Mobile | Owen Organization

How the iPhone transformed the tourism biz.

Sitting in tourism planning meetings you hear people say “let’s do what we did 10 years ago. It worked then.” Yes, it would be nice to do the same things. There’s something comforting in that, but a recent anniversary made me think that we just can’t roll back time.

The iPhone is 10 years old. It’s not the only smartphone, and wasn’t the first. But it has, like it or not, become the standard bearer for that kind of device. Not everyone has a smartphone, but enough tourists do that it has brought massive changes.

Just looking at the travel, tourism and hospitality businesses, what has the smartphone changed?

People still use printed airline boarding passes but a huge number use electronic passes. Flying into the US you can use a free app called ‘Mobile Passport’ authorized by Customs and Boarder Protection that allows you to pre-file your information and breeze through immigration and customs. I use it. It’s superb.

Where to stay, eat or what to do? TripAdvisor and similar sites offer peer reviews that people tend to trust over ads by hotels, restaurants or attractions. All in your hand, on your smartphone, now.

Book your accommodation? No problem. On your phone at the last minute to get the best deal. I’ve seen people sit outside hotels using their phone to negotiate and book. Same applies to tours and activities. These are usually booked within 48 hours of arrival and online sites like TripShock make booking easy, and the tickets are on your phone – no paper. All you have to do is guess that the weather will be OK. No guessing, DarkSky or a dozen other apps will give you accurate, hour by hour forecasts.

How do you get to where you’re going? Built in GPS with turn-by-turn directions, no matter if you’re driving, walking or on public transport. Traffic reports too – yeh, 98 is still blocked.

Don’t bother to carry a camera. Your phone has a camera that makes yesterday’s versions obsolete. Postcards too. You now share your travels to social media friends the world over and you can post your review of the restaurant you just experienced. In places like Jackaccuda’s you can scan a little flag in your meal and see where and when your fish was caught, and who by!

Don’t want to drive? Book an Uber, from your phone of course.

No transistor radios on the beach anymore. You carry your music library with you, and stream what you don’t own. Oh, movies and TV too.

That’s only scratching the surface. Virtual tours of museums and historic sites; payment from your phone; on line shopping; news, books. Oh, and it’s a phone too!

If those are the changes for tourists, think of the changes for hotels, rentals, airlines, car rentals, attractions, restaurants even, in our area, Charter Boat Captains.

Our tourism experience has changed massively in 10 years. But wait, coming soon, virtual and enhanced reality. I’m excited. How about you?

Generational disruption and other buzz words…..

An old joke in the ‘80s and ‘90s was “ I bought a video recorder that was ‘so simple, a 5 year-old could program it’. I ended up having to get my 5 year-old to program it as I couldn’t’.”

That five year old is now likely a Millennial generation adult and is having a major disruptive effect on the whole of the tourism industry.

The Millennial generation now comprises around 25% of the US population according to the US Census Bureau and they travel a great deal. PhoCusWright reports that 71% take at least one trip of three nights or less, 42% travel internationally (compared with 28% of older travelers), and they are twice as likely as older generations to take longer trips of 14 nights or more.

The Millennial generation also travel differently than previous generations in that they don’t always stay in hotels. They stay with friends and they use services like Airbnb. They don’t always use taxis, car services or rental cars – they use Uber and Lyft.

Unlike previous generations, they may take more trips but spend less. They are more connected, with 90% owning a smart phone – compared to 57% of older travelers – which 66% use to shop or buy travel. They use a wide variety of sources for their research and booking from OTAs, review sites like TripAdvisor and of course peer advice shared through a whole raft of social networking.

According to Samantha Worgull of ‘Hotel News Now’ and PhoCusWright, Millennials tend to book at the last minute with 23% booking less than one week before departure.

They seek experiences and want to share those with their peers and families through social networks. Experience is the whole raison d’etre for their traveling. No matter if this foodie, eco-tourism, adventure or pure excitement. The simple fact is that this group want to do more than lie on a beach.

To return to the old joke about video recorders, those same adults who sought advice from their children are now Boomers and are again seeking advice from their Millennial offspring. They want to where and how to buy their travel. They want reassurance that Airbnb or Uber are safe.

Marcello Gasdia, senior analyst of consumer research at PhoCusWright said during a recent conference “Millennials have been the trend setters, they are the ambassadors of technology.”

So, this is the disruptive influence the Millennial generation is having on the whole tourism industry:

They book late
They look for value
They seek experiences
They share their trips with others
They research intensively
They influence older travelers

How does this affect the traditional providers of tourism products?

For airlines and hotels the loyalty of the Millennial traveler cannot be guaranteed. Many fewer are members of loyalty programs, 22% compared with 41% of older travelers. The inference is that they may not trust the advertising and promotion of established companies blindly. They are more likely to take advice from friends and independent reviews, and change their booking habits accordingly.

Travel agents as we knew them are largely a thing of the past, particularly in the USA. In Europe and Canada the situation is slightly different but certainly the old style travel agent is dead. In their continuing quest for value, On-Line Travel Agents (OTAs like Expedia) are well in the mix to seek bargains and value. Anything that is not an ‘experience’ like a conventional hotel room or condo becomes a commodity, to be booked wherever the best deal can be found – preferably at the last moment.

The last minute tourist is still looking for the destination experience, the tour (hopefully not conventional but personally led by a local!) or activity will probably be left until arrival when the weather and local area has been checked out. Tour and activity booking specialist TripShock! confirm that most of their bookings are made after a guest arrives in the destination. Where does the Millennial tourist find the information? Again, peer advice or advice of a local. Local tourist boards (CVBs, Chambers of Commerce and similar organizations) are seemingly trustworthy sources, particularly in areas where the likes of TripAdvisor or Expedia do not have much content (Virtually everywhere except places like Orlando, New York or Las Vegas!).

The problem with local tourist organizations is that on the whole they further refer visitors to individual tour providers for follow up. Given the attention span of website visitors, they want to get advice and book there an then, not have to make lists and do even more research.

Experience from tourist organizations in New Orleans shows that if they offer advice and reviews and then enable on-site, immediate booking it results in more bookings for local businesses, happy tourists and a bonus of commission payments to the tourist board.

Disruption is a current buzz-word, but the Millennial generation has disrupted life in the tourism industry worldwide. Not only by their different travel habits and use of technology; their search for ‘experience’ and value, but also their influence on the other generations of traveler. Particularly the Boomer generation. The important factor with this group is that they have more opportunity to travel and have a higher disposable income. They also learn fast when it comes to technology.

The Boomers also learnt, back in the day, to listen to their offspring……

Not willing to just sit on the beach...... — Not willing to just sit on the beach……

Can you tell me the way…..

A tourist was driving through the beautiful Irish countryside and obviously lost. He he saw a local sitting by the side of the road and stopped to ask directions. ‘Excuse me’ said the tourist. ‘Can you give me directions of how to get to Dublin?’. The local considered for a while, and said ‘Well, I wouldn’t start from here’.

That probably is exactly the situation many destination marketing organizations (DMOs) find themselves in today.

In the USA and probably many other countries, DMOs grew out of the the local chamber of commerce – the result of concerned local businesses wanting to grow tourist visitation. Eventually, they decided that the skills needed were beyond the chamber and local government were persuaded to take over the role and formed a Convention and Visitor’s Bureau or local tourist board. To fund this they either committed an element of their budget derived from local taxation, or they collected a tourist or bed tax from visitors. Either way, the DMO is now normally administered by a group of interested and knowledgable local citizens, and ultimately controlled by local politicians – City Councilors, County Commissioners or a whole host of other titles, depending on where you’re located.

In an ideal world, you’d set up this organization before any tourists arrived, and before any infrastructure had been built. Your group of advisors and Councilors would all have significant knowledge of tourism, marketing, commercial and environmental issues – and common sense (the least common element in the Universe!) Then you could influence decisions like ‘no buildings to exceed the height of a palm tree’, ‘visitors must not leave items on the beach overnight’, ‘create sufficient car parking to anticipate demand in 20 years’ – you know the sort of thing.

But it’s not an ideal world.

For a start the infrastructure wasn’t planned. Like Topsy it just ‘grewed’. No one really planned much further ahead than next season. The one big hotel in town became the dominant commercial interest and was then bought out by a Chain.

In the ski resort, the lift system was already 30 years old.

To cap it all, the city elected representatives are all retired hydraulic engineers (I have nothing but admiration for hydraulic engineers, the occupation just randomly flew into my mind!) or lawyers. No knowledge of tourism, commercial imperatives, associated technology or marketing, no matter what their other undoubted qualifications may be.

Add to this toxic mix the speed of change in travel technology, emergence of social media, the rise of peer reviews, changing tourist demographics and worldwide political changes and you have, to over cliché this particular pudding, a perfect storm.

In our part of the world (Northwest Florida) this has been highlighted by a couple of recent events.
One is the emergence of Airbnb which has put a strain on how and if Tourist Development Tax (Bed Tax for want of a better name) is collected. This article (http://ow.ly/7QMp302ESAv) demonstrates how Santa Rosa and Escambia Counties are trying to cope. It’s almost as if the Airbnb concept has suddenly appeared. Uber has had the same effect on taxi regulation around the world.
The other issue revolved around the running of a country music event in Okaloosa County. The idea was suggested that the county should run the event as a trial to provide business for the local convention center. If nothing else, they would break-even and learn lessons for future events.

The lessons learned were that the county were hamstrung by their (possibly understandable) complex and long winded purchasing and contract writing system; that having to refer everything to two committees including the Board of County Commissioners slowed the whole system to a snails pace; and that really they should leave such things to people who knew what they were doing.

Oh, and they made a staggering loss on the event.

The latter example resulted in the sensible decision that in future, such events should be outsourced to the private sector. A good lesson learned and kudos to the people involved for acknowledging this.

So, how do we move forward?

Speed and agility are the watchwords for tourism today. DMOs must be able to turn on a dime (or sixpence, depending on your location) to react to changes, developments and opportunities.

The nature of government is that it’s unlikely (though not impossible) to have the knowledge, awareness and nimbleness to recognize and react in a timely manner.

A local government agency that I know has taken a year to create a new website, and it hasn’t been implemented yet. They’re in tourism and have lost a whole season, possibly two. At the same time a private company has created a state of the art website, with different versions for smartphones and tablets; included video, web cams and on-line booking; acquired partners; and all in two months from pulling the trigger. The site will go live on schedule and on budget.

True, some private companies are as slow as government (An accommodation provider has taken 4 years to change a website and no mobile version. Hello?), and not all local government is unresponsive. But you get my point.

The suggestion is that government run DMOs should at least partner with private companies if not outsource the whole business. Visit Florida is a great example of a public/private partnership, although some politicians do want to be more involved which is a questionable move.

It’s a conversation well worth having between the politicos and private enterprise. Locals need to get involved too.

We probably shouldn’t have started the journey here, but that’s the where we are. We just need to get our directions, decide on our route and follow it – fast.

How Micro-Moments are reshaping the Travel Customer Journey – Google report.

Google have just published a report that examines how people plan for travel. It examines the devices (that’s definitely multiple devices!) that they use and when they use them. The report is certainly well worth reading if you’re in any way involved with the tourism, hospitality or associated industries.

It runs to 41 pages and it hones in to what Google terms ‘micro-moments’. It certainly shows that habits are changing fast. If you’re not seeing the rise in mobile bookings in your business, believe me you will – and sooner than you expect. currently 40% of travel site visits in the US come from mobile devices. You’d better make sure that your site handles mobile in a clean and efficient way.

The report has a number of case studies which are worth taking time to study.

These Micro Moments break down into ‘I want to get away moments’, ‘Time to make a plan moments’, ‘Let’s book it moments’, and ‘Can’t wait to explore moments’ . Depending on your business, you could fit into one or more of those. Be assured that you’re not the only site people are looking at for your particular moment.

To be successful you need to actually be in the booking space, and you need to offer a useful service. You need to be part of the ‘experience’.

52% of travelers with smartphones said they’d switch sites or apps if a site took too long to load. 45% said they’d switch if it takes too many steps to book or get desired information. Have you looked at your booking process on a smart phone recently?

Some other stats –

Only 23% of leisure travelers are confident that they can find all of the same hotel and flight information on their smartphone that they can on their desktop.

2/3 of leisure travelers double check prices on a desktop after shopping for flights on a smartphone.

Over 50% make the switch to double check hotel prices.

94% of leisure travelers switch between devices as they plan or book a trip. Where does that leave your tracking systems?

View Google’s report here: http://ow.ly/PaFe302fl37

There’s more and we’re happy to consult on this and other similar issues. Contact us for more information.