May 13, 2014

Don’t use hammers for specialized tourism!!!! Nor for the Business Model… PART 1

Life and Entrepreneurship 4
Sometimes, I have the opportunity to begin a company from scratch, either by myself or for somebody that hire me as a consultant. It’s always a great adventure… BUT with all blessings came greater responsibilities and possibilities of pitfalls… one of the biggest threats it is related to setting up the right team for the endeavor that we have ahead. Here is what I have learnt after a few scars in my professional life!
“If the only tool you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail!” It’s a famous sentence from, arguably, the father of modern psychology, Abraham Maslow. As you know, He was the first psychologist bold enough to say… Psychology is both for making ill people normal AND normal people extraordinary. No wonder Chip Conley build up his success in JDV hotels based on Maslow. He even wrote a book about how to apply Maslow’s ideas in modern organizations.
This metaphor of the hammer (I love metaphors, remember?) Reminds me some of my older mistakes trying to create an enterprise for specialized tourism and hiring people trained only in generic tourism… To them….everything looks like a nail!
What on earth do you mean with everything looks like a nail, Jordi???
Take it easy Touristologists, I will try to explain in this post what I mean related to the Business Model and in the following one what I mean related to the technological scheme. Always two hands, remember???
When you are looking for a team to create a specialized tourism enterprise, take into consideration that they have to detect several specialized segments, then create new product and the consequent servuction in order to satisfy the specific necessities of each segment, then  they have to use /build/manage the chain of value members. 
Don’t make the mistake of hiring somebody that only knows how to use a hammer…
You would say… let’s find new segments in different countries of origin, let’s personalized our service and find complementary services to offer to them. Then find meeting places or better still, create your own or integrate the meeting place into your project (as Chip Conley did when He created a hotel for musicians and involved  the Rollling Stone magazine as investors!!!. You can read more about that, here…), then find specialized outgoing travel agencies (as snow.com did when they want to attract people focus on skiing, more about that here) , then let’s define the servuction process from the beginning to the end of the trip…
You need a Touristologists to do all that, otherwise… they will use their hammer…
BAM!!! There are only two segments Jordi… Business and Leisure! BAM!!!
BAM!!! Specialized service? Of course, Jordi… Good mattress, good food and beverage and a nice meeting place! BAM!!!
BAM!!! Do I take care of my distribution channels? Of course, Jordi… the biggest Touroperator, the powerful OTA , the biggest Search Engine  and the most famous social networking site… BAM!!!
What is the biggest difference between a Touristologists and someone else? Well, this is an easy one… Touristologists are able to develop great careers both in generic and specialized tourism… the rest well… I think that they don’t even see any difference… a tourist is a tourist right?

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