Searching for the Future: The Forum on Technology and Change

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Searching for the Future The Forum on
Technology and Change

• Daniel R. Fesenmaier
• National Laboratory for Tourism and eCommerce
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

University of Illinois April, 2002
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Futuring The Impact of Technology

• We overestimate the page of progress near term
  and under estimate progress long term.
• Bill Gates

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Tourism on the Internet

• Search on NorthernLight.com Sept. 20, 2001
  Travel 16,244,629 websites
• Search on AltaVista.com Sept. 20, 2001 Travel
  51,158,214 web pages
• Search on Yahoo!.com Sept. 20, 2001 Travel
  26,410 categories

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Consumer inquiries
Callers
Mail
Website users
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Use of Government Web sites
58 of Net Users 68 million Americans
Source Pew Internet American Life, 2002
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Everyday things

• E-business is business..
• Sawhney M. and J. Zabin (2001). The seven steps
  to Nirvana Strategic insights into eBusiness
  transformation, McGraw- Hill, New York.

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Winning strategy and change

• No winning strategy lasts forever
• No fixed law seems to determine the length of
  time during which any sing species or any single
  genus endures.

S. Godin, Survival is not enough Zooming,
evolution and the future of your company, 2002
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Change is the Future

• Pleading economy.
• A shift in balance of power from the employer to
  employee I predict that companies in this
  10-year period will go out of business, not
  because they arent good at providing products or
  services, but because theyre not good at
  recruiting and retaining employees.

Faith Popcorn and A. Hanft, A Dictionary of the
Future, 2001
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Five trends affecting travel.

• The continuing speed and sophistication of
  information technology.
• The continuing growth in the use and uses of
  information technology in tourism.
• The changing forms of information technology as a
  media for communication.
• The emergence of the new consumer.
• The emergence of experience as the foundation for
  defining tourism products.

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Trend 1. The continuing speed and
sophistication of information
technology

• Starting with PC just 20 years ago IBM 4.7 MHz
  64 K RAM 8088 ---- 2.5 GHz with 2 gigabyte of RAM
• Moores Law leads to continued
• growth in speed.
• Growth of human centric
• computing where the
• computer becomes invisible.
• Innovation will focus more on empowering
  individuals within the framework of human
  experiences.

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Trend 2. The continuing growth in the use and
uses of information technology in
tourism

• Growth of the Internet use
• Changing demographics of users
• Changing uses of Internet

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Trend 3. The changing forms of information
technology

• Internet is different.
• Increasing use of interactive systems.
• Increasing focus on entertainment gaming to
  increase involvement.

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Trend 4. The new consumer

• Individualistic
• Involved
• Independent
• Informed

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Trend 5. Experience as the foundation for
defining tourism products

• Tourism is.
• Experience

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Implications Non traditional becomes

• Anyplace, anytime, anyway
• Dynamic pricing
• Individualized products based upon detailed
  knowledge of individual customers.
• Systems that better match the way people think
  focusing on the needs and experiences desired.
• Customer relationships/conversations drive
  revenue - Multi-way communication leading to a
  co-production of pretrial experiences.

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Are you ready?

• Recent eCommerce surveys show that the biggest
  challenges businesses face are organization-relate
  d (Andersen Consulting, 2000).
• Recent surveys of American CVBs indicate they
  largely ignore the opportunities created through
  ecommerce. Most use the web to publish a
  brochure and communicate through email.
• Survey of Canadian tourism industry documents the
  lack of knowledge/ability and leadership in
  tourism industry to effectively use technology as
  a competitive tool.

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Todays Agenda

• Thinking about the future
• Nosh Contractor, Professor UIUC
• The power of the network technology and
  new organizational forms
• Changes facing the industry DMO perspective
• The changes being made
• The role of technology