Touristology for starters

I always remind my Touristologists, customers and partners that the future is to be competitive in a global environment.

Jordi- Why do you repeat this idea over and over? Because, you say yes (sometimes it is worst and directly you said NO) but still focus on local tourism, make deals with local enterprises, only seek local tourists or tourists already here… We are living in a world that is changing very fast, that it is difficult to predict but one thing for sure… there will be winners and losers. If Touristology has to win it has to be an international science. If my Touristologists have to win they have to play in a global environment.

I always remind my Touristologists, customers and partners that the future is to specialize. I not only mean to focus on something specialized. I also mean, to know how to make the most of specialization using Touristology’s tools: 1,2,3, theory, chain of value building and  management... I developed these ideas deeper here.

Fortunately, my Touristologists prove to me that I’m right and they earn a living doing new international and specialized enterprises. Can you give an example, Jordi? Of course I can! What about turisme km 42 a travel agency focused on sports? They provide any kind of tourism services to professional athletes, pro-am related to this segment or just people who like this kind of activities. A perfect example of high level segmentation that we will talk about in a minute!

Let’s suppose, you are the brand new manager of a hotel, a resort or you are in charge of a tourism destination and you finally believe that international tourism is the way to go (I repeat one more time…. Nothing wrong with local tourism BUT if you want to be competitive, if you want to become NOT expendable you’d better get contacts, train your mind, think about your career, services, enterprises… in a global perspective!)

Obviously, you don’t want to be mister Magoo (a nice character famous for his short vision). Consequently, you want to manage the whole chain of value, or at least try to do so!

International tourism? Focus on the chain of value? Perfect! Now time to decide between generic or specialized tourism. Let’s summarize this idea in a Powerpoint presentation! Shall We? I like prezy but it is a little bit posh for me! Anyway, neither Powerpoint nor prezy can transform a boring/useless presentation into a good one.

First things first, we need Tourists! In generic tourism usually a low level segmentation will be enough. So, we have leisure and business segments. We follow Gauss normal distribution. Forget outliers! Focus on the big segments. Our strategy is based on economy of scale. So, we need as many tourists as possible.

What about chain of value’s components? Let’s see…

Meeting places? Generic, of course! Facebook and  linkedin, for instance.

Travel agencies? Generic of course! Even better if we can make a deal with a big Touroperator.

Of course, we have to make deals and appear in the most important search engine, the new group buying and flash sales sites…

And that’s it, now we can focus on offering a quality service, reduce cost and pray that this will be enough… BUT remember other members of the chain of value will try to become leaders of the chain of value, keeping the trust of the tourist, deciding which service to promote, buying new enterprises that appear in the market offering value.

Data Aggregators or Metasearch engines are a good case in point. Take for instance the movements of Expedia and Priceline into Room77 and Kayak respectively as I tweeted here…

Ok Jordi! What is so different in specialized Tourism? Well, a few details… First you begin with a high level segmentation...

... you believe in long tail theory and consequently you build a chain of value with specialists. If you get the trust of the tourist you will be the leader of the chain of value and can expand your business with international routes, becoming a Super 3 and /or use the marketing power of being the reference for a specialized community.

Obviously, web-engineering can help us to coordinate, analyze, articulate, these chains of value making them work as a single organization.

You can use web-services or web-scraping or a combination of both. In this article by Andrew Chen you have an interesting example featuring airbnb and craigslist . It’s a good case in point of Integration in the chain of value. As you know, to me, this kind of integration is a key ingredient in a successful and international tourism enterprise and in the development of web 3.0, but this will be part of another post…

In a few days I will explain these ideas to a new bunch of future Touristologists. They are doing a MBA (Master of Business Administration) specialized in Hotel management. They have an international background, they have the vision of an eagle and they want to become Touristologists…

I love my job! I’m a Touristologist builder! Michelangelo has his Sistine Chapel Ceiling;  Leonardo has his Giaconda. I have my Touristologists!

Can you feel my energy? It’s the most powerful force of the Universe. It’s the force of a dream burning inside… Touristology’s dream!!!