The travel and hospitality industry has been delivering great service for long time. Tourism is one of the greatest global industries, improving according to the continuous changes in tourism trends and consumer preferences. It is this need to change that makes the concept of innovation a vital concern for tourism firms of all sizes – they need to stand out from the strong competition with successful and profitable operations.
However, the importance of innovation has long been underestimated in service activities. In contrast to drastic innovations in industrial sectors, innovations in services and tourism were usually secondary. With limited capital allocations for innovation, it has been excluded from the scope of government interest, actions and policies.
Innovation can be defined in an variety of ways. Based on the business dictionary, innovation is the process of translating an idea or invention into a good or service that creates value or for which customers will pay. To be called an innovation, an idea must be replicable at an economical cost and must satisfy a specific need. Innovation involves “the deliberate application of information, imagination and initiative in deriving greater or different values from resources.”
Of course the common denominator among all these changes is that they involve “carrying out new combinations”, which is vital to enhance growth and competitiveness of tourism firms.
Organizations often chase creativity, but what they really need to pursue is innovation. Theodore Levitt insightfully notes, “What is often lacking is not creativity in the idea-creating sense but innovation in the action-producing sense, i.e. putting ideas to work.” More than ever now, the tourism industry needs innovation.
But what exactly are tourism innovations? Well, innovation is similarly used in this sector as in any other; innovations are simply “new combinations of things”, – like the ice hotel in Sweden or the antelope park in Africa.
Innovations show themselves in the new products, new services and the new processes that these new combinations of things bring about. But, in order to come up with these new combinations, someone must have fresh ideas. Changes in tourism practices can generate major benefits by motivating change towards greater sustainability within the tourism supply chain and other sectors.
Trends which are varying travel patterns, such as recreational and adventure tourism with their many enjoyable activities, are rapidly growing. In particular, green innovations can lead to more jobs as well as diminishing environmental impacts, lower costs, and competitive advantages for companies and destinations, all while enhancing the visitor experience. Innovation in tourism has many faces and can involve:
- product innovation with new products and services
- process innovation with new ways of delivering tourism services
- logistic innovation with new ways supplying products or services to customers and
- market innovation focusing in new ways of marketing and consumer behaviour.
Innovative tourism is “thinking out of the box.” Some very appealing examples of innovation in tourism include the Marriott Renaissance Hotel in Pittsburg that has guests surrender their digital device upon arrival and the Berlin Heart Break Hotel that is only for customers with broken hearts. Also, CorruptTour.com does political corruption guided tours and Netherlands WaarSchijntdeZonWel.nl offers a holiday destinations search based on weather trend and prediction. As we come to realize, the sky is the limit in ways to innovate.
Application of innovation has many benefits in end results like increasing efficiency of operations and/or profit levels, decreasing costs, ease in satisfying changing needs of consumers and assisting the business to successfully compete by having and communicating a special advantage. Currently, in challenging economic times, consumers are looking for improved cost/value relationships and and this will come through innovative in tourism practice. In other words, businesses and systems need to innovate in order to enhance their competitive advantage and ultimately drive additional innovation.
About the author
Philia Tounta, MBA, Ba, Di, is a travel and tourism consultant and ambassador of tourism in Chania, Crete, Greece. She is the General Manager at Apokoros Family Club Hotel 7 Villas and has been a Customer Service consultant for various hotels since 2004, as well as sales ambassador for You Planet.com. Philia is also a speaker at conferences and seminars concerning tourism.
