LOVE TOURISTOLOGY!!!!

Clear enough? I hope so! Because you’re the future of Touristology!!!