Anders Mogensen
Essential strategies in a travel 2.0 environment
Anders Boelskifte Mogensen is a founding partner at Seismonaut http://www.seismonaut.com, a strategic innovation consultancy based in Denmark. At Seismonaut Anders helps clients within the travel industry develop strategies for the moments of engagement where people, products, services and technology meet, both online and offline. Anders has a MA in Information Science from the University of Aarhus.
Abstract
As people from around the world become increasingly conversant with the Internet, the enormous potential of the Internet is slowly being unveiled. At the same time it is becoming clear to all what differentiates this new media platform from traditional media.
In traditional media the travelers were receivers of information in a closed one-way communication system. Online the travelers are part of an interactive communication process that cannot be controlled. As active users, friends and followers, travelers are taking on a new role online, and contributing as never seen before. I grew up in the 80’s. This was long before there was anything called the Internet. One summer my parents took me on a trip around California. Excited to know more about the trip and possibly also wanting to convince my parents to include a number of theme parks in the agenda I remember mailing letters to several of the theme parks in California asking them to please send me a brochure on their offerings. When I finally got a mailed reply (this could easily take a week or two) I would study the brochure until I knew everything about the theme park including all the practicalities about how to get there, where to park and so on.
It might be hard to remember but before we were all connected to the Internet, it was hard to get good information about a particular holiday destination, hotel or tourist attraction. We all relied on travel agents who could help us, adds in the travel section of the Sunday paper, printed guidebooks like Lonely Planet or self-gathering methods like the example above.
In the mid nineties something started changing. In 1995 British Midland became the first airline in the world to provide online reservations service, complete with an online payment option. The traveler now took on a new and more active role in the tourism ecosystem. Suddenly he could design and purchase a personalized travel experience online.
The shift from operating offline to online offered the travel and tourism industry a great wealth of new opportunities. It became easier for the industry to market a certain destination or hotel for the traveler it became easier to research and compare prices and thereby make an informed decision before heading off on a holiday. But it also meant that the industry had to reorganize itself to meet the requirements of operating online.
Today yet another dramatic change is challenging the travel and tourism industry. A raft of new socially oriented Internet services are giving even more power to the consumer challenging the power balances between industry and consumer. This development, which is also known as Travel 2.0, does not refer to any specific change in the technology of the Internet, but rather a change in the behavior of the traveler.
The authority is no longer the travel agent or even the media. It's us. We're empowered with the tools that enable us to review and share our travel experiences online on social networks and websites, blogging, twittering uploading pictures and video, live- and life streaming as we travel on along.
This talk will present the results of a yearlong research project focusing on the digital traveler and how the travel industry can develop essential digital strategies to capitalize on the opportunities of travel 2.0.
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