Time flies but vision persist OR Don’t mark down the price add value instead!

12 years ago a young Touristologist was reading his Phd thesis… in a nutshell, he predicted that in the future tourists will go to internet basically for two reasons:
1) Searching for the best price
2) Searching for the most trusted and personalized information, commerce and community.
At that time, price was the main reason to shift from the real to the virtual world, nowadays more and more tourist and companies are looking for the second trend. Tourists go to internet to search for content, to connect to other people, to play… but overall they want to do this in a customized way, taking into consideration both objective reasons (price, distance to city center or the beach…) and subjective reasons (personal taste, preferences, deals…).
A few years later our Touristologist represented this idea with something like this…

I can prove it! The proof is in Catalan (Catalonia beautiful language) but maybe you want to see the face and movements of a Touristologist!


 

As you see in the price approach appears Kayak. At that time the idea of people going to internet looking for content and commerce tailor made and community with similar or complementary taste and necessities wasn’t the flavour of the month. It was before web2.0 era!
At the end of the last year appeared an example of the second trend: Superfly and when far long time ago, young but still Touristologist, read about it, he got a flashback!

STORY OF SUPERFLY…. Superfly.com is a new startup which main competitor is kayak, both use the same engine (ITA/Google platform) to provide basic information. Kayak is focus on offering the best price, that’s all. Superfly, on the other hand, pretends to show all the relevant 3 C’s (Content, Commerce, Community) both objective and subjective. Superfly adds more layers of value. It’s like augmented reality for mobile .
At this moment, Superfly is focus on flights but during this year they pretend to extend to hotels and rent a car companies.
Superfly is to me a good example of a Business Model and Technological Scheme dealing with Big Data and attempting to control /manage all the 3 C’s in a chain of value in order to add layers of value to its customers.
So far, they only provide one layer. You must provide information about your loyalty programs and then when you search for a flight you will get prices and the effect in your loyalty program. See the example:

 

If you decide to book you are redirected to www.expedia.com where you can finish your reservation process.
I’m sure that you can add more and more layers. Maybe you can get an idea from the following graphic…

To me this is not a big leap into the second approach, but it’s definitely a paradigm shift in the evolution of Data Aggregators. From focus on price to focus on add value.
Mark down the price is a race to the hell of mediocrity, unless you’re a low cost enterprise as Ryanair or Tune Hotels. Add value is a stairway to heaven where every step means happier customers willing to buy your service more often and ready to recommend it to his friends.
In order to achieve that you need to know your customer, be ready to get and send in a customized way all the things that they need (Content, Commerce, Community).
Do you really think that you can do that without knowing web 2.0’s business models and technological schemes? Well keep dreaming Alice in the wonderland!!!  As Thomas Foxwell Buxton said “With ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable” Be sure don’t skip the perseverance part!!!
The business model can be something similar to this:
1) Who are your customers and which necessities they have?
In this example we have at least two customers. The tourist, willing to have the 3 C’s  in a customized way at his finger tips. Also the suppliers of tourism services battling to get the trust of the customer.
2) Which necessities you fulfill and in which way?
Tourist: Providing them customized content, commerce and community.
Suppliers: Helping them to offer a better service to their customers, helping to get new ones, but also putting themselves between them and their customers trying to shift THEIR customer to MINE, of course they will highlight the first and they will try to hide the second!!!
3) Can you earn a decent profit? Revenues minus cost or even better investment / revenues/profit = Bermuda Triangle

CAN YOU IMPROVE IT?

You also have to describe the technological Scheme both for transactional data and for big data.
For the first one you can use the usual three layers: Visual (HTML/CSS/JS) Business Logic (Servlet/JSP; PHP; ASP…) Data (Relational Data Base Management System) and then expand it to n-layers using webservices and XML.
For the second one you have to take complex and unstructured data (LBS, SNS, UGC…) rely on the flexibility of JSON, save it in a not only SQL Data Base and use NPL to transform information into knowledge. Phew! Obviously, this will be the matter of other post!!!
But first we have to finish the story we began with…from the beginning of his task writing his doctoral thesis our young Touristologist saw clearly that if he wanted to understand, to teach, to give consultancy, to set up his own enterprise… He had to master business models and technological schemes both internet oriented. He knows was a difficult task ahead but he didn’t want to follow the easy path; he wanted to follow the right one.
OK, stop pretending that I’m writing the story of someone else… I was this young Touristologist! As a matter of fact I still am!!! Just older, wiser but equally persistent. I see a bright future for Touristology and still strongly believe that to be successful in our lovely sector you have to complement the basic core of Touristology (1,2,3 theory, strategic triangle, Bermuda triangle…) with Web-engineering and foreign languages (English at least!).
Do you know why rain dance works? Because they would dance until it rains!!! 

I won’t stop, will you? Welcome to a new year!