Innovation, Tourism and New Technologies

Hélène Delpy & Elodie Siméoni

The Travel & Tourism Industry is one of the most important for many countries all around the world. We should notice that this business is at last 2,000 years old and began when wealthy citizens of ancient Rome decided to spend their summer holidays away from their own city: they wanted to take trips to the countryside and the coast. Quickly, the travel & accommodation needs of the Romans were taken in consideration in order to offer the best products and services. But, this travel & tourism business ended with the decline of the empire. Then, the Travel & Tourism Industry had continued its expansion and evolution throughout the ages with new challenges, trends and needs for the travellers: for example, in the 18^th century, the needs and motivations for the travellers were the health and the culture. Thanks to the industrialisation in Europe, a middle class with a lot of increasing amount of free time has emerged and allowed entrepreneurs to start to build specific accommodations with specific infrastructures like roads, ferries and carriages. That was the beginning of the Tourism Industry such as an International Industry.

And such as an International Industry, all the Travel & Tourism Companies nowadays have to deal with its complexity. The competition in this sector is really hard and important. The increasing pressure that exists in this sector forces the tourism businesses to continually reinvent themselves to satisfy the continually changing needs and expectations of their demanding consumers. A business, during its life cycle, will always be influenced by trends in consumer demand, the competition on its market, the economic, social and politic changes in the countries it operates and by the technological advancements. We know that innovation and the implementation of new technologies within an existing business can help to solve problems and assist managers in their decisions in order to respond to the actual changing environments. In the Tourism Industry, “Innovation” refers to the development and implementation of ideas or concepts that will enhance the consumer experience to improve the existing services and products or to improve daily comfort. We should notice that “Innovation” is not mainly about creativity but more about ideas to solve a problem, to add-value and to identify efficient ways of delivering services or products.

Nowadays, the information communication technology is used in all the tourism companies for many tasks. The environment in the Tourism Industry has been really influenced by the revolution of Internet and the new forms of the E-commerce. Information Communication Technologies (ICT) are used for many reasons in businesses: for the advertisement, the promotion, the distribution & sales, for the operational efficiency or the consumer management. The most important things to be considerate for the Travel & Tourism Companies that would like to implement ICT in their businesses are:

• Internet is a key tool for a lot of companies for sales & marketing and communication with stakeholders.
• Not all technologies can be appropriate for all the companies: at first, they have to identify their needs and the different technologies in order to choose the best one for their own businesses.
• For a very good success: if a company wants to implement an Information and Communication Technology, the managers should considerate that it can require a very good level of ICT skills.
• To anticipate the possibility of ICT failures seems to be essential for all the companies: that is why it could be useful to elaborate “risk and recovery” plan.
• Tourism Operators should remain up-to-date with other technological systems in addition to the Internet (Such as credit & banking facilitation, E-commerce…)

In the following French article (http://www.karinemiron.com/tourisme-nouvelles-technologies) the author is talking about the importance and the necessity to innovate in the Tourism Industry. In fact, she says that this is a sector where the competition is more and more aggressive and to innovate nowadays is not just an option but an obligation! She is adding that innovation is not just to develop a lot of new technologies: companies can just use or distribute an existing tourism product or service but with a new way to do it, in order to be special.

In this article you can discover the latest innovations (the article has been written on the 5^th of November, 2008). Such as the SAMAP: software that allows the visitors to customize their ways of visits thanks to a computer or a mobile phone. The Visioglobe which is a software in 3D: on its mobile phone, the consumer can visualize in real time the place that he wants to discover or visit.

The author is talking about the virtual visits that exist on a lot of websites and their impacts on the consumer behaviour and their decisions making process.

Actually, the interest of this article, dated from 2008, is that the author was already aware of the fact that new technologies like mobile phones and the internet are essential and have to be taken in account in the marketing strategy of any company. The web developers, new technology companies were already working on new ways of thinking his way of thinking, planning and travelling through applications, 3D and “virtual reality” 3 years ago. Today, we can find articles about those new technologies every day, we talk more and more about mobile technologies but we mustn’t forget that it’s not so new...!

Sources:

http://www.sustainabletourismonline.com/

A Brief History of Tourism

http://www.english-magazine.org/index.php/business-english/483-a-brief-history-of-tourism-julys-business-english-articles.html

by Kevin Watson