Last year, Gonzales S. predicted the end of Quick
Response (QR) codes due to an inefficient use in tourism and hospitality
industry in his article on e-tourisme
official website. Three years ago, a
study underlined the enthusiast around this tool. How can we explain this
change in such a short time? It was obviously and gradually becoming popular with
the craze of IT (Emek M., 2012). Tourism industry has not been left behind. Back
in 2012 the British company Econsultancy run a survey about it. Results showed
that over 163 corporate respondents, 67% of them planned first to invest in
mobile applications as mobile channels or technologies and then 48% of them in QR
codes as mobile channels or technologies the same year. The main question is to know the reason why
they use QR codes.
To
begin with, they allow users get more information about items via smartphones
or in general mobile devices. Smartphones read the content from the code
rapidly. Before all of this, users’ and suppliers’ main concern is security
issue. If there is no constraint, everyone can access to database and then they
can get product identification. QR codes contain so many characters. If we
would like to compare QR codes and 1D barcodes, QR codes are much better than
1D code. Indeed even if 30% of barcodes are damaged, we can read the content
from the scan.Then, QR codes in tourism contribute to
propose a new trendy experience to tourists. When people started to use smartphones
and mobile devices in general now, it has been leading to change users’ habits
and needs. QR codes have provided a luxury experience for tourists as well. To
catch the tourist’s attention, the system should be set up with reader software
system and then tourists can easily use QR codes information like web page,
photos or videos. They are particularly eager to use QR codes at every moments
of their journey on the booked room key card, on tourism spots even on menus. The
Cleveland Museum of Art and Bologna’s Museum of Archeology was one of the first
museums to use QR codes. For their audio tours covering its new galleries e.g.
Egyptian, Byzantine and medieval arts, as soon as the code is scanned, the
visitor is redirected to an online version of the audio tour (Emek M., 2012).
Furthermore if we go further in this article written
by Emek M. in 2012, it misses one key element. The most striking point at the
moment Emek M. published his article, he did not underline or not focus on the
role of QR code in Asian visitors’ habits. They are more active on social media
which can be associated to the use of QR code compared to Western visitors. We
can also wonder if this is not the reason why this is the so-called end of QR
codes in tourism by Gonzales previously. Indeed, If we have a look at Chinese
one, they are used to looking information through Wechat QR codes. Wechat is one of two main social networks in China with
Weibo. It is deeply hard to neglect it in their habits. For example a study run
this year by SKEMA Business School student in MSc Strategic Event and Tourism
Management on the behalf of Nice DMO in France underlined the key role of
Wechat QR code. Their study was a focus on Chinese visitors’ profile during the
Nice Carnival. This is the cultural event of the second French city destination
i.e. approximately 200, 000 visitors per year.
Results showed that the lack of Wechat QR codes or other codes targeting
the Chinese on the main city spots can contribute to a misunderstanding of the
event among the respondents. But this missing point can be explained by the
fact it was not so popular in Europe four years ago.
To
conclude, QR codes help visitors have access freely to information and
single-handedly. Tourism industry has been constantly changing and this system
illustrates one of the industry customers’ current habits.
Written by Kenan CETIN & Aurélie HONORE
Source:
Emek M., 2012, Usage of QR codes in Tourism Indusry,
School of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Dogus University, Turkey
Gonsalez S., 2015, Du
mauvais usage du QR codes, etourisme.info, France
Key information on Chineese visitors’ behaviors
retrieved from Nice Carnival Report 2016 written by Pulin Chen, Manon Gattegno,
Yimin Jıang, Aurelie Honore, Duc Nguyen and Jiangyo Zhu
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