Joining Up the Loosely Coupled

1
Joining Up the Loosely Coupled!

• eBSN Seminar, Tourism Stream
• Anna Pollock, DestiCorp
• Oslo, December 4th, 2007

2
Todays Agenda

• Overview Anna Pollock, DestiCorp
• Accessible Oslo Bodil Tzeitan, Visit Oslo
• Ireland Aileen OToole, AMAS for ITIC
• BIT Reiseliv Anna Pollock
• General Q A and Discussion

3
Focus

• How have publicly funded agencies and polices
  shaped and supported the tourism industry?
• How successful have we been in enabling
  innovation?
• How relevant have we been to our customers and
  suppliers?
• Some observations

4
Technology 1993-2007

• Web Sites, Home Pages
• Content ebrochures
• Commerce Transactions products to experiences
• Interoperability, standards, XML, OTA
• Mobilitylocation-based services, geo tagging
• Search, metasearch
• Community - Web 2.0 and The Long Tail

Technology leads, tourism follows!
5
Sought the Low Hanging Fruit

• Public sector likes order, hierarchy and control
  top down approaches
• Private Sector likes size, volume and has its own
  product fascination
• Left much fruit on the tree!

6
Public Sector

• Pride of Place Realpolitik, or why does
  tourism attract the politicians?!
• Too many DMOs
• Too many similar messages
• I did it my way
• Reinforce fragmentation
• Dilute resources
• Politicians need results so they do business with
  the big players and ignore the SME base
• From competition to co-opetition!

7
Private Sector show me the money!

• Airlines, GDS (Sabre, Amadeus, Cendant)
• OTAs (Expedia, Travelocity, LastMinute)
• Hotel Chains (Marriott, Hilton)
• Tour Operators (TUI)
• SMEs their time has come

8
Myth of Disintermediation
9
Current Challenges

• More distribution channels not less
• Higher distribution costs (overall) not lower
• Travel a commodity
• Many visitors unhappy online
• DMOs not moving quick enough not adjusting to
  market changes and new opportunities
• Inadequate competency
• Variable standards
• Oncoming redundancy (Google, Microsoft, Nokia)
• Oncoming obsolescence P2P
• New roles in future?