Theme1: T & Tech

So, what ARE the links between Tourism and Technology?

Why does it matter?

What does it mean for our industry today and for the industry of tomorrow?

….. and I do not just mean our latest informtion and communication technologies (ICT  / TICE) ….

Let’s look at the ‘Big Picture’ first…….at something I call ‘Blending the Business’.

This is essentially a conceptual diagramme which seeks to represent what all businesses are actually seeking to do.  However, one might equally take the word ‘Businesses’ and replace it by: tourism resorts and regions, the Tourism industry (if we believe it can be argued that there is such a thing!), a nation as a Tourism destination: effectively we are all striving in our different ways, using different terminology, to achieve the same thing: the best possible ‘fit’ between the external business environment and the internal resources of the organisation/destination:

So, as you can see, technology is a feature of the external business environment.

This represents:

• the developments going on worldwide in research and development labs the world over….. there are also experiments going on in the weightless environment of space currently which may also have a direct bearing on new technologies that we may find ourselves wearing, carrying and using in the years to come.
• investments by both the public sector AND the private sector
• the harnessing of the creative genius of scientists, engineers, inventors with vision, courage and tenacity, blessed with the belief that they might be able to change things for all of us to make things better, easier, quicker, cheaper, richer…..

Of course, only a small proportion of things make it ‘out of the lab’ and into the workplace, our homes and our lives, but they can and DO change our lives, and usually they represent a step in a continuing process of technological development.

Let’s give you a sense of technology and its development in the time of the age of steam and the impacts and implications it had. Over to Jacob Bronowski from his fabulous 1970s series (which has never been bettered) called The Ascent of Man.  This from a man who lost all but all his relations in the concentration camps, invented smokeless coal for the British National Coal Board, worked out the likely intelligence/capability of the Taung Baby fossil skull using mathematics and had the courage to change career and focus on biology after the development of the Bomb.

Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast over nature. »

James Burke also explained the ‘Connections’ between things (especially technology) pa rticularly well. Again a programme from the 1970s – it looks dated, but the insight is remarkable.

Exercise 1.  Past and Present Technologies and Tourism Impact.

Let’s look at a few innovations, consider where they came from and nature and scale of their impacts upon and implications for Tourism products, services, providers and customers:

1. The harnessing of steam power
2. The telephone  (not mobile)
3. The internal combustion engine
4. The jet engine
5. The pill and the condom (préservatif)
6. The Internet
7. Modern cell-phones

Exercise 2.  Technologies of Tomorrow…. where is ICT taking us?

If we have access to PCs, research for yourself what is going on in technological terms and address the following questions.

1. In terms of the technologies we do see already emerging today (not just ICT) – what do you think are the likely impacts and implications thereof for Tourism?  AND
2. Taking a tourism business / sector / operator of your choice: if you were a manager therein, what would you be seeking to do / to change to address the threats and seize the potential opportunities presented by such technologies
3. Have a look at research centres and ‘futurologists’ and what they are saying about the way technologies may affect us in the less immediate future: how do you see the tourism impacts and implications.   [You can think wildly here if you wish – maybe virtual reality will have come on so much that we really can enjoy a VR holiday [Shwartzenneger in Total Recall /  Reeves in the Matrix]…. maybe it will cost too much to go on holiday anyway….. maybe the environmental damage caused by air travel will be unthinkable….. ]

Exercise 3.  Building Your Own ICT Information System for Tourism.

OK, so you have bought into the idea that:

• technology is critical to Tourism
• technology and your ability to address its possibilities may be the key to your success as a Tourism Manager
• technology can help make organisations leaner, fitter and more competitive

But how are you going to keep tracks of this technology as it changes?  How can you keep channels of communication open so that you get to hear about appropriate innovations early enough to create competitive advantage?

TASK: Define for yourself as a Tourism manager a network of contacts, information  links, connections and affiliations which will help you to remain in the forefront of technological advance and adopt the best opportunities as early as possible so as to give you ‘first-mover advantage’.