A good portion of the PhoCusWright report about tours and activities that was published in January, 2011, is dedicated to “Local, Social, Mobile MOJO”.
As with the in-destination tour and activity segment in general, there is a lot of potential to capitalize on the mobile and local channels for in-destination tours and activities.
Unfortunately, it’s still too early to consider mobile as an effective actionable channel, and here is why.
Location based services are neither influential nor actionable
Despite what services like FourSquare, Gowalla, and Facebook would hope, for travellers, these mobile apps are neither influential nor actionable.
For the most part, they just plain stink when it comes to compelling people to do a locally offered tour or activity.
That’s not to say they are not relevant for locals, but for travellers, becoming the mayor of a coffee shop or checking into a favorite cafe just isn’t realistic.
For tour or activity providers, whose primary clientele are inbound tourists, incentives for repeat visits make even less sense.
The other issue with location based services is that tours that travel through a city or around an area don’t have “a” location, they in fact have many locations.
Local deals don’t influence travellers
If you’ve read my articles in the past, you probably already know that I don’t drink the local deals kool-aid. I don’t have anything against the business model, in fact, the local deals model works very well for about half of the businesses who use them and extremely well for the local deals companies.
That said, as actionable as local deals are, they don’t have any influence on inbound travellers and don’t build repeat customers for local businesses who offer tours and activities.
They are a great way to get locals to try something new, but ultimately a local probably isn’t going to use a tourism service again and they more than likely won’t pay full price for it.
Maps on mobiles are important but operators aren’t ready
Only a small percentage of local tours and activities are geo-tagged. Since most (86%) of small tourism businesses don’t store their product data in a reservation system, it is safe to assume that most don’t have geo-location data available for their products either.
The number one requirement for location based mobile search and booking of tour and activity products is that the product must be searchable using a location aware device.
If a traveler is standing somewhere and pulls up a mobile application that will find tours and activities around them, the assumption is that the tours and activities around them have been geo-tagged.
Since that is not the case with nine out of ten operators, the chances of actually finding anything “around you” is pretty slim indeed.
Bookings are actionable, listings are listings
As it stands, the best bet to find a local tour or activity operator is to use the local yellow pages app for an iPhone or Android device.
But, if you plan on doing that, then you might as well browse those endless brochures in the hotel lobby as well. The bottom line is that, even if you can find a tour or activity using a mobile device, you probably won’t be able to book it.
Why? Because building a decent mobile app is expensive for a small business and it’s a one off install anyway.
Think about it, how likely are you to download and install an application for a sightseeing company and you’re only going to use once?
So, you’re left with apps made by the OTAs or an aggregator, in which case the product is probably being offered through a third party reseller who doesn’t have direct access to live availability and cannot book without at least a one or two day cut-off or even a confirmation from the supplier.
Searching, browsing, and finding a local tour or activity that is compelling will inevitably lead to the traveler wanting to consummate the relationship with a booking and right now, that means a “click to call”.
Is it any wonder that 36% of travelers still use brochures to search for local tours and activities?
So when will the tours and activities segment get their mobile MOJO?
I hate to sound like a broken record here but mobile and social MOJO will elude the tour and activity segment until the small businesses that make up the majority of the segment start adopting reservation systems, get websites, and start taking ecommerce seriously.
But, we as an industry, can’t expect small business to take these things seriously if we don’t show that there is a pent up demand for what they offer.
With the recent surge in tour and activity metasearch sites like Goby, Flextrip and PocketVillage, we may be at the beginning of something different, a growing trend focused on the promotion of unique products offered by small businesses.
For now, however, the only thing mobile about this MOJO is the brochure you pick up and stuff in your pocket.
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About Stephen Joyce
Stephen,
There needs to be a middle ground between listings and actionable bookings for the far too many activity providers that cannot support live booking through third parties, such as mobile couponing or vouchers.
Douglas
Agreed. Part of my point is that even if booking is not capable, the product needs to be location aware capable, ie. geotagged in order to be relevant and timely for travellers.
Stephen is right. It’s not a technical problem, but an ecosystem readiness and willingness problem. We can send people to the moon, but the local activity supplier will still use a paper notebook.
If only all booking engines/systems can work together and integrate… linking and making ‘activities and tours’ bookable on all the’trip planning sites’ (eg. Duffleup, Flextrip, etc). This seem to be the best way to link, suggest and promote ‘local tours & activities’ in the traveler’s area.
The ‘customer’ then only need to download the ‘travel planning’ app of his choice on his phone, and get all the bookable tours and activities. Viator seem to get this right with many travel planning sites- isn’t it possible for all booking engine sites to integrate in this manner?
I think you forgot to mention a point that, in my opinion, is very important when talking about mobile as a actionable channel for in-destination tours and activities: the price of roaming data plan. Except for the business traveller, it is very rare that international travellers will have internet on the go.
Also I have to disagree with on your opinion about app as Foursquare. Yes, becoming a mayor might not be relevant. But getting badges because you are a traveller or checking in on a must-go restaurant in a different country is great. Not mentioning, that on foursquare you can explore the area that you are located and read tips of local people, whick is awesome for travellers!
Fully agree with you on the roaming data. It’s a big deterrent for international travellers. Regarding Foursquare, I haven’t seen any data to back up your opinion here, but I would be interested in seeing any research you have here.
Also Agree with the point that mobile data roaming rates is a big obstacle in fully realizing mobile as an actionable channel for in-destination tours and activities…. a temporary workaround would be to obtain a local prepaid sim on arrival in visiting country…
The foursquares app is subject to the previous obstacle… but provided its no longer an issue for the visitor , i can see the practical value and usefulness of being able to identify and check-in to a must-go restaurant, and also explore an area and read tips from locals… but the badges, not as useful IMHO…
Hi Stephen, very interesting article!
Ferdi, the author is saying that most tours and activity providers do not have a booking system, so it’s not even a question of linking them up. It’s also a dull idea to have everyone link to one aggregator, they would be a monopoly and then everyone would be depending on them and start yelling at them.
I agree not to give monopoly to only 1 aggregator: the suggestion is not to link all booking systems to one aggregator, but to make all booking systems able to link/ integrate to a variety/ all of them. If Viator can link & partner to a variety (eg. Duffleup, Flextrip, etc… isn’t it possible to link all booking systems with most aggregators.
I’m not an expert in this tech stuff, and found that choosing a suitable ‘booking system/ engines’ is one of the biggest obstacles and mayor decisions for operators and activity providers, because they am scared of investing in a booking system, and then it cannot link to most distribution channels to give them a bigger online presence.
I agree with Marcelle, that data is extremely expensive on a ‘pay-as-you-go’ or 3G internet service on a mobile- especially in the 3rd world countries, and living in South Africa – I know that it’s not common to get local ‘mobi-booking sites’.
This definitely seems to be the hardest to crack nut in the travel services distribution system for all the reasons you mention. It’s the chicken and egg question when it comes to automation and nobody really stepping up the plate to change the status quo. I still am of the opinion that there is a role to play here for DMOs, at least in raising awareness for the need to automate and maybe trying to aggregate them for better distribution models. It would be part of an overall effort to raise the level of professionalism at the small business local level.
I agree Joe, DMOs still have a very important role to play in helping small businesses adopt automation tools. The ATDW e-Kit is an excellent example of how DMOs can get involved.
Its great fun talking about mobile for tours/activities – but its very much a day tour topic – not a multi-day tour topic (due to the leadtime before travel that multi-day is booked vs the generally last minute / in resort booking nature for day tours)
Now as travel inspiration websites tend to work on inspiring people well ahead of travel dates…. mobile (as in for reviewing product information) isn’t a strategic match (might be for shared booking experiences, but I digress). Inspiration websites that are more “now I have brought my flight, what can I do” (such as perhaps flextrip) could use a dose of mobile yes….
Anyways, nice post, just outlining that there are more nuances to “mobile for tours activities” than expressed in Stephens good overview.
Thanks Alex. You are right, this is really more geared towards the same day tours and activities in a destination.
Nice rant, Stephen, and certainly a good wake-up call for small activity operators. Some more thoughts on that…
) Obviously, we need more of this, agreed!
- Location based social services: I agree with Marcelle, those services will develop into great sources of local information for travellers. I guess there will be specialist Q&A sites (like travellr, localyte, loquize) that will be really good at this. The introduction of Facebook “Questions” in connection to “Places” points in this direction, too.
- Local deals: If they are integrated into a mobile app (among more local things to do)… why shouldn’t this have any influence?
- Geo-tragging: Probably an intermediator would have to do the work… I heard that Viator is geo-tagging most of its activities now.
- Live availability: Good point. However, there are players who can do this, right? (Rezgo?
In any case, it is a fascinating area to work in…….
With regards to local deals, I can see them having influence IF they are part of a larger overall system. For example, an app that tells you what is around you and presents deals in relation to these products. Deals alone have little influence. I’m also not a huge fan of the deals (from the business standpoint) as great as they may be for consumers.
@Stephen: Well, someone would need to develop this magic app……….
Thats Flextrip….
You might need to upgrade to a new iPhone, Alex…
isango!’s activities have all been geotagged for the last 4 years, in case anyone’s interested.
Shameful plug, obviously.
Plug aside, it is good to know. In the long run, individual operators need to take ownership of this.
I might add that data quality in general is something they need to take ownership of. There’s still a lot (!) of work to do on this front.
Geo-tagging with Google Maps API is a poor experience. Better to use a cartography engine!
Any suggestions here Claude? It’s hard to avoid Google Maps API given its penetration and ease of use.
@Stephen
Will send you soon some info about a French Start-Up with great Maps techno. You can review it. I plan also to make a TLabs about it
Here http://goo.gl/pnjBe is an article on the use or on-use of location based services that might be of interest.
Great article, I think the opportunity in electronic activities distribution is enormous. Just like hotel and flight booking went through stages of innovation (online booking, meta-search, inspiration/personalization) with lots of companies creating a lot of value in each stage, activities are going through the same process right now.
Hi Michael
No – that is not how I see it.
In airlines / hotels the industry was dominated by trade sales PRIOR to web distribution becoming popular. In tours/activities the industry is dominated by DIRECT sales prior to web distribution gaining traction. There is no native demand for distribution except by a few online players. That demand will have to be generated….
Hence think the outcome will be very different in tours/activities than was for flights / hotels….
Alex, great point. I’m just assuming that demand will have to appear inevitably because brochures/print advertising is going to become increasingly inconvinient. Plus, the few online players who do have existing demand for distribution can drive a ton of volume.
Definitely a good point, Alex.
I agree with Michael that the *perceived* user experience with brochures will decrease as web-savvy people increasingly expect the ability to conveniently search, compare and book activities online as well.
@Daniele: Good to know
I use BrownPaperTickets.com to handle the reservations for my tour business in San Diego. They not only provide reservations capability for mobile users but also issue mobile tickets.
They provide a map of the start point for my tour. Is that the same as a geo-tag? If not, how do I create one for my tour?
I’ve started to use foursquare. I figure by checking in, leaving tips, and even becoming mayor of the locations the tour visits may help develop awareness – especially at the tour starting point, which is in the middle of our main tourist area.