Can technology make tourism more transformative ?

Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash

Transformative tourism (TT) is a type of meaningful and purposeful tourism. Traditional tourism is often used as an escape mechanism from everyday life (5). Transformative tourism is motivated by seeking (10). In transformational tourism the tourist seeks personal growth during their travels, which can take place in areas such as well-being, spirituality and education. The transformative experiences tourists have can be physical, emotional, attitudinal changes as well as the acquisition of context-specific skills (17). These types of tourists are motivated to return home with some personal tools enriched by the experiences of their journey (16) – the purpose of travel instead of escaping reality is about possibly making the reality somehow better or more meaningful.

Transformative tourism is about change (hopefully) for the better and it can provide meaningful experiences. Because of this, it has gained a lot of attention during recent years; it has the power to change human behaviour and have a positive impact on the world (17). These explanations should be enough to support the idea that this type of tourism should be encouraged and developed further.

What makes designing and developing transformative tourism tricky is that it can be different for every tourist. By enhancing the experiences by deepening them, and making them more immersive, can support the occurrence of unintentional transformative tourism and elements of it. There are three different kinds of experiences that are considered transformative: epistemically transformative experience (having a first time experience), personally transformative experience (changes your point of view, your core preferences or you learn something that expands your mind) and epistemically and personally transformative experience, which is a holistic experience that possibly changes the course of one’s life (15).

Technology has changed the value creation process in customer service as it has become a key contributor to consumer experience; a big part of the hospitality and tourism products and services are nowadays delivered by different technologies (8). Technologically enhanced tourism is also changing travel behaviour and activities (7). As technology is said to enhance the customer experience (1), could it also be used to develop and enrich tourism to be and to have more transformative elements? What kinds of solutions are already out there that could be used to make tourism services and experiences possibly more transformative?

There are two critical digital technology stimuli that can lead to a rich customer experience: personalisation and interactivity (14). Based on my readings, I would also add immersion to the list of stimuli. Immersion is the level that describes a feeling of ‘being there’ (20). These can be considered to be the key factors in any tourist experience maximization and thus important factors to consider when talking about whether technology can make tourism more transformative.

Smart tourism’s transformative possibilities

Let’s look into the question through the concept of Smart Tourism, which means technology enhanced tourism. A Smart Travel Destination uses technology based tools in its products, services, spaces and experiences (7). These tools are Smart Tourism Technologies that refer to both general and specific applications that can enhance tourists’ experiences as well as generate added value (25). These applications can be anything from ubiquitous connectivity through Wi-Fi to sensors, smartphones and virtual reality (7; 8). Let’s have a look at how Smart Tourism Technologies (STTs) with the most transformative potential have to offer transformative tourism.

Gamification

Gamification is the use of game design elements and game thinking in a non-gaming context (6) so it is more of a point of view when using smart technologies and designing transformative tourist experiences. With the help of gamification, tourists can get more engaged with the information and the experience they are receiving. If the tourist engagement rises, it can enhance the tourist experience in terms of flow, motivation, pleasure, immersion, enjoyment and presence (3). An example of using gamification and technology together to create a more transformative tourism experience could be an application that teaches the tourist history in the form of a game on a self-guided city tour.

Augmented reality

An augmented reality system merges physical and virtual objects in a natural environment, aligns them, and runs them interactively in real time (22). The goal of augmented reality is to support user interaction with the world around them (2). Augmented reality systems can be wearable computers, such as a smartwatch or smart glasses (26). How smart watches can enhance the tourist experience and possibly make it more transformative is that they extend the tourist’s sensory, cognitive, and motor limitations (2) and adapt the tourists behaviour to the changing environments. A wearable device can shape how tourists orient themselves, interact, and control their interactions with tourism attractions (21). Wearable computers, like any other computer, can also model behaviour and predict the future actions of the tourist so they are said to have potential to transform touristic experiences (21).

Augmented reality has already been applied to destinations and to tourist experiences to assist tourists with retrieval and processing of information on points of interest at physical structures, national parks, walking experiences, historic and cultural objects, museum exhibits, art galleries, and indoor theme parks by overlaying exhibits with additional information through touch-screen displays, smartphones, and/or wearable devices (21). With the help of technology assisted immersion, in this case augmented reality, tourists can be engaged in a more unique and interactive way than in traditional tourism (12). Also, if information is presented through augmented reality (or virtual reality), the information can become more memorable (11) and thus possibly more transformative.

As an augmented reality system merges physical and virtual objects in a natural environment to support tourists’ interaction with the world around them there are clear indicators of experience enhancement, which could make the experience more transformative. If we think about the gamification application example (the history teaching, game-like self-guided city tour application), it could also have augmented reality elements to it. These elements could be for example Google glasses type of images and videos of the historical events. Maybe they could even be holograms in the future. Whether or not the information provided to the tourist is transformative by itself, its transformative qualities could be enhanced and supported with augmented reality.

Virtual reality

When it comes to virtual reality there are more indicators of possible experience enhancement which could make the experience more transformative than augmented reality; the whole tourist experience can be designed from start to finish to be as transformative as possible. According to NASA virtual reality is “the use of computer technology to create the effect of an interactive three-dimensional world in which the objects have a sense of spatial presence.” In tourism it is used to capture destinations, attractions, to re-create events or to create totally new destinations, events and experiences (24). Virtual reality experiences have three key elements: visualisation components, immersion into the experience is a key factor and interactivity is involved in the experience (4). In the future these can most likely be personalised which means that there will be technically everything (personalisation, interactive and immersion) needed for a tourist to have an experience – whether or not that experience can be transformative depends on the tourist.

Other Smart Tourism Technology possibilities

If we look at Smart tourism from a less futuristic and a more practical lens, STT is already capable of making experiences and customer touchpoints more interactive and personalised according to tourists’ preferences (13,11). With the help of STTs almost everything can be personalized and tourists can be provided with the most relevant and context-specific information, expertise, and experiences delivered in real-time or just when they need it (14). To have more personalized services and experiences can support transformative experiences happening, because each tourists’ experience and transformativity is highly objective.

Tourism products can also be tailored to be more interactive with the help of STT (11). Interactivity gives buyers a sense of control so they can feel like they are in control of their own experience (27) – this can support the possible transformativity. At the same time, tourists can also interact with local residents within destination business ecosystems and the larger tourism ecosystems (7). This can support transformation as socialising with people from different cultures or just people outside your own circle of people can teach you something or show you a new point of view. Also, the use of STTs might affect the engagement and immersion of tourist experience (11).

Smarter the more transformative?

Even though smart technologies are slowly getting more popular to use in tourist experiences and at smart tourism destinations, research on smart tourism destinations is limited. Research about gamification in tourism is also limited and the application of gamification in tourism is still in its infancy (8). There’s also no clear definition of what a consumer technology experience is or what a technology experience is. Because of the lack of research, the impacts of consumers’ technology experience on their overall experience remain unknown (11). Needless to say, this means that there are also no studies about whether technology can make tourism more transformative so we have no way to answer whether or not technology can actually make tourism more transformative.

Regardless of the lack of research, the introduction of guest-facing technologies is changing one of the industry’s key characteristics, human-to-human interactions, into guest-technology interactions. Tourists are already interacting with artificial intelligence chatbots, service delivery robots (11), and mobile tour guide apps have partly replaced the traditional human travel guide and information desk. Travellers are also creating their own travel itineraries with the help of the internet. Social contacts and socialising with new cultures is a big part of travel; a cross-cultural interaction can already be a transformative experience. Is there a possibility that technology could be making tourism less transformative? Technology is also making travelling a lot more convenient and easy. Yet somehow it seems that the reward of seeing the sunrise is much more transformative if you have climbed a mountain to witness it.

Also, a big part of the tourist experience is about immersion. Technology can of course help with immersion, but it can also hinder it. The term selective unplugging refers to being partially connected or disconnected from technology during travel to be more connected and present in the moment (19). To be more connected and present is essential for transformative travel, but what if connection and the feeling of being present are provided with the help of technology? Maybe then the tourist has chosen the wrong destination to travel to, but it’s an important topic to think about when designing and promoting technology-mediated travel experiences. Also when thinking about transformative travel, the tourists who decide to unplug are most likely tourists that are escaping their reality. They are not seeking something, which means that most of them are not transformative tourists. Still, the possible avoidance of technology makes it challenging to create transformative elements to tourist destinations and experiences with smart tourism, if people are not motivated to use technology during their trip.

Even though technology is changing the way we travel, its power and possibilities are yet to be harnessed when it comes to transformative tourism. Smart tourism in tourist experiences and in tourism in general is often in a supporting role; most smart technologies tourists use are STTs like maps/navigation apps, ride-sharing programs, city guide apps, mobile payment, and parking apps (14). Yet we can see that technology, especially augmented reality and virtual reality, has great potential to make tourism experiences more transformative in the future. Still, what is transformative to the tourist will always depend on the tourist itself – meeting a local in a travel destination can be a far more transformative experience to the tourist than an augmented reality city tour. The city tour can just be a memorable and unforgettable experience at a smart tourism destination, which doesn’t sound like a bad thing at all.

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How can we apply Harry Potter’s sorting hat into tourism marketing?

The novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone by J.K. Rowling (1997) is the first to introduce the concept of the Sorting Hat. The Sorting Hat is a hat that has a magical ability to sort the first-year pupils of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry into their “houses”, i.e. the groups of pupils that they will represent through their school years. The House-system is used in schools across the English-speaking world but evidently, the Sorting Hat exists mainly in J.K. Rowling’s fantasy literature. But does it really have to?

In the book, the Sorting Hat bases its conclusions on pupils’ values and characteristics. Each of the houses possesses different sets of qualities and values that they expect their pupils to share. The Hat divides pupils into houses most suitable for their characteristics. Although being quite strict in the novel due to there being only four houses, the concept is interesting from the marketing point of view. The idea of a marketing factor guiding customer behavior towards goods and services closest to their likings and values sounds almost too good to be true. What kind of sorting hat could we utilize in tourism marketing and what could it do for the tourism industry and tourist experience? What would happen if we could outsource the destination and activity decision-making process and turn around the basic idea of targeted marketing? Let’s find out.

Why do we travel?

To utilize a sorting hat -concept in the tourism industry, we must understand the basic nature of tourism: why do we travel? What good do we achieve by sitting in an airplane for hours or by staring at some reindeers in Lapland? According to Philip Pearce (2005) reasons for travelling and decisions made before, during and after a trip can depend on numerous variables. Demographic and psychographic qualities, style of travelling and destination for example are qualities that can be used to categorize tourists. Sine Heitmann (2011) proceeds to define tourism motivation through a tourist’s cultural background. But on our way to find out why do we travel; the answer lies in psychology like it so often does.

To understand tourism motivation, it is essential to understand the concept of motivation. Seppo Iso-Ahola (1982), has defined motivation as guiding energy that makes one pursue goals and make essential decisions on the way there. Motive, a reason for pursuing something, is an awareness of future satisfaction. Satisfaction is a collaboration of push and pull factors – a theory often used to describe a person’s reasons for travelling. Push and pull factors form the decision by giving a tourist a reason to leave and a destination to pursue. Awareness of future satisfaction provides energy to make essential decisions and to pursue one’s goals and therefore the motivation to travel is formed.

Sine Heitmann (2011) adds the need for travelling into the definition of tourist motivation. She sees a more practical approach to decision-making and sees there a need and series of actions made to fulfil that need. This is highly similar to push- and pull- theory. The need for travelling is a kind of push factor and the pull factor needs something touchable from tourists’ desires and needs. Therefore, the need and fulfilling that need can be a link in a tourist’s decision-making process and defines the question of why we travel; we travel because we have a need or desire to do so.

Targeted marketing in a nutshell

By understanding who we are dealing with and what guides their motivation, we can start to understand why they travel. A tourist’s values, qualities, travelling experience, area of living and especially personal desires determine a lot when making decisions. But, as a tourism marketing student, I can’t ignore the impact of marketing on a tourist’s decision-making process. After all, marketing is a bridge between customers’ needs and desires and the market’s offerings, a way to match supply and demand if you will (Dolnicar & Ring 2014). But tourists aren’t a homogenous group with their needs and desires. Therefore, we need to decide who we are selling our products for and to recognize our main customers.

Targeted marketing is a way of marketing that allows marketers to target marketing efforts for distinct customer segments (Camilleri 2017). This happens by categorizing our customers and by defining the mutual qualities between our customers and their needs and desires. So, in a nutshell, targeted marketing is a way of marketing your products for those who are willing to buy them and need them by identifying needs associated with your products. This seems quite simple: by knowing my customers and products I could avoid wasting my resources on selling stuff for someone who isn’t interested. Targeting my marketing efforts can have a nice effect on both customer retention and satisfaction and my company’s cash flow.

When written like this it seems that someone already has invented the Sorting Hat long before J.K. Rowling did. But what about if you don’t know that you are part of someone’s intended customer segment and target group? Probably someone must have thought of this and marketing today probably can reach even those not aware of their status as someone’s target group. But could there be a slight niche or even a little bit of Blue Ocean (cf. the Blue Ocean Strategy by Kim and Mauborgne from 2004) for Harry Potter’s Sorting Hat in that small question?

What is a personality quiz?

According to Verywell Mind -webpage, a personality test or a quiz is a test or a tool that defines different qualities and characteristics of a tested person and assesses human personality. Personality tests are used in the medical world and can help diagnose, therapeutic processes and is closely associated with studying human behavior. Personality tests can also be used as entertainment. When talking about entertaining personality tests the term is usually personality quiz. The Internet offers a wide variety of different personality quizzes and, not surprisingly, there are also many quizzes that tell the tested persons their Hogwarts houses, like the Sorting Hat.

Photo by Unsplash.com

Apparently, the author of Harry Potter -novels has constructed an online quiz to work as a Harry Potter fans’ sorting hat. There have even been several studies concerning this personality test and according to Jacob et al. (2019) the test possesses some slight accuracy from behavior study and psychology point-of-view. They figured that the test works mainly by defining qualities and values in the books commonly associated with each of the houses and by forming heavy stereotypes the test can guess with some accuracy the house most suitable for the one taking the test.

The Sorting Hat

Although not being the most accurate personality test available and working mainly on stereotypes, the idea behind the study and the value-guided functionality of the test is highly interesting. After all personal values have, according to Pearce (2005), Iso-Ahola (1982) and Heitmann (2011), a major role in all consuming-related decisions and are a key element in brand communication according to Lisa Sounio (2010). Therefore, this sorting hat theme isn’t that far-fetched. Could we transport this into marketing tourism products?

Targeted marketing might not recognize all the potential customers due to it focusing commonly on recognized customer personas and tourist segments. This means that those who don’t realize they are someone’s target group can get left out of fulfilling and interesting products and services. The companies behind these services lose potential income and visibility by missing people who might be interested in their products. But this scenario can’t be totally avoided because targeting marketing for specific segments depends highly on potential tourists knowing what they want. If a tourist is unaware of being possibly part of a target group, the tourist can’t be reached due to a lack of former activity and interest. Then that tourist might stay as a potential customer also in future. But hypothetically, could we turn the situation above upside down and outsource the customer segmentation for the tourists themselves?

When thinking about the push- and pull- factors, the necessary part is the push, the need and the desire to travel. Would it be possible to focus as a marketer, a representative of a tourism agency or an OTA only advertising the pull factors of a given area? Then we could let the tourists determine their traveler profile and suitable locations, travelling styles and other characteristics that usually are done by marketing specialists. Mehmetoglu et al. (2010) have studied the significance of values in tourist behavior and decision making. They defined personal values to be reliable predictors of consumer behavior. This is supported by Pearce’s (2005) and Iso-Ahola’s (1982) findings. The meaning of values in consumer behavior is an interesting finding in the context of Jacob’s & al. (2019) study. The view of Harry Potter’s sorting hat is highly based on personal values in both novels and Harry Potter’s author’s Sorting Hat -quiz.

Photo by Unsplash.com

At this point, an OTA-based, semi-entertaining tourist personality test is starting to sound quite interesting to me. A common OTA possesses quite a few tourism companies more on its site than the Hogwarts School possesses houses. Therefore, the accuracy of an OTA-based tourist personality test should be higher than that introduced by J.K. Rowling – at least when executed properly. This could take some pressure of segmenting and categorizing targeted groups. Through the test’s psychological and value-guided base the decision of a tourist would be scientifically valid. An OTA-based tourist personality test could therefore improve tourist retention and satisfaction. This concept would also reach those potential tourists that get left out of target groups because the only upfront information needed here is if there is a need or desire to travel.

This is highly hypothetical and out of my own substance but as an idea, I think it is worth playing with. After all, marketing is an innovative field of work and what would be a more innovative approach than Harry Potter. Sometimes it can be useful to rattle one’s way of thinking because it can bring up something no one hasn’t thought about before. OTA-based, psychological and value-guided tourist personality test definitely is something ponder. Would you like to get sorted for your next journey?

References

Camilleri, M. A. (2018). Market Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning. In Travel Marketing, Tourism Economics and the Airline Product (Chapter 4, pp. 69-83). Springer, Cham, Switzerland.

Dolnicar, S., & Ring, A. (2014). Tourism marketing research: Past, present and future. Annals of Tourism Research, 47, 31-47.

Iso-Ahola, S. (1982). Towards a social psychological theory of tourism motivation. 1982 Annals of Tourism Research, 256-262.

Jakob, L., Garcia-Garzon, E., Jarke, H., & Dablander, F. (2019). The science behind the magic? the relation of the harry potter “Sorting hat quiz” to personality and human values. Collabra. Psychology, 5(1)

Mehmetoglu, M., Hines, K., Graumann, C., & Greibrokk, J. (2010). The relationship between personal values and tourism behaviour: A segmentation approach. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 16, 17-27.

Pearce, P. (2005). Tourist behavior: Themes and conceptual schemes

Robinson, P., Heitmann, S., & Dieke, P. (2011). Research themes for tourism. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 24(6), 31-45.

Sounio, L. (2010). Brändikäs

Research: What Do Fishermen Value as a Tourist Experience?

fishing tourist experience — © Anssi Ylipulli / KeloVentures

A new Tourism Marketing and Management research suggests that fishing tourists’ lived experience is always built around the same core elements. The elements in the order of importance are the following: emotional value, social value, and epistemic value. This means that Finnish fishing tourists value such elements as nature, peace-and-silence (i.e. emotional value). Also, sharing the own fishing success, fishing know-how and growing the social esteem (i.e. social value) is important. As well as, new experiences and self-development (i.e. epistemic value).

Based on their seriousness towards fishing tourism, three groups are identified: Hobbyists, Active tourist anglers, and Occasional tourist anglers. Even though the relative importance of value components was the same in every seriousness group, more serious fishermen had higher values.

Practically this means that serious fishermen’s, (i.e. hobbyists) total experience (incl. fishing activity, travelling, accommodation, etc.) is more strongly built around the fishing activity. Thus, they are more likely focusing on self-development, learning of new skills, visiting new fishing spots, and actively sharing this knowledge with like-minded people. Whereas, the fishing activity itself does not seem to have the same meaning for less serious fishermen (i.e. active tourist anglers and occasional tourist anglers).

Six different types of recreational fishermen

The research also identified six different types of recreational fishermen based on the benefits they seek.

‘Service-oriented novelty seekers’ is the most potential group from the guide services perspective. That’s because their experience is often carried out by using a different kind of guide-services. Segment’s fishing tourist experience is built around networking, novelty, and development.

Practically, their fishing tourist experience is more likely a social event that takes place in a peaceful environment and focuses on networking with like-minded people. These fishing tourists are also willing to try new fishing spots, seek new experiences, and use professional fishing guide’s to develop their own fishing-related skills. Thus, it can be proposed that usage of different services enable them to realize their own dreams which would otherwise be difficult or even impossible to implement.

How to use the results in tourism business development?

Company or organisation may only gain a competitive advantage with benefit segmentation if they understand the preferences of different market segments.

The segmentation results should be combined with other segmentation variables to generate even more accurate customer profiles. Hence, future development should more likely focus on the main characteristics of seriousness clusters, preferences of individual segments, and combine these together with the company/organization own special characteristics. The idea is that this kind of profile combines the company/organization service offering, main characteristics of different seriousness clusters as well as the preferences of fishing tourist segments. Practically, customer profiles should be something like “Service-minded novelty seeker who likes to fish monster pikes” or “Development-oriented salmon rower” or “Group-focused trout fisherman who focus on an ice fishing”.

About the research

The research approach was quantitative, and the data was collected from the Finnish recreational fishermen by questionnaire. In total, 1 166 respondents participated in the survey. However, the results only focus on the respondents (937) who had participated in a fishing tourism trip.

The empirical study is based on two basic theories, namely serious leisure and consumption value. According to the theory of serious leisure, the fishing tourists have been categorized into three clusters, based on their level of seriousness in fishing. The components of experience value are based on the theory of consumption value, completed with togetherness value which was found in earlier hunting tourism research. In addition, these value dimensions are utilized as criteria for benefit segmentation, when searching for different fishing tourist segments. The data was analysed by using cluster analysis, principal component analysis, and comparative analysis methods.

More information

Fishing as a tourist experience (Master’s Thesis)
Lari Turunen (LinkedIn)

Are you looking for an international tourism-focused master’s degree programme in business? Tourism Marketing and Management programme by University of Eastern Finland provides a unique learning experience for students who have finished their bachelor’s degree and are looking for new skills and knowledge in developing tourism industry in a sustainable way. Read more about the programme at www.uef.fi/tmm.