“Tourism is everyone’s business”
From Scotland to South Africa, Beijing to the Cook Islands, it’s a much quoted maxim that “tourism is everyone’s business”. Not surprisingly, it passes particularly from the lips of those national and regional marketers charged with putting a destination’s best faced forward to the world. They are only too aware of the severe damage that gaps between the promise and delivery of experience can cause.
With all the multiple touchpoints that impact on a visitors end-to-end experience, one bad apple has the power to sour the visitor experience. Sometimes to the extent that the good businesses cannot fully redeem it.
As a result, the investment to win, satisfy and re-attract a customer at national, regional and individual business level is undermined.
Sound like I’m exaggerating? Here at Highland Business Research we conduct direct visitor satisfaction research across countries, destinations and individual businesses. We seek out visitors for face to face or internet research, plus they seek us out to share their experiences through our systematic customer experience measurement programmes.
Here are some first hand examples of the bad apple effect in actions.
“I just had to get this off my chest”…
I recently received a phone call from a visitor who’d just experienced the worst meal of their life. The hotel in question was not our client and had provided no means for the visitor to give feedback. But so incensed and upset was this individual that they went to the trouble of using a feedback postcard from a completely different business to track down our number and call.
They felt that had wasted money they could ill afford, a special occasion had been spoilt and their impression of the overall destination was unquestionably tarnished. So they went to the effort to tell someone “in tourism” about it, in the hope someone cared. Another person would have been on Tripadvisor, blogging or writing to the local newspaper.
Our client, who has invested in their business and in analysing and acting on customer feedback, not only lost trade to the bad apple but in effect subsidised the means for the bad apple’s customer to complain.
In another incident, a visitor almost shook with rage during a recent face to face interview as they recalled how a few days earlier they had been subjected to particularly patronising and abusive “service” in a shop where they were browsing for high end gifts. They had decided to keep their money and weren’t planning any more shopping.
Because we spend a lot of time asking visitors about their experience and represent a disinterested party they can be frank with, we not only hear about some appalling examples of bad apples in action – we also get to see just how strong the emotional reaction is to the negative experiences.
The ripple-out effect is wide.
When conducting research for destination A it is common to be told about an emotive incident that occurred in destination B – completely beyond the scope of influence of those undertaking the research, but one and the same in the visitors mind.
Bad experiences stick and people want to get them off their chest by telling others about them. And they now have the tools to tell a bigger audience than ever. The ripple out is a problem because it takes more than an equal amount of good experiences to offset the damage from a very negative one. Additionally the negative experience anchors satisfaction low, so that the visitor is also likely to rate the other tourism businesses that they encounter lower than they would otherwise have done.
Wired’s take on the anchoring effect: “If a customer watches three movies in a row that merit four stars — say, the Star Wars trilogy — and then sees one that’s a bit better — say, Blade Runner — they’ll likely give the last movie five stars. But if they started the week with one-star stinkers like the Star Wars prequels, Blade Runner might get only a 4 or even a 3.”
So what to do about the bad apples?
There’s no deny that tourists and therefore tourism and travel businesses are facing an economic struggle. With vacation time and income tight, the sting of a very bad experience with the bad apple is potentially even more potent. And with competition fierce, a good business or destination that is making effort and investment is justified in being frustrated when future business is lost thanks to a bad apple.
So assuming that a Beijing Olympics approach to obstacles is not taken, what does a destination or a group of businesses do about the bad apple that is impacting on the experience of their own visitors?
I must be honest and say I have no grand plan – only some loose ideas below. I would be very interested to hear your thoughts and experiences. Here are my views on some possible options:
- Just let market forces take their toll. If they’re that bad they’ll go out of business. The trouble with this one is that in current economic circumstances they’ll probably go out of business slower than a far better business that has debt from investment in its product and expensive well trained staff. I’m not sure “do nothing” can be enough for a destination that is fighting hard to stay business.
- Provide a band aid, moral support and try to outshine the negative. The good business tries to offset the negative impact, by virtue of its qualities, winning the visitor round in the process. The trouble is, the negative has already had an impact. An anchoring effect kicks in, meaning that the rating the good business achieves may still be lower – despite them doing everything right – than it would have been after a series of good experiences by the customer.
- Name and shame – let the customers do the talking? Tourism businesses have always listened to their customers’ feedback on the associated experiences in their visit that they did or didn’t enjoy and have used these to formulate future recommendations for customers. The popularity of online travel ratings and user generated content means it possible for you to have a wider than ever view of who the bad apples in your market are. Visitors are talking and you can listen. Whether you then encourage your customers to avoid the bad apples like the plague, or are tasked with trying to bring them up to standard depends on your job description!
- Apply the carrot of training/rewards and the stick of policy at a national or regional level. Not an option that tends to have teeth in free market Western democracies, but still wrestled with the world over. But with so much of the tourism sector operating in a grey zone outside of official quality assurance programs, or impacted by businesses such as retail that may not even regard themselves as “in tourism” – taking this approach as a standalone seems doomed outside of planned economies.
- Lead by example to drive sector, community or destination level quality control activities. Ah, a tough one. Movements like Scotland’s Pride and Passion have taken this approach, with the private sector trying to lead by best practice example. However, the concern is that they are preaching to the converted. Are they ever successful in influencing the indifferent, ill-willed and the incompetent that make up the bad apples? (This is a genuine question – please do tell me if you know!)
If I had to pick one, personally it would be name and shame by letting the customers do the talking – and really utilise what you are hearing for competitive advantage. As my recent distressed caller said “there are clearly so much nicer places about, I want other people to be able to find them instead of places that don’t give a damn”.
I’d love to hear if you know of different appraches to this issue that have worked.
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 18th, 2008 at 3:12 pm and is filed under Destination research, National tourism strategy, Opinion, Public policy, 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.