speaking in terms of the web, 2010 will definitely become another interesting year  for the travel and tourism industry. like almost no other industry, tourism services are characterized by its intangible nature: they are both physically and mentally difficult to grasp for the customer. they are immaterial value propositions by the tourism supplier to the customer, require the active participation of the customer (prosumer), can’t be stored due to the simultaneous production and consumption (uno actu principle) and can, at best, only be judged after their consumption. tourism services are therefore characterized by a enormous lack of information and a large amount of risk and uncertainty about the customer value, as the customer does not know what to really expect at the time of purchase and decides solely on the basis of information for or against the product. on the demand side, this results in high costs for searching, obtaining and verifying information. no wonder, that the tourism industry was, is and will always be one of the forerunner in using the internet, as it is the number one channel for customers to inform themselves. especially all kinds of virtual communities (nowadays we call them social networks or – in a broader sense – social media) are of high interest for customers as well as suppliers, as they are tools to alleviate the problem of trust in information. paying attention to social media is important for all kind of industries, but i hope it became clear, there are specific industries like the travel and tourism industry, where it is particularly valuable.

hence in this post i will focus on three emerging web trends for the upcoming year 2010, that in my opinion will be of high interest for the tourism industry, especially destination management organizations. i don’t say these are the only important ones, nor that they apply to all tourism providers or every destination management organization (i.e. refer to these blogs that deal with web-trends in 2010, too: jason falls’ social media explorer blog, tourismuszukunft.de (german)). least of all i want to state, that they became important on 1st of january and will vanish on 31st of december. these trends constantly evolve and just will increasingly get into spotlight this year.

(1) destinations – from facebook fanpages to social media strategy

some destinations have already launched their own presence  on facebook. one reason for this is obviously the enormous number of members, that can be reached via facebook. at the time of writing this, facebook has more than 350 million active users with the average user having 130 friends (social network), spending 55 minutes per day on the platform (involvement), becoming a fan of 2 pages and member of 12 groups each month (commitment). in addition, one can set up a facebook presence for free and in under 10 minutes! so this is the good news.

the drawback of the straightforwardness is twofold. first of all fans are faster than brands. that means, many destinations already have a fanpage, that is not controlled by the destination management organization, but by some fans out there. in this case, you need a wise strategy not only for social media, but for social media cooperation, too. as a rule it’s a bad idea to “grab back” your “domain”. instead, get in touch with the founders and identify, why they build the facebook-fanpage and how you as brand can support them! don’t forget, they might be your biggest fans and definitely are great multipliers!

the second drawback is based on the missing awareness and wrong perception of social media importance. social media is not just another marketing channel – it is a social online communication channel (SOCC): consumers and ordinary people, who are linked, who talk and who listen to each other. but this is not the place to tell you about the ‘why’ of social media importance (i think the first paragraph gave enough background information), but to encourage you, to build a solid social media strategy for your destination.

think about your social media vision for the next 3 years! define a vision statement that outlines the organization’s future course. deduce the goals and commit your team to shared values. your vision is a long term instrument, that must be source of inspiration for everyone in your organization and provides clear guidelines for future decisions. after developing a social media vision, build your social media strategy. determine exactly where your organization stands, where it wants to go and how it will get there. as structure always follows strategy, you new strategy will/must have an impact on your organizational culture and structure. create a new position “social media agent” who will be responsible for the coordination your social media engagement and take care that your employees (your team!) will be open to a cooperative culture (mark evans even calls 2010 the year of the community manager). define a social media policy in order to reduce uncertainty within your team when it comes to social media activities. last but not least make your efforts measurable: think about indicators how to measure your goals and methods on how to calculate a social media return of investment (i’ll write more about this in a future post). this said it should become obvious, that facebook fanpages can be an awesome starting point for the social media activities of your destination. and there is so much more! just have a look over at the new facebook campaign of the österreich werbung called “wish you where here“.

(2) mobile as major access point to the destination: m-tourism becomes relevant

an increasing penetration of 3G access & wifi hotspots, data-plan adoption and availability as well as improved usability of mobile apps (i.e. push notifications, location based services) will see more and more people using their mobile as a major access point to the internet in 2010. according to facebook, there are more than 65 million active users (about 20% of the facebookers) currently accessing facebook through their mobile devices and those users are almost 50% more active on facebook than non-mobile users. recent research from japanese Mobile Marketing Data Labo found, that 75,4% of the respondents of a survey among almost 4,000 social network users in japan accessed social network sites from their mobile phone and not from their pc. speaking of online travel services, the use of mobile seems to be considered much more of reality than in the years before and almost unavoidable in travel distribution and travel business in the future.

beside the possibility of being hyper-connected, the fact of a growing availability of useful mobile apps that make use of the gps-chipsets comes into its own. there are mainly three kind of apps that are of importance to the travel and tourism industry:

a) travel information
b) travel communication
c) travel distribution

these three types do not necessarily represent disjunctive sets; in fact, the boundaries can overlap and in future definitely will. travel information apps aim to help the user to get informations on nearly everything in his or her current location. regardless of which service you need, it seems, “there’s an app for that”. you want to know, in front of which touristic attraction you are standing right now? use augmented reality apps like nearest wiki, acrossair or google goggles - apps that use the camera of your mobile phone in connection with gps and a compass in order to supply you with information about that, what can be seen through the camera-lens right now. you are in search for a good restaurant? open qype radar and you have thousands of reviews in your pocket. you want to “check-in” at venues and earn some points, be awarded with badges, maybe get some freebies or just meet new people? use travel communication apps like foursquare or gowalla. you want to know how to get to the airport from your current location by subway? no problem, there are lot of apps with subway maps (new york, metro paris, barcelona, london, singapore, berlin, …). you want to know if your flight is delayed? use flight track. and if it’s canceled – how do you get a hotel? now travel distribution apps come into spotlight. you can book your hotel with hrs, rent a car with isixt or avis and book your next flight with lufthansa launcher. in 2010 so-called in-app-purchase will become wide spread and make payments as easy as reservations. there are fantastic possibilities for new businesses in this area, but the biggest show-stopper still remains: roaming-costs. mobile provider have to change their mind and offer affordable data-plans. if they do, it will have a huge impact on mobile businesses.

if you agree with me that the future is mobile, you should ask yourself the following questions: is your destination website ready for mobile users? check this and if not, hurry up and make it available! could your customers benefit from a mobile app explicitly build for mobiles like the iphone, blackberry or nexus one and what would be the added value? could you benefit from cooperating with existing apps like foursquare or qype radar? do your already cooperate with app-suppliers like HRS? last but not least, what would be the costs and damages of doing nothing?

(3) social media monitoring – netnographic online research

there are hundreds of millions of consumers out there, interacting through various online communities and their associated cultures. users share their thoughts and opinions worldwide 24/7 online in blogs, social networks, twitter and the like and maintain their own personal profiles. this is a great resource of knowledge – but somehow not that easy to access (i will concentrate on that topic in a future post).

2010 is the year, when destination management organizations will have to start collecting and analyzing information online in order to offer new, authentic knowledge and market intelligence in a timely manner to their customers: hotels, restaurant, specialist stores, and so on. what do people say online about accommodation ‘xy’ or the restaurant around the corner? how do they rate the quality? do they like or dislike your products and services? what do they say about your competitors? who are those people, who have something to say? how does their network look like? how (fast) does their word spread around? how do their preferences are changing? gathering and managing  knowledge in this field of interest is a great way for destination management organizations, to add value to their customers and to re-integrate into the tourism value chain.