How to become a shark in tourism’s waters

We live in a world that is ending, that means crisis, which also means opportunities. On one hand big companies and families with big fortunes have more and more power, but on the other hand small enterprises and individuals with the right knowledge and tools can work together and compete with the big sharks.
I love big sharks (especially when they are my customers!!!) but overall I like a good fight.
I would like to introduce the framework that makes possible for small enterprises to compete with big ones.

1) Forget about individuals! You need a team. You need to find people with the same culture (vision of reality) that you have, assign them task, responsibilities and authority and also provide variables of control and communication tools and protocols. Your employees? Of course, but you have to do the same with pro-am (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Leadbeater) and your own customers (servuction remember?)

2) And you need this kind of employees because you will have this kind of organization… Forget your enterprise, focus on your chain of value!

3) Forget about your PMS / CRS or website! Take care of a portal related with this chain of value. Use the three principles of web-engineering:
     A) Give static and dynamic pages with access to your database thanks to Portlet / Servlet/ JSP (Java world) ASP / ASPX (Microsoft) or PHP/… (Open source).
     B) Get and send (SYNDICATION) the three C’s (content, commerce and community) to others databases thanks to webservices.
     C) Get information NOT format and then adapt the information to your platform (mobile, interactive television, laptop…) and design. With these team, chain of value and technology you can compete and you can win. Of course, to set up all this you will need…. A GOOD TOURISTOLOGIST!!!!

Please, follow this link if you want to see a graphical representation of this topic.

Two alien species willing to dominate our attitude

Which will be your side? Don’t be in the middle. Act now! If not you who? If not now when?

On one side you have the aliens which seem characters taken out from "A Confederacy of Dunces"

 

They are easy to recognize:

1) They never smile; at most they force a grimace.

2) They are very fond of dead fish handshake and yawning like an elephant seal.

3) When you make an agreement with them they never keep their word. Always do something different or nothing at all and, of course, without previous warning and with a set of excuses ready to make clear that it wasn’t their fault.

4) Whatever you say to them they already know…. As a matter of fact they are experts in the art of knowing how to pretend to know.

But… don’t be mistaken! Be aware they’re dangerous.

They haven’t no merci, no feelings, no souls…

They’re enthusiasm killing machines!!!

STOP!!!

On the other side you have the aliens which seem taken out from the lyrics’ of My Way

 Think about people living for their ideas. The ones able to visualize something new and create it.

Always with their spirit up, always smiling, no matter tiredness, personal problems or bad circumstances because they know…

“Circumstances - what are circumstances? I make circumstances.” Napoleon Bonaparte

“To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.” Bruce Lee

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.” Steve Jobs

Nothing is lost yet you can unbalance the invasion!!!

Just remember…To be a Touristologist is not something you say or something that somebody has given to you. It’s something you have to earn!!!!

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