Dealing with multiculturalism and chain of value creation

Last week, we talked about service management. We decided that service recovery and employee responding a guest requests are vital aspect of this topic. We also saw that multiculturality and web 2.0 can become wildcards in this framework.

Let’s talk about how Sol Melia is dealing with multiculturality issues nowadays that, like a lot of international chain of hotels, is looking for his place in the tourism Chinese market.

For starters… it’s obvious that you have to follow different approaches in different countries and cultures, otherwise multiculturality won’t be a source both of problems and opportunities! We can see multiculturality as boon as well as bane.

If you want to deal with China you have to know, understand and respect his win2win /ying and yang approach. I like the way this article explain this subject… “How to win tourists from China? Send them yours!” By the way, ehotelier is also a good website into your toolbox!

How different from other countries! If you want to bring tourist from Britain, unless you want to work with mass tourism, I recommend that you try to make and alliance with a specialized outgoing travel agency.

I usually ask to my students where can you find this travel agency? In Google they reply feeling that they know the right answer.

Ok, can you provide an answer worthy of a Touristologist?

Of course you can look in Google but, what about…

Asking to an international student doing his Erasmus here?

Using the services of your country tourism offices abroad?

For instance in Spain: http://www.tourspain.es/en/TURESPANA

For instance in Catalonia: You can ask for the services of Catalan Tourist Board

Finally, last but definitely not least, you can search in the data base of a travel agency association. In this case, ABTA could be appropriate! You can search and filter your results for destination and activity (for instance, travel for single parents).

You are a good Touristologist not only for the things that you know but also because when you don’t , you know where to look at and have an attitude to never surrender until you get the information needed!

But let’s finish with Sol Meliá’s tale in china.

Sol Meliá is a global company. Does it have to face multiculturalism issues? Does it have to face chain of value creation? Of course it has!

I strongly recommend this article (I also recommend www.hotelnewsnow.com for your toolbox!) I only want to highlight this sentence “To guarantee reciprocal awareness of corporate culture and management systems, in addition to enhancing sales and customer loyalty, Sol Meliá and Jin Jiang will create “mixed teams” in the 12 hotels to ensure the cultural adaptation of the Reception areas, guest rooms, and food and beverage services to European and Chinese preferences.”

Wow! New tourism destinations, new countries of origin, new segments, new technologies that allow us to create, communicate and commercialize tourism products in different and innovative ways…. Interesting times for Touristologists!!!

Servuction IS NOT production

Servuction is a word coined by Eigler and Langeard aimed to highlight the biggest difference between products and service management. The customer is an input in the process of servuction (the other inputs are the staff in contact and the physical support) while that input it doesn’t exist in production.

This fact has big implications in service management. To me the two most important effects are:

1) You have to be ready to manage service recovery. In production you can implement a quality system that prevents to create wrong products. Even if this happen you can review the product before delivering it and avoid the problem. But in services it is a dream to get 0% defects because the customer participates in the process and as he is not your worker sometimes he will do things in a wrong way or just in his way. On the other hand, if a problem appears you don’t have time to amend it. So, you will have bad quality service from time to time and then you have to practice... service recovery!

2) Subjectivity appears when an employee is attending a guest request. When you are talking about human interaction, quality passes from the objective point of view to subjective.

In servuction we have to create a framework to provide a good service and then we have to select, train and empower our employees and even our customers in order to avoid pitfalls.

When you have employees and customers from different countries and cultures you can multiply these two effects by 10… or maybe 1000! Welcome to multiculturality problems in services!

Empowerment? Subjectivity? Multiculturality? Phew!!! You really need an expert in service management… By the way, have I never mentioned before the necessity of TOURISTOLOGIST?!?!?!

Let’s see this picture to have a visual approach to the important issue of service management.

 

Get curious? Check this post out

Don’t forget important lessons!

Motel 6 taught us long time ago how to plan a campaign, you can learn about its process here “The lesson of this campaign is to use a disciplined process that begins with research to learn about consumers' behavior, responds unwaveringly to those insights, and the follows through with consistent creativity and measurement. Marketers working in any product or service category can benefit from these lessons.”

They practiced a marketing research and found different segments visiting their motels. In summary, the empty nest, the salesman, the young couple and the family with small kids. They discovered the problem: There was a hesitancy to admit to stay at Motel 6. They were afraid to be tagged as people who couldn’t afford to a decent accommodation.

So, they developed “The Smart Choice” campaign

“Motel 6 met minimal, though acceptable, standards to the loyal guest: decent overnight lodging that enabled the traveler to save a few dollars. Typical anecdotes revealed that this savings was not hoarded but, instead, was spent (1) by grandparents on their grandchildren (among the empty nesters), (2) on additional vacation activities (among the young family travelers), and (3) on better meals or extra tanks of gas (among the commercial guests).”

Thanks to marketing research you know what it’s important to each one of your segments so, use the power of Internet to customize and syndicate relevant content, commerce and community (what it was called the 3 C’s long time ago!). We can make special alliances (that is to create a chain of value) which help us to add value and get the trust of the customer.

Instead of focusing on low prices we can focus on add value, that means to develop a website with different C’s for each one of the segments and a Facebook page also customize for each segment.

I mean specific website and Facebook pages for empty nest customers, young families, young couples, salesman…with customize information about things really important to them, with commerce of desire services and community with other people with similar or complementary opinions.

At the core of this post we have a simple but powerful idea.

Touristology laws apply off-line and on-line otherwise won’t be Touristology laws!

1) To mark down the price is the last thing that you have to do. It’s not forbidden but it’s the last resort. This law has been forbidden in Barcelona city in the last few years!

Please check out www.hospitalitynet.org (another must to have in the toolbox of any touristologists!) to see the revpar evolution. I attached a summary of my own:

2) To look for specific segments with specific needs and then add value (because you provide something value to them NOT because you provide more!!!) it’s the path to follow. 

Are we or not the leaders on tourism companies?

SME can compete with big ones!!!

What's all the fuss about cloud computing? Does it have something to do with tourism companies and destinations or can we ignore it?
First, we are talking about cloud that it is not a fuzzy idea it’s a reality with clear implications for tourism organizations though.
Granted that small and middle size enterprises are majority in the tourism sector these implications are far more important. Cloud computing allows small and medium size enterprises to be as productive as big enterprises, because it brings to them...
1) The possibility to pass from strong investment and fix cost to a variable cost.
2) The possibility to increase the number of users to its web application from 1,000 to 1,000,000 in just minutes not months.
We can get these features from a public provider of cloud computing (Amazon for instance) or a tourism destination can create a private cloud for itself and offer this service to their tourism companies allowing them to create their own chain of value connecting HIS customers with HIS services. Which, as you already know, it’s a fundamental idea in Touristology.
Let’s see a clear explanation of the tree fundamental ideas of cloud computing: IAAS, PAAS and SAAS

Paraphrasing Thomas Friedman in his book “The world is flat” - “XV-XVIII centuries it was the era of countries, XIX and XX centuries it was the era of big multinationals. In XXI century individuals and small and medium size enterprises are also part of the game!”
At the core of this post we have a simple but powerful idea.
SME can compete with big ones!!!
With Hardware thanks to Cloud computing
With Software thanks to Open Source
With Organization thanks to Chain of Value.
A fundamental part of this chain of value will be the ideas of:
A) PRO-AM (thanks Charles Leadbeater!!)
B) Long Tail (thanks Chris Anderson!!)
but these will be the matter of other post!
Treballem, treballem que la Turistologia guanyarem!!!!

In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king

Any Touristologists need to have a full toolbox, contacts and good attitude. Talking about toolbox you need sources of information reliable and updated. For example, eyefortravel. You can subscribe to its newsletters it’s free and worthy.
This video is an excellent case in point!

A customer asks the airline company to advance one week the beginning of the new route Amsterdam-to-Miami. Yes -reply the airline company- but only if you fill the flight!
Then making the 9 hours trip an experience thanks to the help of Guinness world records the use of Social Networking Sites and the collaboration of bloggers and journalist, the company gets free publicity around the world!
What are tourism companies waiting for…
… to integrate customers in the servuction process?
…to help customers to create, communicate and commercialize tourism products?
…to use new technologies to improve its operations and processes?
Luckily for the future of our sector more and more Touristologists are experts in the field of new technologies… the art and the science of webengineering! But this is part of another post!

What can a Touristologist (a good one!) bring to any enterprises?

Touristologists are experts in several issues /subjects that nowadays are important to any companies.
1) Internationalization: All companies, no matter its size, have to look for new markets, customers, providers, distributors… from around the world. At the end of the day, as Friedman quotes, “The world is flat”
2) Multiculturality: The first brings the second, in a flat world you have to deal with customers, partners and employees from different cultures and backgrounds.
Touristologists know about that because their core business is to bring and to send tourist around the world!

3) How to integrate the customers in the organization which is one of the drivers of web 2.0?
Touristologists know about that because they are good at in Servuction (P. Eiglier et E. Langeard) to them to integrate the customer in a service is not an option is a fact!
4) Dealing with Infoglut. I mean getting information, transform it into knowledge, share through your chain of value… Touristologists know that information is very important because their customers are in a different country (SPACE) and they have to do actions before, during and after the travel (TIME).
5) Web 2.0? Infoglut? YES, Touristologists are also expert in Web Engineering but this is another POST!!!!!
So, a question… Why Touristologists study Business Economics ( “Empresariales”) when they are already expert in the most important topics that concern any companies??????

Is there life out of Google? Part 1

YES! This doesn’t mean whatsoever that Google is not important. Tourism companies and organizations MUST learn how to use and manage both organic (SEO = Search Engine Optimization) and not organic (SEM = Search Engine Marketing) campaigns. This is especially important when you start a business but as you have more and more customers you have to use less Google and more Your Own Butterfly Strategy and the idea of OUR Enterprise.
In summary Your Own Butterfly Strategy is similar to the strategy followed by Google but focus on your business.
Google combine AddWords (people/enterprises willing to pay in order to appear in Google Search Engine OR in its Content Network) with AddSense (Websites known as Content Network willing to let Google to put adds in his place in exchange for a commission).
Your Own Butterfly Strategy aims to create a butterfly which connects webs related to your content or to your segment’s needs with your segment.
Then you connect the two wings with Links (the simplest way of web connection) or WebServices which provide the famous three C’s (Content, Commerce and Community) relevant to your segment.

Next day we will talk about OUR Enterprise idea! C U !