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  Introduction to the debates
Innovation and welcome: can tourism be made both more human and more competitive?

Prof. Peter KELLER - President of the Scientific Committee of the Tourism Summits - Director for Tourism, SECO, Bern, Switzerland

Slideshow

How can one make visitors' stays at a resort unforgettable so they are happy and willing to return

 

INTRODUCTION

The welcome as a human element of the tourism offer

The warm welcome of outsiders into a community is one of the oldest cultural conventions. It unites residents and visitors. This effort at social integration by host communities is gaining in importance in a world that is becoming increasingly multicultural. It acts as a check on xenophobia and contributes to understanding between peoples.

While we are treating the theme of welcome in the 7th Chamonix Mont-Blanc Tourism Summits, we are not talking about this social progress. Rather, we are discussing the socio-economic aspects of the welcome. This could be considered the emotional and intangible element in the interface between visitors, service providers, and the host environment. It is implicitly reflected in the prices of tourism services. A smile costs service providers nothing; it is free for visitors, but encourages them to pay more for a service.

The objective of the 7th Chamonix Mont-Blanc Tourism Summits is to consider whether there are innovations in the area of the welcome. The answer is not an obvious one. An innovation is by definition something unique and clearly identifiable which profoundly and creatively changes the world while destroying the usual patterns that people tend to perpetuate and that they don't want to see disappear.

General trends and tourism innovation

Innovation is often considered magical. Basic innovations crop up in a surprising way. On the other hand, applied innovations have become a routine production factor that leads to growth and well-being. They are the trump card of the market economies of developed nations. Innovations have changed the world since the collapse of the Ancien Régime and the industrial revolution. Property rights, free trade, technical progress, and protection against abuses of power have allowed the innovative involvement of new entrepreneurial resources and capital.

Tourism has greatly taken advantage of the well-being brought about by the industrial society. It owes its popularisation to the paid vacations granted to workers, a wide-reaching social innovation imposed by Léon Blum's government in the last century. Since then, new technological revolutions have contributed to the fact that fewer and fewer industrial firms are producing ever more added value with fewer workers. This increase in productivity has allowed the development of the service sector and the genesis of the leisure society.

Tourism has adapted basic and applied innovations that were originally produced by other sectors. The great innovations in the area of transportation, such as the railroad, the automobile, and the jet airplane have made it possible to develop the tourism resources of the entire world. To control the growing tourist flow, the tourist economy created innovative industrial structures, such as tour operators, charter flights, hotel chains, non-hotel (or "parahotel") accommodation, rental car businesses, cable cars, and board sports.

Innovation in services

On the other hand, we are not sure that there are innovations at the level of products or service provision. Changes in services come slowly. They are not the follow-up to targeted research and development carried out by a scientific laboratory or by professionals. They are made by small steps within the companies themselves. Innovations seem to be a function of the learning processes within companies. They do not seem to produce great gains in productivity.

However, one would be wrong to think that there are no innovations in the domain of services. Firstly, a service is not only marked by the contact between the customer and staff or by its intangible aspect. It is also always linked to a physical medium bearing the innovation, such as an airplane or a form of accommodation. Furthermore, computing standardizes and industrializes service processes in an innovative way.

These innovations in process have increased the functional productivity of services in management and in the organisation of travel, the stay, and the event. They now make it possible to perform what is called the "customisation" or adaptation of a service to the individual needs of the visitor, and thecreation of unforgettable emotional experiences.

Tourism as a dream factory

Tourism was one of the trail-blazers in the application of technological innovations in computing to the information and reservation systems of civil aviation and accommodation. It is also the driving force of the experience economy.

The experience economy is considered a new quaternary sector that redistributes the additional gains in productivity under the guise of well-being, understood in a wide sense--physical, intellectual, emotional, even spiritual. Consequently, tourism is living increasingly on the symbiosis between high-tech computing and the creation of unique experiences.  

The tourism economy currently has the knowledge and techniques necessary to produce dreams. It is becoming a true dream factory, which revolutionises the welcome by producing unforgettable experiences. It can be considered as the great innovation in welcome. Tourist services or groups of services are imagined, designed, staged, and produced.

QUESTIONS TO ADDRESS

External factors of the welcome: the host environment

The welcome includes the intangible elements of a service provision. Club Med has broken new ground by creating a new occupational category, the "gentils organisateurs" or "G.O.s" (sometimes called "gracious hosts" in English) who do their utmost to spare guests from boredom and to minimise the negative externalities of their stay, like an individual visitor's isolation or inconvenience.

The welcome also depends on the host environment at the destination.  All parties in contact with visitors create this environment. It is marked by the esprit de corps of all those who work in the sector, by the tourism consciousness of the resident population, and by the authorities' understanding of tourism interests.

The recruiting of workers available to deploy an effort, a hospitable local population, and authorities who understand the needs of visitors are all important external factors for the economy that depends on tourism, without their true contribution to the income of a given resort actually being known.

The welcome as a competitive asset: visitors' expectations

First it is necessary to know what welcome tomorrow's guests want, and what can be offered to them. The welcome can be shaped according to guests' expectations and it can follow fashion or offer something unique and different. It is not easy to guess the dreams of individualistic visitors from pluralist societies. However, some general trends emerge. They make it possible to offer innovative services that are accepted by the market.

It is obvious that, in developed countries, the quality of the welcome was neglected during the phase of rapid growth, with its standardisation and industrialisation of services. Products and services have not been sufficiently innovated and improved. People have not sufficiently internalised the advantages of a high level of development, such as an infrastructure that functions, an environment still intact, or a multitude of cultural attractions that make a given site interesting. 

The high level of development by which traditional destinations benefit allow not only a sophisticated technical organisation of travel and the holiday, but also investment for the preservation and maintenance of all the cultural elements of the past. These destinations can simultaneously offer superior quality and comfort while integrating the uniqueness of the places into their products. Therefore, they respond to tourism's two general trends: a high standard of quality and the preservation of the site's traditions.

The physical reflection of the welcome's vision: architecture and design

The atmosphere as an important element of the welcome puts its mark on visitors' experience. It is the physical reflection of the service providers' vision of welcome, and must correspond to the visitors' leisure culture. Today the form and image of a product or a destination are just as important as their content or utility. 

Architecture and design express the visions that mark the new society of experience. It is not by chance that the hotel industry and tourism, which produce experiences, are presently a special field of experimentationfor prominent architects, like Jean Nouvel, Norman Foster, and many others.

The form and image also express the quality of a service or group of services offered by the resort. Promotion alters them in order to forge what is called the brand image. Architecture and design are therefore nothing other than indicators that make apparent for guests the intangible and immeasurable aspects of potential tourism experiences.

Dramatising the welcome: a fad or a profound change?

The dramatisation and creation of unforgettable experiences is a great challenge for a destination. This is a strategic innovation that requires complex management by service providers and the resort. It is a matter of exploiting the existing attractions to create a dream factory.

If we want to produce dreams, it is necessary to imagine what potential visitors want. It is necessary to be familiar with their expectations and their prejudices. It is possible to create icons from this knowledge, such as a modern museum, or to exploit an existing attraction. Finally, one must define what it is that one wants to promote to the clientele.

Once in place, one must welcome the visitor and present services, like a candlelight dinner or an experience such as a concert by a well-known orchestra.

Managing the welcome: a complex task for destinations

How can one manage the emotional content of experience in the provision of service or even in a resort? The fragmented structures of traditional destinations hardly lend themselves to offering visitors holistic experiences. However, destinations are "veritable stage sets". They could define the attractions of the site, and create events and emotions for the visitors.

Those doing the staging could be tourist offices and service providers. Support from local authorities seems necessary in order to give private initiatives some recognition. Finally, it is hardly conceivable to present events without the voluntary participation of the resident population, as many examples in sports and culture show.

Moreover, it should not be ignored that one can learn to produce dreams, as has been shown by the creation of new occupations in the management and development of cultural and natural resources. Many occupational training products enable one to acquire the knowledge necessary for presenting services and entire resorts.

Welcome facilities: the problem of being small

A few years ago, the slogan "Small is beautiful" made the rounds. It asserts that small and medium-sized businesses would hold an advantage in guaranteeing a high quality in the area of personalised services. In fact, small and medium-sized businesses are more flexible when it comes to adapting to the individual needs of a given client. However, a moral hazard exists. The interaction between the service provider and the guest can break down. Furthermore, loyal guests are not inclined to change, and can prevent change brought through innovation.

A small size also has other drawbacks. Production is expensive, due to lack of economy of scale. Small and medium-sized businesses suffer from cost disease. They must raise prices to make up for losses in productivity in relation to other sectors, which restricts their competitiveness. The equipment and services that small businesses can offer to visitors are limited. The salaries in the hotel and food industry in resorts are often clearly lower than the average of salaries paid in other sectors.

As the international travel and tourism industry shows, larger enterprises can produce better value and offer more to guests. It is therefore in the interest of small and medium-sized businesses to increase their capacities and to acquire other businesses in order to offer attractive services at decent prices, to pay competitive salaries, and to obtain more economical financing for investment. It is necessary to overcome the disadvantages of a business' small size through horizontal cooperation within the sector, and through vertical cooperation at the destination.

Personalising the welcome: the essential level of service

The control of the large flow of visitors and the popularising of tourism have obliged service providers to outsource services, as the consumer goods industry has done in the "do it yourself" field. "Self service" became established below the parahotel sector, which offers no or very few services. It took the form of a buffet and the standardised and systematised production in the food trade.

The advantages of "self service" tourism are obvious. Tourism productivity is increasing. Production costs and prices can be lowered, which improves businesses' competitiveness. The lack of little-qualified manpower is felt less. Visitors feel free to use the services that suit them.

However, with the increase in well-being, there is, generally speaking, a return to the consumption of services. Furthermore, the general trend towards well-being also suggests a return of services. The fate of destinations will increasingly depend on a judicious balance between service and "self service".

CONCLUSION

If the welcome succeeds, unforgettable experiences can be created, which encourage visitors to return. They will return because they feel better after their stay at the resort.

Slideshow

Sources :

Keller, P., 7th Tourism Summits, Introductory Report, October 2005
Keller P., Innovation and Sustainable Development, new conference cycle, 2005-2007, May 2005