Much of what I am using here is drawn from Marketing Magazine – I don’t always agree with its conclusions but its news section is often a reliable indicator of how customer trends are changing. So, I’ve collected together a collection of stories that caught my eye.

Is organic food set to become a luxury consumers can’t afford? and Credit crunch causing rise in retail disloyalty on UK high street both emphasis how customers have become more price sensitive over the last couple of months. Things that were ‘necessary indulgences’ are being replaced by cheaper replacements and there is a rising number of customers that are purely shopping on price – loyalty be damned.

For me a number of things jump out of these two stories. The first is that it’s fine to be green in a time of plenty but people’s attitudes harden in times of lean. I think the number of people who will make purchasing decisions based on ‘ethical ‘grounds will decrease and this will hit sectors and suppliers who have this as a USP.

On the other hand, if the ‘green-ness’ has a definable economic or tangible immediate advantage, then it will remain a strong card. An example of this is in the Virgin Galactic technology (as much about getting fuel efficient aircraft in the sky as offering space adventures). Another example might be making an increased virtue of locally sourced food – at some point it simply might become cheaper to source some foods this way.

Another thing that jumped out at me was the sentence in the second article, “…there is evidence that despite their focus on value, consumers are also demanding quality service.” As we know, it was ever thus but the challenge (especially for smaller operators in whatever sector) is to deliver this top level of service from a decreasing pool of money.

This second article is also interesting as it suggests that it is possible to retain customers through a judicious blend of customer service, products and value for money and cites John Lewis and Amazon as examples of this. In other words, the current climate does not mean an automatic race to the bottom – you can compromise in some areas but not all areas if you want to survive.

The final article is Supermarket chief identifies ‘Northern Rock effect’ and I include it because it is a great article of how good customer insight can keep your business a success. For me, the killer paragraphs were:

“Lucy Neville-Rolfe, Tesco’s executive director of corporate and legal affairs, said that findings from its regular customer research changed ‘almost on the day’ Northern Rock’s problems emerged in September, which led to a run on the bank.

Since then, Tesco has witnessed a shift away from sandwiches and ready meals, as more consumers make meals from scratch.

The supermarket’s Value line has also recorded a ‘big uplift’ and there has been keener interest and awareness of promotions such as its ‘Veg pledge’, which offers five lines of vegetables at half price every week.”

Being an habitué of Tesco, I can recall that recently their whole sales strategy seemed to literally change overnight to catch the new mood of the public – out went the expensive wine promotions and in came the ‘value you can trust’ own products. They haven’t gone down market in most respects (their service is still good as ever for example) but they acted on their information to tell them how to realign and keep their customers coming in a changed market.

So what?

Seeing that there are changes in one sector and making the leap to say they will affect another sector in the same or similar way is asking for trouble. Life doesn’t work like that and, just because people are buying own brand supermarket product doesn’t mean that their travel plans will change in the same way.

However, I do believe that these reports give us a clue about the changed mindset of the travel industry customers. In a sentence, I think we are looking at a period of lower prices, good service and some jettisoning of indulgences. Money will need to be stretched to deliver better value and people will make a mental calculation between the cost of saving the planet and the cost of accommodation. On the more positive side though, those that really understand their customers are going to come though this even stronger.

I really enjoyed reading all the posts that were submitted and I’m pleased to be able to share my top-picks here – I hope you find them as interesting as I did.

Always the last to know…

This is a great post from the Get A Room Blog (or should that be a great plea?) for hotel guests to talk the hotel itself when there is a problem, before talking to the whole world.

As Don writes: “Just give them a chance. The last thing they want is for you to be unhappy… After all, the hotel’s goal is to welcome you back again.”

While I’d disagree with Don that it’s not the raves that make it on to online consumer sites like TripAdvisor (see this recent Tracking Tourism post) – I do otherwise completely agree with Don’s thinking in his post. As Rene Looper, a former hotelier, recently said in a comment here: “If you had a great time, tell TripAdvisor – but if you had a problem, tell us”.

Shock horror, a consumer-to-consumer site makes it to the pages of this decidedly b2b blog!

Aside from the fact that I like this post and Barbara’s Hole in the Donut blog generally, I’ve chosen this as I think it embodies consumer thinking in these hardening economic times.

Read how a devoted traveller, who has literally travelled the world, discovers for the first time the attractions that are right on her doorstep.

And as we’ve highlighted in this blog previously, all the statistical evidence coming in from the US suggests that in these times of potential recession, it is not just Barbara who will be looking at the tourism opportunities in her own back yard this year!

Social media sites, hype and non-takeover stories. Surely not?

Kevin May, editor of the Travolution blog, ponders just why it is that WAYN (The Where Are You Now community that claims to be the fastest growing travel and lifestyle social networking community website in the UK) seems to attract a disproportionate amount of attention in the travel industry for a site of its size.

Read Kevin’s post to see if some of that hype is justified.

Space Tourism in Cape Breton?

Finally, for those of us in Scotland who’re hoping that space tourism will have its birth here, Kim Kinrade reports in the White Point Manor blog that the Canadian government is still looking into the funding $45 million as its share for a rocket launching facility in Cape Breton, which would see the birth of “Space Tourism” in the province of Nova Scotia.

Mmm – does this mean Scotians old and new will be duelling in their spacesuits at dawn?

Previous picks from the Travel Blog Carnival

If you’re interested in reading more from the Travel Blog Carnival, see Darren’s carnival pages over at TravelRants.com. You can also find out how to submit your own posts for review.

However, as one of the stories states, “…the contest is not so much about developing an actual vehicle that could fly on the moon–none of the vehicles competing are capable of that–but about building up ideas and expertise that will eventually lead to such vehicles”

Also, not quite about space tourism but of interest to some readers, an article about the space industry in Scotland from the Sunday Herald.

A factual overview of the talks can be found in the news reports here and the accompanying Virgin Videos here but I thought I would use this space to touch on a couple of points not really developed in the news reports .

The first point was the phenomenon Ian identified as ‘fly EasyJet, stay at Gleneagles’ within the luxury market. It is often assumed that people staying in a top hotel will also pay top dollar for every other aspect of their trip (including transport) although Ian’s work suggests that it’s actually a more complex equation – essentially balancing the maximising of time spent doing what the customer really values and wants to be doing (e.g. being pampered at Gleneagles) against the minimising of the time needed to get to what they really want to be doing (and if this means that Easyjet is the best way of doing this, then so be it.)

What I’m not sure about is what this means for hotels based close to a space base: does it mean that people (such as the enthusiasts, driven by an interest in space and the science) aren’t necessarily looking for luxury accommodation or will luxury accommodation be an essential aspect for those seeking a once in a lifetime experience?

The second point I thought was worth developing was how Virgin either have some bright sparks working for them (which they undoubtedly do!) or how thoroughly they had done their qualitative research (which I’m pretty sure they would have done as well).

The reason I say this is that the whole Virgin experience is packaged in a very user-friendly way – even though it is the end results of many hours of techies hunched over diagrams, interpreting re-entry parabolas and so forth, Virgin have realised that the key to making this work is ‘access.’

What do I mean by ‘access’? Put simply, they are making it easier for their customers to do the things they really care about.

For a start, the price is not bad and so this makes the venture accessible to more people. I couldn’t afford the £100 000 or whatever it is but I’m sure there are more people that can afford that than the £millions needed to travel with the Russians.

Secondly, you don’t need to take a year out of your life (unlike a Russian mission). It’s not quite walking up to the front desk and away you go but its pretty close. They appreciate the importance of minimizing the inconvenience of training – whereas the current alternatives for budding space tourists are akin to having to take a course in seamanship if you ever wanted to take a ferry to Shetland.

Virgin also cleverly minimise other negatives that I think many people associate with space travel, burning up on re-entry and being strapped into pretty un-ergonomic surroundings with some horrid suit the size of a shed. The videos show people floating about in sleek Silver Surfer style uniforms (much more convenient and natural than having air canisters or something bulky strapped to you!) and, lets face it, if you’ve spent that much money travelling into space, not being allowed to float would be really really dumb.

It’s again making it easy for people to experience what they really want to do and not be tied down (literally?) to how things have been done in the past.

So what lessons does this have for the rest of the tourism industry? From a research perspective, it shows the importance of qualitative customer focused research and development. I don’t know whether Virgin did it or not but I can almost hear the voices of focus group participants as Virgin explain their offering and in a language that rarely comes though from purely quantitative work. One by one their promotional material address the fears and objections that I am sure they have listened to real people raise.

Tourism industry practitioners often overlook qualitative work as it is felt that there is safety in numbers from quantitative work. I think this is as good an example as any to show that listening to your customers on a deeper and more emotional level is also vital to developing and improving a product offering.

In many case this is informally done already in small tourism businesses but as it is often done by the proprietor with their guests as they leave/arrive, there is always the danger that the customer is being polite when responding and not telling the truth.

Harnessed correctly, qualitative research can deliver insight to help tourism business owners make it as easy as possible for customers to do what they really want to do. In other words, improving access to all areas.

So lessons from space as to how to use qualitative research findings on the ground!