Tracking Tourism: The Tourism Research Blog Archive for the ‘Privacy’ Category

How ubiquitous plugged-in travel is becoming a reality

Some of you might have noticed in passing reports last week about the beginnings of a Ubiquitous City (or U-city) in South Korea. If you didn’t (or passed the articles by because, well…, how exiting can urban planning be?), I would suggest you revisit those articles (cited below) as this is yet another trend that will have profound ramifications for how we lead our lives.

And, it could give rise to a breed of traveler I have called ‘the U-traveler’

What is the Ubiquitous City?

Well, before the ubiquitous city and the ubiquitous traveler, there is the foundation concept of ‘ubiquitous computing’ (“ubicomp“).

At the moment, we interface with information processing mainly through a PC . However, as the Wikipedia article states,

“As opposed to the desktop paradigm, in which a single user consciously engages a single device for a specialized purpose, someone “using” ubiquitous computing engages many computational devices and systems simultaneously, in the course of ordinary activities, and may not necessarily even be aware that they are doing so.”

So, we are talking here about the potential of networks and processes to move beyond ‘the computer’ and into many other aspects of your life. Examples might include your fridge sending a message to your phone when you were running out of milk or smart sensors monitoring the balance of your exercise/nutritional intake regimes and advising if they were badly off optimal. A travel application might be your phone ‘talking’ to the hotel check-in with your preferences so you don’t have to explain these afresh to staff.

This technology sets the foundation for the Ubiquitous City which is defined in its Wikipedia entry as,

“A ubiquitous city or U-city is a city or region with ubiquitous information technology. All information systems are linked, and virtually everything is linked to an information system through technologies such as wireless networking and RFID tags.”

In other words, the examples I used above of ubicomp are applied on a much larger scale – a move from the body to the body politic if you will.

To get an idea of what this means in practice, have a look at this presentation by Anthony Townsend about U-cities and how they could affect its users.

A few of the ideas that caught my attention included

• The basis of a U-city and the ubiquitous traveler is ubiquitous computing. Many cities are on their way to becoming U-cities by dint of their concentration of ubicomp, albeit with fragmented solutions. London, Amsterdam, New York, San Fransisco are cited as examples of this.
• A U-city differs from an area of fragmented ubicomp in that the information flows are somehow integrated into central processing areas.
• It will encourage the development of online social networks that relate to and complement offline social networks.
• “There is evidence that telecommunications and face-to-face are compliments, not supplements”

So What?

The potential for travelers is immense. As is the potential for a worrying degree of surveillance.

Let’s have a look at those in turn. In terms of the travelers, I’ll cast a few thought out about what this means at both supply and demand levels but at its core is the notion that the consumer gives up an element of their privacy in order to allow a more seamless flow of highly information tailored to their needs.

Before I do that though, I’ll spend a number of short paragraphs talking about what makes for ‘good information’. Many years ago I worked with the dissemination of real time Financial Market data and this sector provides an interesting example of how the better the information flow, the richer (in all senses of the word) the market. And there were three elements needed to make it rich.

The first was timeliness (anyone relying on 2 minute old data at the opening of the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday morning would have lost a lot of money, for example).

The second was the context the information appeared in in which is appearing. In financial market terms, a lot of orders of a stock at a similar price means that the information you are seeing is more reliable that a single price from one market player only. In Tripadvisor terms, this means that if you have a 20 lousy reviews spread out over the space of a month you are more inclined to believe that there is a real problem as opposed to the one disgruntled customer who posted six months ago. Market data can also contain other vital elements information that help you make an investment decision.

The last piece of information was the synthesis of the last two, namely the price it was quoting. The article (see here for the start of a fascinating conversation about Hayek’s notion that prices “aggregate widely dispersed information and tastes” -and how this relates to a online information aggregator like Wikipedia).

In other words, if the data was up to date and could be trusted to be representative of the market, then it would deliver through the medium of the price an accurate indicator of how people felt about that product.

Demand side

So what do equity market transactions have to do with our U-traveller?

Well, for example, it means that in a streamlined network environment, the traveler’s desires and aims can be ‘matched’ much more efficiently than at present. When you trade equities, you essentially have a large system in the back ground that joins specific buyers and sellers who agree on a trade price. In our example, the technology enables the traveler to identify 3 ‘friends’ of friends’ in the foreign city they are visiting who share in interest in certain kinds of clubs and ‘matches’ (or introduces) them through its knowledge of existing social networks.

Another example, is that the system notices that you have an interest in, say, folk dancing, based on places you have visited in previous destinations (and where you have been discretely monitored attending such events) and can recommend events in your new destination in an apparently ’spontaneous’ text.

In both examples, the flow of information to the traveler has been timely, contextual and (it is assumed) based on a solid basis of evidence that suggests that the ‘trade’ is one that can be meaningfully evaluated.

There are indeed privacy concerns but I am always surprised by just how much information people are prepared to give up in order to streamline processes. Given a stable political system with appropriate safeguards against both public and private sector misuse of data, I suspect that a huge number of people would prefer to be ‘wired in’ and reaching their goals more efficiently through this network than they can presently do.

And this will breed an attitude that to be without a ubiquitous network is to slumming it and not getting the most out of a destination.

Finally, it should be noted that this move fits in perfectly with the desire for more efficient use of time as discussed in the post with Ian Yeoman recently.

Supply Side

So how does this affect the supply side of the travel industry?

Well, from a customer insight point of view it enables you to access a richer stream of data than you have ever been able to lay your hands on before. For example, you can relate online and offline travel related behaviour perfectly. For example, your airline site knows that in the last three trips abroad you went to Italian restaurants three quarters of the time and so is able to recommend an add-on package that features Italian restaurants (remember that this restaurant information has not been revealed by the customer but by a system marrying data up behind the scenes).

In another example, it might allow reservation systems to cut out all of the ‘uncharacteristic’ choices for that customer and just offer them targeted booking options based on their previous booking behaviour. Or, it could allow the hotel bar to know that having two cold local ales ready for you even before you’ve stepped into the bar (and really impress you by doing so as well as helping you avoid the crush and saving time).

Privacy concerns

Myself, I find a lot of this quite creepy. There are time when I want to be genuinely surprised and not kept in a walled garden of recommendations. I also don’t trust such systems not to be closed to abuse (and that’s taking a long term view – your government might be nice now but what about in 20 years time?).

So, two recent articles then to present a more distopian view of U-cities and the technology of ubicomp.

The first from is from the New York Times. The second, entitled Want some torture with your peanuts? comes from the Washington Times.

By way of a conclusion, it seems to me that this is a significant change in how people will operate in advanced societies and that this will have enourmous impacts on the traveler. My guess is that it will start off with a hardcore but itself become ubiquitous within 30 years.

Why data privacy should matter to us all

I love data. Yup, sets, charts, trends and ratios rock my world. And as you probably know, many of the posts in this blog are about collecting and using customer data to drive your business forward.

So does that mean I’m advocating a business should collect and store every bit of personal data about its customers that it possibly can?

Do I share Google’s vision of storing 100% of user (ie your) data?

Not at all. I believe that when we ask for personal data from a customer, we must understand that we are being trusted with something precious and that we have a responsibility to limit what we take and how we use it to within boundaries that are acceptable to both parties.

Here’s my exploration of why.

Data is power

For a business, customer data is knowledge and knowledge, as the saying goes, is power.

The power to make strategic decisions, power to delight customers by understanding and surpassing their needs, the power to boost conversions and the power to make our marketing work just that little bit harder than our competitors.

Businesses don’t generally collect data because they’re evil, they collect it because they want to do what they do better (including, of course, making money).

But data can be stored. Data can be lost, stolen or exposed. Data can be used in innocence or corruptly for purposes very different from those imagined when it was collected.

The data in its own right is benign. But start aggregating it, storing it, analysing it – then suddenly its power is explosive.

Have you met my data shadow?

Like you, everywhere I go as I conduct my life on and offline, I leave a data shadow. Not only does that data shadow mirror my actions, but to some extent it also mirrors a distorted approximation of my thoughts.

(Anyone unsure how your data shadow might reveal what you are thinking should check out this article about the AOL data release, when AOL made public the web searches made by 658,000 of its users over a three month period.)

And my data shadow is being stored.

Maybe its only being stored to speed up my online shopping cart process, so that I am more likely to buy. Perhaps it is stored to record my travel history, while I earn airlines or reward points. But may be its being stored for some unspecified purpose that will be decided at a later date. (Check out for this rather scary Guardian newspaper article about Facebook as a good example).

But, if I have nothing to hide, does it even matter?

I believe it does matter very much.

Yes, on a basic level, I simply don’t want strangers knowing everything about me. But at a more philosophical level, I believe am more than the sum parts of my data shadow. The trouble is, what is being stored for future retrival doesn’t reflect that. In 10 years time I will not exist as I do at this moment – but my data shadow from today will.

And it will exist in a very different context (and perhaps political climate) to when the data was collected.

“There is a view that the storage of personal data is only problematic for those with something to hide. But we cannot know for sure how data we supply today will be used tomorrow – goalposts shift, governments change – and not all are benign. When in 1933 the population of Germany provided their personal data for census purposes, they could have had no knowledge of ultimate consequences.” From An Uncertain Voyage, A British Computing Society article by Barry Blundell.

The trouble with context is it can change

What if the supermarket loyalty card data which you have readily handed over in exchange for points was used to prove you drank too much wine over the last 15 years, thereby denying you access to healthcare?

What if your airmiles & Tripadvisor data was used to calculate your share of responsibility for global warming and you were fined accordingly?

What if of your barely known Facebook “friends” commits an act of terrorism and every shred of your personal communication data becomes evidence? (After all, Facebook even has your mobile phone number).

These may seem far-fetched examples, but they all relate to data we readily hand over and cannot simply retrieve if we change our minds.

Taking responsibility

As consumers, I think we have to think a little harder before we hand over our personal data.

And as businesses (especially us data-huggers) I think we have to remember ask ourselves not just if we want this personal information, but also if we really need it. Because ultimately, we should not demand or solicit from our customers any data we would be reluctant to hand over ourselves. And we should respect and protect customer data as though it were our own.

(A document Google inadvertently released on the Web in March 2006 said it was moving toward being able to “store 100% of user data,” citing “emails, Web history, pictures, bookmarks” as a few examples). See this interesting Wall Street Journal article for more on the subject of Google Plans Service to Store Users’ Data