The blind men and an elephant

Once upon a time… there were two different hotels but for a lack of Touristology they were in the red. From far away came experts, wizards and consultants, but the poor hotels remained in bankruptcy.

One hotel was at the top of a small mountain it was isolated but near of everything. Some customers complaint about the lack of any warning about having to drive half an hour from the city centre. Its name was “California”.

The other hotel called “Watchthesee” was in the city’s centre and in order to commercialize both of them relied on two travel agencies “Expense” and “Reservation”

One day a young touristologist came by to the city, which once was the home of the Olympic Games, and just asked a simple set of questions:

Don’t you see that they are different kind of hotels? Don’t you see that you have to customize the way you create, communicate and commercialize tourism products? Don’t you see that in order to be successful you have to apply 1,2,3 theory?

1,2,3 theory? What is that a child’s song? - Replied one of the experts that up to then didn’t have any proof of his expertise.

Not – calmly replied the young touristologist- it’s just the bedrock of modern Touristology.

If you have and isolated hotel you must look for people which can benefit from this and then make the most of long tail theory. Let’s put this as an example:

The segment of a romantic couple or occasionally lovers which can use these websites as number 3. Do you know zcuza or iwant2meetyou (don't miss the video!!!)?  For this segment you can add a ride with a nice car so in this way a weak point becomes a strong one.

The Honeymoon segment using theknot  as a middleman.

The small and medium size enterprises willing to organize a product presentation or a creativity seminar. You can use redherring  to communicate your services...

For all these segments isolation can be a boon instead of a bane. In all this segments long tail is more interesting than traditional channels. Of course, that you have to discover this segments, customize your offer and make new deals, both commercial and technological with new intermediaries but… for that reason you need a TOURISTOLOGIST able to see the tourism sector as a system, able to manage the demand, the offer and the chain of value, one who see all the system and not just one of the parts.

Then the Touristologist explains the ancient story of the blind men and an elephant, he left this drawing and went to the next adventure hoping the new touristologists would go along.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant