Does Virtual Reality (VR) Travel have the potential to be more?

Retrieved from Forbes.com

Due to the pandemic, the global tourism industry had to come to a sudden halt. Even as lockdowns were slowly lifted, travelers were skeptical, and the threat of the virus is still very real. Recently, a second wave has swept across the world which has led to a second lockdown. Until a vaccine is in place, it will be quite difficult for the tourism industry to recover from its losses and reach the pre-pandemic tourist numbers. The tourism industry is constantly innovating and doing its best to get back on its feet. The role of modern technologies in tourism is changing rapidly, leading to customer relationships developing through virtual reality in the marketing of tourist destinations. In addition to focusing on the influence of travel intentions that has prevailed in practice so far, the use of VR is expected to have an impact on the travel experience on the spot. VR has existed for some time now but using it in the travel industry was not extremely popular. But the pandemic has boosted this trend and travelers that were once skeptical and found it pointless are turning to this technology for some solace. Tourism boards, airlines, hotels, destination management companies are making use of this tech to stay relevant in their travelers’ minds and to meet the demand temporarily if not physically.

The International Air Transport Association (Iata) said that international traffic “has all but disappeared”, with airlines carrying only about 10% of normal levels. By Iata’s estimate, Covid caused disruptions to put more than 41 million jobs at risk across the travel and tourism sector. Iata predicts that travel will not resume to pre-pandemic levels until 2024.

Steve Perillo is boss of Travel World VR, a US-based VR and 360-degree video marketing and production company. He says the pandemic has been a “shot of adrenaline” for a technology that to date had “not yet really arrived”. Now he says VR can whet a potential audience’s appetite. “The momentum has really picked up. It’s really launched the concept of travelling remotely.”

Retrieved from StudioBinder.com

VR acceleration?

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have had a lasting influence on tourism and will shape travel and booking behavior for generations. Undoubtedly, the desire to travel is uninterrupted, but financial and health fears and worries have made some people confused. However, every crisis can produce some positive outcomes, as difficulties stimulate new innovative ideas. Such a need creates the courage to change and that may include trust in social media marketing and distance tourism. As a result, tourists are more mobile than ever, and their information needs are constantly growing; almost no travel decision is made without prior virtual inspiration or internet research. In addition to the technical requirements of Web 2.0, there has been a change in the virtualization of social networks with much deeper consequences.

The annual travel report by Euromonitor International Accelerating Travel Innovation after Coronavirus examined innovative concepts designed to accelerate recovery to survive, sharing best practices from the most technologically advanced to the simplest solutions, in four categories:

Digital (virtual experiences, artificial intelligence and automation, biometrics, and digital identification, and 5G)
Sustainability (domestic tourism, social impact, own resources, transparency in terms of carbon emissions, and new sustainable business models)
Health (people first, safety and hygiene, social distance, diversification, and data analysis)
Guests (offers, real-time information, flexibility, personalization, and affordable luxury)

There are, however, several limitations that are currently holding the technology back, including large, unwieldy headsets and excessive costs. The most important limitation, according to Miguel Flecha, is that there has yet to be a trusted global brand to place its bets on VR. “The industry needs to believe in the technology,” he says. That may have begun to change with the launch in the US of Amazon Explore, a platform that gives access to one-on-one virtual experiences with tour guides and local residents in countries around the world. Experiences offered on the high-tech giant’s public beta version range from tours of Kyoto neighborhoods in Japan to artisan shopping in Costa Rica and fish taco cooking lessons in Mexico. As Mr. Flecha sees it, Amazon Explore may foretell the success or failure of VR in the travel industry. Serious investment by a high-tech giant and a trusted brand – Apple and Samsung are also looking into virtual reality – could, he believes, be the “great accelerator” needed.

Retrieved from Scooterrise.com

VR a blessing?

Necessity is the mother of invention, so although we had the digital tools available for us, but it is this pandemic which brought out their significance and advantage of shrinking the world and making it accessible for people to satiate their sense of exploration and discover destinations and cultures which exist around the world. One pitfall that keeps arising is that technology is hugely dependent on internet access, which sometimes can be a challenge. One major benefit of this tech is that it offers an eco-friendly alternative to the rising problem of over-tourism.

Virtual reality simulations must be created by people. Like most technologies, this means that the people responsible for creating virtual travel packages have a lot of control over how vacation destinations are represented to virtual tourists. One of the important benefits of tourism is that the tourist is usually forced to engage with native populations on their own terms (cruise ships and tropical all-inclusive resorts may be the exemption to the rule). This means that tourists can often learn that their preconceived notions of what other peoples or nations are like were wrong. With VR travel, this isn’t possible.

Ralph Hollister explained that VR has historically remained a niche concern. “When the technology was first released to global consumers the technology was hampered by technical drawbacks and unrealistic expectations. VR is incredibly hard to love unless you are experiencing high-quality VR with a high-quality VR headset. Sets such as Google cardboard provide affordability but often a sub-par experience, which may be negative for VR’s overall reputation. Travel and tourism is incredibly tangible, which is something VR cannot fully provide. It may provide a temporary fix for travelers with current wanderlust during COVID-19, but it could still be disregarded when restrictions are lifted as it can’t meet other sensory needs, such as taste or smell.”

In my opinion, I somewhat agree with Hollister (Travel and tourism is incredibly tangible, which is something VR cannot fully provide) as Virtual Travel does not offer the sensations of travel, touch smell, the environment therefore it cannot be considered as an alternative. Future tourism as we imagine it, entirely robotic, is not desirable. Humans are social beings, they need contact. A dimension that the VR cannot (yet) offer. Therefore, the consumer needs someone to accompany in their reflections and decisions. If a tour operator is not supposed to indicate which place is better than another in terms of its offers, the adviser will naturally do so, by expressing his or her opinion. Information that a robot or a virtual experiment will never be able to provide in the same way.

Retrieved from CASE.org

Replacement for Physical Travel?

A global survey by Italy4Real had found that VR travel will not replace real-life travel experiences. The following are some insights from the survey:

81 percent do not think virtual reality could ever replace real-life travel
90 percent say they would miss the full sensory experience of travelling
77 percent claim that the lack of local food and drinks would be a downside of VR travel, while 69 percent would miss meeting the locals and interacting with new people
52 percent say travel agents could be replaced by AI (Artificial Intelligence), but the majority agree that tour guides and hotel staff need a delicate touch

What are the benefits of Virtual Tourism?

Retrieved from BusinessWorldIT.com

Even VR travel may not replace physical travel, but it has handful of benefits for tourism. Because viewers can experience activities, locations, and destinations from the comfort of their own homes, there are many clear benefits to virtual tourism. The most obvious of these benefits is that viewers can see and experience a destination without traveling to it, which means they aren’t limited by available flights, travel logistics, safety concerns, and whether destinations are open. They don’t even have to think about time zones or weather conditions. The other huge benefit for viewers is cost. Virtual tourism makes destinations accessible to millions of people who may otherwise not be able to afford to travel to them. Viewers are embracing the rise in virtual tourism destinations and the increasing quality and availability of virtual reality technology to see and experience things they never thought possible.

For the travel industry, virtual reality can be used in tourism marketing to enhance travel experience and shape the behavior of travel consumers. What technology can do today is absolutely remarkable. For Tourism, the clear benefit is the ability to stay top-of-mind with potential customers and to highlight a location, amenities, and offerings. Viewers who have experienced a hotel or location through virtual tourism are more likely to book a future stay and will eagerly anticipate experiencing the activity in the real world. There are also great marketing opportunities offered by virtual tourism technology. Potential guests can see a 360-degree view of a property and its amenities, rather than the flat images on a brochure or website. Experiencing a property this way increases the chances that viewers will want to visit in the future and means that they can easily share the virtual offerings with their friends and family. VR in the travel industry also helps specific brands stand out from the rest. VR’s success, like any other outlet, depends on the quality and creativity of the experience. Designing the right things in VR and investing in its quality will guarantee the best customer engagement. This fact has always translated into revenue.

The most notable benefits of virtual reality in tourism go as follows:

Attract more visitors by enabling them to experience the destination firsthand before even booking it;
Showcase realistic 360-degree views of any destination or hotel in high resolution;
Mesmerize travelers by allowing them to explore destinations on their own from the convenience of their home;
Improve brand image by delivering unique brand engagement;
Gain competitive advantage by offering unique, unforgettable experiences;
Helping travelers worldwide become more comfortable using VR to explore travel destinations;
Virtual reality is a fantastic way to advertise on social media.

Potential for VR in Tourism

Retrived from UIEXPERT.com

Virtual reality manages to fool the tourist’s senses into believing they are in the real world in their chosen destination. Through this reality, they can interact with fictional worlds that they could not explore in real life or with worlds that they could only visit with great effort.

Nevertheless, while the virtual reality vacation is not necessarily destined to replace tomorrow’s travel, it does have features that could revolutionize the industry. Virtual reality could become tomorrow’s travel catalogue. A helmet and 360-degree immersion to help customers discover the destinations offered by tour operators would then replace the brochures on the counters. It is the perfect tool for preparing a trip without revealing everything, it would give a real foretaste and allow tourists to better target their preferred trip. Perhaps it could be even more useful. Without replacing travel, VR could make accessible destinations that are out of reach. It would help to relieve congestion at certain sites, which would be temporarily closed to allow them to regenerate in an eco-responsible manner. Consumers could also go to inaccessible places like space, for example. Or even change times. How? By reconstructing places on an archaeological site, a godsend for history fans eager for knowledge. Once on-site, the tour operator will offer an immersive and educational experience. To a small extent, of course, you don’t visit a place to have glasses on your head. Reliving Pompeii before it was destroyed, for example, like the exhibition currently on show at the Grand Palais in Paris. “Eventually, virtual reality will bring a new form of entertainment to the tourism industry,” imagines Erik Champion. It could appear in the main sites of major tourist destinations, but also as a pastime in airports.” No doubt a revolution is underway.

The future of VR in tourism is bright and believe it or not with the help of this technology, the tourism industry is going to change. The immersive and interactive virtual reality (VR) is a great opportunity for tourism and travel businesses to offer a unique and memorable experience to their customers. VR technologies will surely continue to advance, and as such, the opportunities in the tourism sector will grow exponentially. Regardless of the direction in which these advancements and developments take place, immediate applications and trends are identified and used within the tourism industry already. VR can and probably will fundamentally change the way in which tourists’ experiences and requirements are managed entirely. Virtual reality will likely enable us to impressively share our experiences with friends and family in a way that brings these destinations to life like no slide show ever could. Many companies in the tourism industry have their sights set towards the future, and some even go so far and publish reports about their expected future developments. As an example, in the 2014 Skyscanner report ‘The Future of Travel 2024’, published by the company which is mostly known for offering a global travel search engine, they envision VR as a major influence on touristic experiences. They predict VR to “become a new form of show rooming, an incredible 3D taste of a destination that will make travelers long to experience the real thing.” (Skyscanner, 2014, p.24).

The future of VR in tourism is already here, despite how far it seems away. With the most recent developments in virtual reality (VR), it doesn’t seem like that will be changing anytime soon. VR is constantly gaining traction in the travel industry, and with good reason. VR makes it easy to create an immersive travel experience for anyone, anywhere. VR allows users to be transported to anywhere in the world, which means they’ll be able to experience the world in a way they never could before. VR allows users to feel like they are in the middle of the action, which is what makes it so appealing. VR is the wave of the future in tourism, and it’s not just about experiencing another place in real time.Thus, I think VR has the potential to replace the real world with a digital one.

References

Arbulú, I.; Razumova, M.; Rey-Maquieira, J.; Sastre, F. Measuring risks and vulnerability of tourism to the COVID-19 crisis in the context of extreme uncertainty: The case of the Balearic IslandsTour. Manag. Perspect. 2021

Ralph, Hollister.; VR travel industry

Rončák, M.; Scholz, P.; Linderová, I. Safety Concerns and Travel Behavior of Generation Z: Case Study from the Czech Republic. Sustainability 2021Gössling, S.; Scott, D.; Hall, C.M. Pandemics, tourism and global change: A rapid assessment of COVID-19. J. Sustain. Tour. 2020

Rosário, A.; Raimundo, R. Consumer Marketing Strategy and E-Commerce in the Last Decade: A Literature Review. J. Theor.Appl. Electron. Commer. Res. 2021.

Denise Chen.; Virtual Reality Vacation Offers New Kind of Entertainment, 2020

Euromonitor International—Accelerating Travel Innovation after Coronavirus. Available online: https://go.euromonitor.com/white-paper-travel-201110-travel-innovation-after-coronavirus.html (accessed on 22 October 2021).

Igbaria, M.; Schiffman, S.J.; Wieckowski, T.J. The respective roles of perceived usefulness and perceived fun in the acceptance of microcomputer technology. Behav. Inf. Technol. 1994.

Kim, J.; Hardin, A. The impact of virtual worlds on word-of-mouth: Improving social networking and servicescape in the hospitality industry. J. Hosp. Mark. Manag. 2010.

AllThingsVR. (2015). Infographic for input technologies for VR.

Argyropoulou, A., Dionyssopoulou, P., & Miaoulis Georgios. (2011). Tourist Destination Marketing and Management Using Advanced ICTs Technologies.

Skyscanner. (2014). The Future of Travel 2024: Planning & Booking.

Barnes, S. (2016), “Understanding virtual reality in marketing: nature, implications and potential”

Jung, T., Tom Dieck, M.C., Moorhouse, N. and Tom Dieck, D. (2017), “Tourists’ experience of virtual reality applications

Beck, J. 2017. Try before you buy with Expedia. Virtual Reality in Tourism

Cavanaugh, C. 2017. Virtual Reality And Augmented Reality Will Change Brand Experiences.

Graham, L. 2016. Virtual reality devices could transform the tourism experience.

What causes people to buy from OTAs?

Today millions of travelers around the globe use Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) to plan their leisure and business travel. OTAs are getting popular among travelers even though there are still people who prefer travel agents expertise instead. Although, OTAs evolved their introduction in the 1990s, the corona pandemic provided new and exciting opportunities for them to attract more users and increase revenue. Due to the pandemic, people barely visit travel agents expertise and choose online service for information and booking. According to Statista, the global online travel market is expected to reach $833.52 billion in 2025 at a CAGR of 10%.

What’s OTAs?

An online travel agency (OTAs) is a web-based marketplace that allows consumers to research and book travel products and services, including hotels, flights, cars, tours, cruises, activities and more, directly with travel suppliers (Expedia group). Expedia, Orbitz, Airbnb, bookings.com, tripadvisor, Travelcity, Hopper, and Priceline are some familiar OTAs.

So the question arises, what influence these travelers to purchase from OTAs?

Below we will discuss about five influencing factors with supporting reviewed scientific publications.

Values:

People are certain about getting good value and benefits with the purchase from OTAs. A result imply that quality of benefits, monetary, social status, preference, and information values predict purchase intention toward OTAs, with the chief driver being the quality-of-benefits value, followed by the preference value.¹

Payment and refund policies are also important drivers for OTAs. Results from a study show that refund rate has great effect on the customer’s payment decision, while transaction cost has great influence on the hotel’s operational decision.² When the refund rate is greater than a threshold, the customer prefers online payment.

Additionally, sentiments plays vital role to understand customer buying intention and brand attitudes.³The qualitative aspects of OTAs can help service-providers understand customers’ brand-attitudes by focusing on the important aspects rather than reading the entire review, which will save both their time and effort.

Price:

Social currency have become an essential factor in motivating the customers to co-creation content related to products and services (Zinnbauer & Honer 2011). Social currency, attitude and subjective norms influence customer experience concerning online travel agencies.⁴

Quality:

Further, the quality of content on OTAs portal aids as drivers influencing booking intention among travelers. The study explored localization, website quality, product information, perceived interactivity, price and promotion, e-security, customer value, service quality, electronic word of mouth (eWOM), marketing and brand promotion amongst the identified determinants to define the relative dependence and driver powers.⁵ Another study supported this by showing the positive impact on electronic loyalty from the quality of services, website quality, infrastructure and electronic purchase.⁶Research which carried out a questionnaire survey on Chinese tourists visiting Korea with experience of using the online travel agency web also favor that in the e-service quality, convenience, interactivity, information validity, credibility had a positive impacts on perceived value and satisfaction.⁷

Increasing levels of competition are faced by OTAs thus, experience an ever greater need to evaluate the effectiveness of their Web sites. The study was conducted to examine the influence of perceived Web site quality on willingness to use online travel agencies. Ease of Use was found to be the most important dimension in determining Willingness to Use, followed by Information/Content, Responsiveness, Fulfillment, and Security/Privacy.⁸

Loyalty:

The result of research conducted to analyze factors that influence e-Loyalty of customers indicates that customer e-Loyalty is predisposed by e-Service Quality through e-Perceived Value and e-Trust. Hence OTAs popularity depends on innovation, convenience it offers as well as how trustworthy it is.⁹

Sentiments and duration of trip:

Does length of stay, demographic and socio – economic characteristics impact on purchasing behavior of OTAs. It was founded that short-duration travelers were more intended to use online travel agencies, where Long-duration travelers preferred their traditional travel agencies.¹⁰

From my point of view, online travel agency is growing popularity not only in developed countries but also in developing countries travel industry. Online travel agencies have rather advantage of reaching out to the larger audience. Fast processing of information and transaction is crucial aspects of OTAs for its popularity. The quality of portal, details about the product and service are another important factors affecting OTAs success. Users also gets best price from OTAs, easy payment and refund policy which aids on its utilizations.

Looking into future if vulnerability in booking system (altering or cancelling service) is improved to ensure trustworthiness, OTAs future is very bright.

References:

¹ShaliniTalwar, AmandeepDhir, PuneetKaur, Matti Mäntymäki (2020) why do people purchase from online travel agencies (OTAs)? A consumption values perspective, International Journal of Hospitality Management 88:102534

²Guang-XinGao, Jian-WuBi (2021) Hotel booking through online travel agency: Optimal Stackelberg strategies under customer-centric payment service, Annals of Tourism Research 86(2):103074

³ArghyaRay, Pradip KumarBala, Nripendra P.Rana (2021) Exploring the drivers of customers’ brand attitudes of online travel agency services: A text-mining based approach, Journal of Business Research 128(2):391-404

⁴AnuragSingh, Nripendra P Rana, Satyanarayana Parayitam (2022) International Journal of Information Management Data Insights, Volume 2, Issue 2, 100114

⁵MahakSharma, RoseAntony, Rajat Sehrawat, Angel Contreras Cruz, Tugrul U. Daim (2022) Exploring post-adoption behaviors of e-service users: Evidence from the hospitality sector /online travel services Technology in Society, Volume 68, 101781

⁶S. H. Jafarpour, A. Mahmoudabadi and A. Andalib, “The impact of quality of service, website, shopping experience and infrastructure on online customers’ loyalty,” 2017 3th International Conference on Web Research (ICWR), 2017, pp. 163-168, doi: 10.1109/ICWR.2017.7959322.

⁷G. G. Ronsana, M. R. Shihab, B. H. Syahbuddin and W. R. Fitriani, “Factors Influencing Customer’s E-Loyalty in Tourism E-Marketplace,” 2018 International Conference on Information Technology Systems and Innovation (ICITSI), 2018, pp. 237-241, doi: 10.1109/ICITSI.2018.8696021.

⁸Young A. Park PhD, Ulrike Gretzel & Ercan Sirakaya-Turk (2007) Measuring Web Site Quality for Online Travel Agencies, Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 23:1, 15-30, DOI: 10.1300/J073v23n01_02

⁹Niu LX, Lee JH. The Intention of Repurchase on e-Service Quality by Online Travel Agency Site. The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business [Internet]. 2018 Jul 30; 9(7):61–70

¹⁰Sujay Vikram Singh, Rajeev Ranjan, “ONLINE TRAVEL PORTAL AND THEIR EFFECT ON TRAVEL AGENCY: A STUDY ON OUTBOUND VISITORS OF VARANASI.”, IJRAR – International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews (IJRAR), E-ISSN 2348-1269, P- ISSN 2349-5138, Volume.6

How a starting tourism business creates customer value by adopting digital marketing technology?

How a new tourism business creates customer value by adopting digital marketing technology?

Everybody is online today and everybody is expecting all the noteworthy and legitimate running businesses to be there as well. If the consumer can not find your online presence the chances are your business goes unnoticed. Even worse it builds an image of untrustworthiness in the minds of the consumers. The potential customer may presume the business can not deliver what the customer is expecting. If the business fails in the first customer touch point the game is over before it even began, no matter how good the service or a product in reality is.

Where to start when you´re starting- the do´s and don’t´s

Alford and Page state in their study of technology adoption in marketing that SMEs who have a strong Web presence grow twice as quickly as those who have no or minimal presence¹. It is essential to seriously think about implementing technology from the very beginning. As a starting business owner, you should start by thinking about what you want to achieve and who you want to reach. Once the business plan is ready, the goals, strategy and the understanding of the desired customer is clear it is time to use this knowledge as a basis in creating a suitable digital marketing plan. The plan should not be a separate aspect but rather intertwined with all that is in the very core of the business.

Dredge et al. examined the challenges and opportunities of digitalisation in tourism listing the needs of tourism businesses when taking up new technology². They identified five topics: skills, mentoring support, finance, policy support, and infrastructure.

Skills.

The digital competencies of your business will play a key role in the successful uptake of digital technologies. Often tourism businesses lack the necessary technical resources in their workforce to fully realise digital potentials. This can be due to a number of factors such as a lack of knowledge in identifying required digital skills to limited staffing issues. These restrict the time and effort which can be applied to learning new digital processes. You should map your knowledge and see if you already have knowledgeable personnel in the company. Or think do you want to outsource completely or partly.

Mentoring support

One option is to use mentoring initiatives. Mentoring can boost innovation, enhance creativity and ideation and assist with capacity building. It may improve connectivity between tourism enterprises, technology companies, the arts and cultural sector, and other start-ups. Mentoring reduces the distance and improves the timeliness, of advice between those that have the expertise and those that need to learn. It can be a prolific co-operation between two or more companies where all parties deliver something the other needs helping their businesses thrive. It is smart to keep in mind to not to bite off more than you can chew and here the importance of networking stands out.

Finance

Lack of finance is identified as the number one obstacle preventing the implementation of digital technologies in tourism businesses. There is a significant concern amongst tourism businesses that the cost of implementing new digital technologies will be more than the gains. Analyse what technology your business can benefit from and make a decision. You can start by taking up a few platforms and expanding from there according to the set budget. It is important to remember to build digital marketing around your customers and choose channels accordingly. Thinking which technology to choose to reach the specific customers and which technology brings the most value to the customer in return. Starting smaller and smart saves time and assets.

Policy support

You need policy initiatives and actions to support business awareness of new technologies. They make clear the benefits of their implementation. Your business requires support in business planning and decision-making with regards to new technologies to ensure efficient utilisation. Do research on the available technologies and find what best suits your needs and what serves your customers best. Find out what is out there, any new innovations that would suit you and your customers´, needs. Choose only appropriate, functional and effective technologies.

Infrastructure

The geographic location of tourism enterprises greatly affects their access to adequate digital infrastructures. In developed countries, connections tend to already be adequate even in more remote areas. Still, businesses in urban settings benefit from modern wireless and fibre broadband connections. The infrastructure in rural or more remote areas can be less developed. Getting your software and connections up-to-date is important so that the basic tools at hand are functional.

Are you (all) motivated enough?

Different personal motivations, corporate culture and managers attitude affect the willingness to adopt technology, which is traditionally explained by the technology acceptance model (TAM). Ritz et al. studied the combination of TAM and the do-it-yourself (DIY) behaviour model in adopting new technologies. They stated that small businesses are less likely to participate in digital marketing than larger businesses³. TAM evaluates the ease of use and perceived usefulness of the technology. DIY motivators are economic benefits and lack of quality in existing services. In other words, managers should make the use of technology easy and the economic advantages and other benefits that come with technology apparent. This applies to themselves and communicating this to the whole team.

Alford and Page found out that small business owner-managers have a positive attitude and a real appetite for adopting technology for marketing¹. If you can channel this attitude successfully to motivate your employees you may be able to get staff involved in creating more innovative marketing content. This may serve a wider spectrum of customer expectations that exist towards your business.

So what is customer value and how it is created using technology?

According to Holbrook customer value is the basic foundation for everything in marketing. It can be defined as a preference, experience, interactive and relativistic, that is comparative, personal, and situational⁴. Komppula and Gartner talk further about desired value, which refers to the value that customers want to receive from products or services and their providers. Received value refers to the value customers have actually experienced through specific customer interactions⁵. Zeithaml encapsulates the definition by stating that value represents “a trade-off of the salient give and get components”⁶. All the definitions explain what exactly is the customer value that is created when a business can answer to the needs and wants of their customers.

The product of tourism business is a service that can be thought of as an intangible object which is more difficult to define and label. The service involves emotions, hopes and dreams and the pursuit of satisfaction. As Neuhofer et al. state in their study experiences constitute the essence of the tourism industry⁷. Holbrook continues that therefore customer value resides neither in the product purchased, in the brand chosen, nor the object possessed but rather in the consumption experiences outcome. People desire not simply the product but rather what is behind the product or service; the satisfaction the experience brings through activity⁸.

It is all about the experience

It is important to understand the consumer´s journey. How they experience it throughout all the phases of tourism experience which happens before, during and after the service situation as stated by Opute et al⁹. For a business aiming to achieve improved customer experiential value at a profit, the focus should be to leverage digital technology. This is to fundamentally optimise customer satisfaction. That is why the focus should not be limited to leveraging digital technology to ensure more effective service design and implementation. It should also be about leveraging such technology to drive an integrated implementation strategy. The strategy should recognise the importance of reaching out to customers. This involves engaging actively with them to access customer ideas and suggesting cues for improving their overall experience.

Opute et al. studied the role digital technologies play in tourism customer service experience. They continue by stating and summing up that tourism service providers can leverage digital technologies to drive a customer engagement focus. Doing this higher customer experiential value is reached. At the same time, customer retention and organisational performance improve. Achieving these targets requires the business to interactively engage with customers. By leveraging customer-generated information to fine-tune tourism service design and delivery leave an indelible and memorable impression in the mind of the customers. Customers may attach a high experiential value to a tourism service episode. When this happens they are motivated to undertake a repurchase or re-endorsement of the service. In addition, they want to share their positive service experience afterward⁹. This reminds the business to put emphasis on the follow-up of the customer visit on the marketing plan.

Ready, engage, interact!

Interaction is what consumers want. They want to be recognized and treated personally. Businesses have to keep in mind that consumers are not completely dependent on communication with the business. They also want to communicate with other consumers and a smart business creates these opportunities. This brings great value to the customer. Customers want honesty and transparency and they go where they can get it. As Prahalad and Ramaswamy ¹⁰found out the consumers can choose the firms they want to have a relationship with. The consumer base this on their own views of how value should be created for them. This reminds the starting tourism business to be humble and how important it is to engage and answer to the customers’ expectations.

Technology adoption has been successful when your business uses technology that is suitable for your strategy. If the technology produces measurable customer value it can be said your business has been very successful. Tapping your digital marketing efforts on all the stages of the tourism experience you maximise the effect and benefit of technology. This way your business ends up creating superb value for the customer.

Acknowledgements

This blog post was written as a part of the Information Technology in Tourism Business course at the International Master’s Degree Programme in Tourism Marketing and Management (University of Eastern Finland Business School). Read more about the programme at https://www.uef.fi/tmm

References

¹Alford, Philip & Page, Stephen John. 2015. Marketing technology for adoption by small business. Faculty of Management, Bournemouth University. The Service Industries Journal, 2015-07-07, Vol.35 (11-12-9, p. 655-669. ISSN: 1743-9507 DOI: 10.1080/02642069.2015.1062884

²Dredge, D., Phi, G., Mahadevan, R., Meehan, E. & Popescu, E.S. 2018. Digitalisation in Tourism: In-depth analysis of challenges and opportunities. Low Value procedure GRO-SME-17-C-091-A for Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (EASME) Virtual Tourism Observatory. Aalborg University, Copenhagen. © European Union, 1995-2019. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/vto/documents?page=1. Retrieved 25.10.2020.

⁸Holbrook M.B. (Ed.). 1999. Consumer value: A framework for analysis and research. London (UK): Routledge.

⁴Holbrook, M. B. 2005. Customer value and autoethnography: subjective personal introspection and the meanings of a photograph collection. Journal of Business Research, 2005-01, Vol. 58 (1), p. 45-61. ISSN: 0148-2963, DOI: 10.1016/s0148-2963(03)00079-1

⁵Komppula, R., & Gartner, W. C. 2013. Hunting as a travel experience: An auto-ethnographic study of hunting tourism in Finland and the USA. Tourism Management (1982), 2013-04, Vol.35, p. 168-180.35. ISSN: 0261-5177, DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2012.06.014

⁷Neuhofer, B., Buhalis, D., & Ladkin, A. 2014. A typology of technology‐enhanced tourism experiences. International Journal of Tourism Research, 2014-07, Vol. 16 (4), p.340-350. ISSN: 1099-2340, DOI: 10.1002/jtr.1958

⁹Opute, A. P., Irene, B. & Iwu, C. G. 2020. Tourism Service and Digital Technologies: A Value Creation Perspective. African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure, 2020-03-01, Vol. 9 (2). EISNN:2223-814X

¹⁰Prahalad, C. K., & Ramaswamy, V. 2004. Co-creation experiences: The next practice in value creation. Journal of interactive marketing, 2004-01, Vol. 18 (3), p.5-14. ISSN:1094-9968, DOI: 10.1002/dir.20015

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Do Not Read This!

Content Marketing?

Yep, I thought you wouldn’t listen. Luckily there is no harm in reading this, quite the opposite. I just wanted to prove a point: In content marketing, you are competing of customers enjoying an overflow of information and suffering lack of time. Therefore, your content marketing needs to be intriguing and catch the attention. Like hopefully this headline did. So, in case you are interested in content marketing, you should stick around and read rest of the post!

Let’s start with discussing the term. It can be mixed up with social media marketing. Creating an ad in Facebook is still not content marketing, just marketing happening in social media. The idea of content marketing is to create different types of content, like blogs, video material and online discussion with customers. The content is shareable and creates interest towards your business, increases your appearance in search engine results and should affect your sales.

How to start

So, let us say that you just established a hotel in Lapland. Should you now open accounts to every other social media outlet and fill them with room pictures and other posts? No, first comes the content marketing plan. For that you need to know your potential customers and their preferences. With bench-marking rival companies, you can learn what content they share and what social medias they use. Referencing the competition is a good start, but also personal goals need to be established. What does your company achieve with all the content you share? Who sees it and what do they do with it? When you can answer these questions, you can proceed with the plan.

Some No No’s

Next, lets dodge some common landmines of content marketing. First, the content can’t be all about the company. Do not always sell something, the customers are not always buying something. The key idea is to be on mind of the customers and when they want to make a purchase that you can provide, they will remember you.

Television was a one-way media, but social media is not. By forgetting this, you miss out on the potential of content marketing and might even do damage. Be attentive to the customers, answer the complaints and discuss the questions.

Do not do too much. If your customers discuss your services in Facebook and like your pictures in Instagram, but Twitter is not working, concentrate on the former. That way your company can be consistent and reliable online, which creates trust also in general.

Do not forget to track the impact of your content marketing: It is essential for you to know how it works and what should be developed or altered.

Entertain, Inspire, Educate and Convince

Content should be useful to both existing and potential customers. In general, you should follow these four guidelines:

Entertain the customer with top quality content to spend time in your media and get them to know you.
Inspire them and help them to create new ideas and new dreams.
Educate the customer on the issues related to your business and create a feeling of trust.
Finally, convince the customer to use your services to retain the best possible solution to his or her problem.

Know your customers to know the preferred social medias and content. Track the impact and you know what to develop. By being consistent and attentive, you are reliable and on people’s mind.

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