5E: New Technology

Introduction

Customers are changing. So is how they access visitor information and how and when they expect information to be delivered. Increasing Internet use, availability of broadband and mobile phone advances mean customers can source the best deals and seek customised information – all the time raising their expectations of information services.

Online train ticket agency www.thetrainline.com uses the term "mobile generation", described as:

• age group 25-34
• professionals working in the private sector
• frequent house movers.

They seek convenience, control and freedom with independent choices and ease of access. Mobile generation customers prefer to buy from their home or office: the ability to do so represents the highest level of service.

International business futures forecaster Professor Richard Scase uses the terms "digital immigrants" and "digital natives". A digital native is a person who has grown up with digital technology while digital immigrant is an individual who grew up without digital technology and adopted it later. Visitor information provision must be ready to meet the needs of both.

Destination Management Systems

Destination Management Systems (DMS) offer the convenience of delivering online visitor information within a couple of clicks, at any time. Kept updated, they provide impartial, accurate information and should be regarded by customers as coming from a trusted source.

For example, rich data input at a local level populates EnglandNet, which is a national distribution system for linking data and marketing Britain’s tourism providers. It provides tourism product information to www.enjoyengland.com and www.visitbritain.com. It is not a consumer facing website itself.

In turn, this data feeds into regional websites and VisitBritain’s national and international websites. As well as powering websites, DMS technology feeds stand-alone interactive kiosks. As these become more prevalent, so will the ways in which customers access information.

Interactive kiosks

Tourist Information Kiosks meet a demand for detailed, area-specific information in a variety of locations which don’t offer a full service T/VIC, or where destinations wish to supplement the service by offering timely information located in areas of high footfall.

Huntingdonshire has introduced kiosks to serve towns without a staffed T/VIC. Three kiosks were placed in St Ives, Ramsey and Huntingdon. Birmingham uses kiosks to supplement the city’s staffed visitor information as part of an overhaul of the visitor information service. Replacing ineffective centres with kiosks provided more information to more people and still achieved savings on the overall service cost.

Kiosks are an attractive option in areas where falling use of T/VICs makes the service unviable and vulnerable to budget cuts.

Call centres

The prime aim of call centres is to remove incoming telephone calls from the front desk enabling front-line staff to concentrate on face-to-face enquiries. This applies whether telephone calls are outsourced to a dedicated service, or an in-house call centre is operated. Ensuring that staff are properly trained and have access to rich data about the destination is the main requirement.

Destinations which have a dedicated call centre facility commonly report a substantial reduction in missed or unanswered calls. Marketing Birmingham reports a missed call figure of two per month, down from 900.

In-house call centres

Some destinations dealing with large numbers of enquiries have set up successful in-house call centres. These are often linked to conference and convention business, as is the case for Brighton and Canterbury.

Outsourced call centres

Go Leicestershire outsourced to a call centre based in Devon and early on endured an uncomfortable period as a media target for doing so. Go Leicestershire is confident the outsourced service provides a better customer experience as well as better value, and the main lesson learnt was that rich data is crucial.

This is especially true when the call centre is not local to the destination and therefore reliant on data rather than first-hand knowledge of individual businesses. A restaurant record that said "Italian" is not enough – the record has to include opening times, early closing day information, special offers, distance from key location points, etc. The person answering the enquiry, wherever they are based and whether outsourced or not, represents the destination, and customers expect a great degree of accuracy and level of detail.

Commercial operators

Increasing numbers of commercial operators see the potential of providing 24 hour access to real time information. The growth of web 2.0 technology offers powerful marketing and customer relationship tools to deliver targeted messages and gather feedback economically. Web 2.0 is a catch-all term for the ability for users to create their own content and to interact with each other via the web. This includes tools such as blogs, podcasts, discussion forums, file-sharing and social networking (think Facebook and My Space – over 100 million users worldwide and counting).

Web 2.0 also offers opportunities for promotion. On a basic level, three major search engines (Google, Yahoo! and MSN), for example, offer the possibility for businesses to be listed on directories coupled to maps (either traditional maps or satellite images). But because of their flexibility and the open way in which they have been made available to the public, some of these services also offer great potentials for customisation for the mildly technologically minded.

There are also websites creating content targeted specifically at the tourism sector.

Tourist Information Centres Ltd (www.touristinformationcentres.com) acquires and promotes business contact details and information that was once the preserve of local destinations, making them available at any time.

Tourist Tracks (www.tourist-tracks.com) create specialist MP3 walking tours which are downloaded via websites – or sold at T/VICs. Existing tours include Bath, Cheltenham, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cambridge, Oxford, Brighton and several for London.

Many towns and villages are producing podcasts. Some popular examples can be heard at www.shakespeare-country.co.uk/downloads/talking-the-walk.asp.

Web giants TripAdvisor and wayn.com (Where Are You Now) are making increasing inroads into the provision of visitor information by consumers for consumers. There may be some quality control and impartiality issues and the risk of manipulation is an ever present but their growing popularity will only increase their power and influence over destination information.