Some of biggest travel and tourism questions and how research can best address them
It is my humble opinion that lots of research effort and money is wasted on tackling the wrong questions. Questions that don’t stand up to the so what? test and so do not ultimately help make money, save money or improve customer experience.
I reckon there are some “big questions” at the heart of businesses and organisations in the travel and tourism sector. And while these big questions are mind-blowingly scary, because they can’t be glibly answered with a quick survey or a few days work, I think it is essential to keep them in mind for every single research and analytics activity you undertake. This is because they form the big picture - the context, the so what? - that all smaller activity must be calibrated towards.
Without reference back to the big questions, ad hoc research and analysis activity can easily lose its way or fail to be translated into any form of meaningful action. It becomes focused on the interesting or on the production of information - not on tactics and strategy.
So here’s my big three. (You may disagree and it’d be good to explore your thoughts and suggestions!)
1. How do we attract and convert customers in the face of intense global competition?
2. What must we [and all our delivery partners in the end to end process] do to ensure customers will come back/recommend to others?
3. How do we deliver a optimum customer experience from a profitable, sustainable business base?
You may have noticed I’ve covered the business, the customer, the market, but not explicitly product. Partly, this is because I see product as being closely bound up in question 1 and 3. Mostly, though, I think that in a Travel 2.0 environment, the toughest questions revolve around the customer’s experience and demand.
“The 20th century was about sorting out supply…The 21st is going to be about sorting out demand.” The Internet makes everything available, but mere availability is meaningless if the products remain unknown to potential buyers. Wired Magazine
At this point, you may be exclaiming “Enough with the deep stuff Vicky, I just want to know if my customer had a good time. I’m not trying to solve universal questions right now” To which I must irritate you further. Because as I see it, the “how was your experience” type question is asked in order to tactically address question 2 and 3. If it is being asked in isolation, all small picture and no big picture, what do you do with the answers? Benchmarking and nice graphs don’t improve customer experience or the bottom line. It’s the actions - however small - that make the difference.
So, where does research fit in to tackling these questions?
Well, given I’m feeling philosophical, I would suggest it takes a shift in mindset in order to enable these big questions to be properly tackled by research. A shift away from the idea that research is somehow something you do a bit of once in a while when you need it. A shift towards a culture of business intelligence and analytics that works with all the data it has (even if it is in a show box) in order to tackle and act on the big questions.
Allan Leighton, Chairman of the Royal Mail declared at the recent Market Research Society conference:
“I believe every organisation should have radar - to listen to your people, listen to your customers all the time. It shouldn’t be called research it should be called radar. You cannot be selective when you have it. You have to have it all the time.”
I quote it because I couldn’t agree more. And I don’t think that only global corporations and national destinations that have a hope of attaining this - I do genuinely believe that a very small business with the right mindset can also be intelligence driven.
Making radar work for you
So what does the shift from research to radar involve?
1) Always on
You can’t just do a bit of radar when you think you might need it. Radar is always on, always monitoring the information stream in anticipation of the unexpected. In research terms, that means listening to customers, staff and other data on an ongoing, not an ad-hoc basis.
2) All around
Radar takes a 360 degree view of information, it doesn’t focus on one source at the cost of all others. Switchboard activity, website activity, conversations with customers, regular staff surveys, news reports, transactional information, emails are all data sources. Listen in, by keeping on top of it and finding a standard way of recording and reporting on key information.
3) Alarms and flashing lights
Radar can only alert. Make those alerts easy to spot, as opposed to hidden deep in 100 page reports. Make the bells ring loud and the lights flash bright through the way reporting information is presented and distributed. If the boss wants a 50 word summary in a text message, that’s great. Because the point of alarms and flashing lights is for the leadership to see the problem and act.
4) Is it a bird? Is it a plane?
But is there even a problem? What is going on? Why? Often the picture isn’t really clear and your radar triggers more questions than answers. But staff on the ground know more than is often allowed for - talking to them can give insight to what is going on. You may also need to know more about what customers think and what their reasons are for this.Depending on the size of your organisation, this may be the point that you need outside expertise - or at least to make some bright internal spark available to ask great questions and crunch the answers.
5) Looks forward more often than you look back
Ait Traffic Control doesn’t use radar to see how safely planes landed yesterday, they use it to make critical, tactical decisions in the present and immediate future. The focus more on what is going on now and what might be in the way - not solely on what happened in the past.
Beware, brains in action
So, how do we get business, retain business, oh and make some money/fulfil our stated mission too?
I think these “big questions” are at the heart of businesses and organisations in the travel and tourism sector. And the point is, they can’t be answered by a quick bit of research or a new fangled tool. Instead, every piece of data/research/analysis that flows through the organisation should serve towards these critical questions.
I won’t pretend it is easy - but it is being done. And it’s being done by businesses in this sector, giving them distinct competitive advantage over those who’re wasting their time and effort tackling the wrong questions.
So, a final question to you - am I on the right track, or hopelessly deluded?
This entry was posted on Sunday, May 18th, 2008 at 2:02 pm and is filed under Business research, Opinion, Tourism market research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.