Presentations & Speeches
Workshop 1 Fact sheet : New Technologies, New Tourists

Roger Carter, Managing Partner, Tourism Enterprise and Management Ltd.

The purpose of this workshop is to enable participants to understand better the role that new technologies are playing in this reshaping tourism and the implications for tourism destinations and businesses – relating, for example, to the rapid growth in online booking of most type of tourism products and services. What exactly are the opportunities and how can tourism destinations and businesses take full advantage of them. What are the challenges?

In particular, what are the implications for the micro SMEs that form the majority of the tourism industry in most regions? They are not selling a commodity and often like to talk to their customers before making a booking; and their customers like to talk to them. So, should they use the internet simply as a mechanism for distributing information; or should they be persuaded and enabled to adopt online booking?

The consumer perspective is clearly critical. To what extent and in what ways are they using the Internet to help them in planning and booking their tourism activities? What do they value most? And what do they value least? What are the differences between different countries and between different market segments? It is only by understanding these factors that the tourism industry can optimise its investment in different channels of distribution.

One of the major opportunities opened up by new technologies is the full implementation of customer relationship management and marketing (CRM). A lot is talked about CRM, but few tourism businesses and DMOs implement it effectively. The workshop will look at both the principle and practice of CRM in travel and tourism.

The challenges and opportunities for the industry will be addressed by the first two speakers, Stefano Landi and Konrad Plankensteiner – the latter drawing on the longstanding experience of www.tiscover.com. Valuable perspectives about consumer requirements and use of new technologies will be provided by Karine Bruère, in a case study of www.visiteurope.com, the new consumer portal developed for the EU and ETC. Issues of information security will be covered by the fourth speaker, Kari Santalahti.

Both the speakers and participants in the workshop are encouraged to identify other technological factors that will have a major impact on the tourism marketplace (and thus on tourism suppliers) in the future, both short term and long term. For example:

• How will the ‘mobile revolution’ impact on the ways in which visitors access information and use it when they are travelling to and within destinations? What will be the implications for traditional information and booking services within destinations?
• What are the implications of ‘location based services’ via mobile devices?

In order to understand what contribution new technologies have made to major changes in the volume, nature and patterns of tourism, we need to have regard to a wider context. Key trends in the market place, evident over 25 to 30 years, have been for consumers to:

• Take more and shorter holidays
• Make decisions later, reducing the lead time
• Seek more individual offers and self-fulfilment
• Require better, immediate information about the product and the destination; and better service
• Become more experienced and knowledgeable about international travel
• Be more brand and experience aware; less loyal; more price sensitive and critical

These are all key factors in themselves, but over the past ten years, their impact has been multiplied by low cost international air travel, as well as rapidly increasing access to the Internet, which has enabled potential travellers to obtain instant, in-depth information and booking

Clearly this combination of factors has resulted in dramatic changes to the volume, nature and flows of tourism globally. Understanding the relative impact of each of the factors is an interesting field of debate.

Some key trends as background for the workshop presentations and discussions:

• Internet usage worldwide has grown 20 fold over the past ten years, to reach 1 billion by 2005. A further doubling of usage by 2010 has been forecast
• Usage has grown rapidly in all world regions, but particularly Asia Pacific, which is now dominant
• The high level of growth there is driven to a large extent by the growth of wireless access – proportionately much more important there than in other world regions
• A key trend for the rest of this decade and beyond will be the rapid growth in broadband usage of the Internet, which is highly relevant for both consumers and suppliers of travel and tourism services
• The online travel market has grown rapidly in the United States since the late 1990s and is expected to reach more than $70 billion in 2006 – accounting for 35% of all expenditure on travel/tourism
• In Europe, the rate of growth has lagged 2-3 years behind the US. Rapid growth did not start until 2000 and the value in 2006 is expected to be more than 40% lower than in the US
• In Asia Pacific, the online travel market is half the size of Europe’s, but is likely to grow disproportionately in future

The Web has become the predominant method of obtaining travel and tourism information in all major markets, except Russia, India and Mexico.