The Swiss Tourism sector and Web 2.0 change management - A comparison with US online newspapers
The World Wide Web influences economic sectors differently, such as newspaper business models and five key functions for tourism: promotion, distribution, communication, management and research. This study compares implementation of Web 2.0 across these two sectors, drawing on over seven thousand of websites. The study uses an automatic analysis, namely a web crawler or softbot. The results show that although the newspaper sector outperforms tourism sector in the implementation of all but two analyzed Web 2.0 features, namely videoblogs and podcasts. This result could suggest that the tourism sector focuses on features related to the travel experience.
Business sectors have implemented Web 2.0, with differing results. The first generation Web (1.0) challenged mass media, especially print. Internally, the migration from print to digital changed procedures, particularly in information technology and human resources. Externally, the availability of online information impacted print media business models with new reader subscriptions and advertising forms. Moreover, new media actors appeared during the dot.com revolution, facilitating the spread of information and challenging traditional mass media in information dissemination and advertising. The second generation Web (2.0) radically alters traditional newspaper business models, more so than Web 1.0. Information no longer flows in one direction but spreads interactively via networks and communities in multiple forms including photos, video and audio content.
Similarly, Web 2.0 is also changing tourism business models, and may be a paradigm change in marketing – a powerful tool for travel organization. Web 2.0 introduces new travel researching ad planning approaches that offer a range of compelling value propositions for both the consumer and the supplier. The range of possibilities now offered to travelers through Web 2.0 has become “Travel 2.0” (Schmallegger & Carson, 2008) Mashups, for example, merge data from multiple web services such as Google Maps (maps.google.com) and Flickr (flickr.com) into websites such as placespotting.com, iphonemaniacs.com and topin.travel.
Web 2.0. in tourism sector
With Web 2.0 facilities, travelers can review entire trips, rather than trip segments through individual supplier websites. Planning tools such as interactive maps and traveler discussion boards facilitate travel planning and provide additional communication channels and opportunities for direct customer feedback for travel/tourism providers. Web 2.0 facilities also apply to websites of traditional tourist enterprises, such as hotels, travel agencies and destination management organizations. For example, Sheraton Hotels incorporate user-generated content (UGC) by putting guest comments in the centre of their home page (Scaglione, Schegg, Syed-Ahmad, & Murphy, 2008). Another example was in 2006 when Starwood Hotels and Restaurants launched mylobby.com, a website containing blog facilities. That the mylobby.com website no longer existis today highlights the difference between adopting and successfully implementing a technology.
Goals and methodology of study
This study adds to the Web 2.0 research stream by comparing different implementation levels across two sectors and their subsectors, newspapers and tourism and tries to answer the following questions:
- Are there any sectors leading the adoption of Web 2.0 features?
- How popular is User-generated content (UGC), namely blog, videoblog, podcast overall and across categories?
As a first step in examining online newspapers, this study compares Web 2.0 features on over three thousand affiliated and non-affiliated US newspaper websites. The second step examines several tourism sectors across about four thousand websites in Switzerland and in Europe.
The Web 2.0 infrastructure is an array of evolving technologies, application and services (Anderson, 2007). To measure Web 2.0 adoption, this research investigated nine website techniques (RSS, AJAX, etc.). The study used a softbot, a software application that runs automated Internet tasks (Steiner, 1999).
Results for the tourism sector
- Swiss hotels: lowest adoption of Web 2.0 (number) and included mostly in the latest innovation adopter categories.
- Swiss restaurants: notable adoption of Web 2.0 but only 10% penetration of Web 1.0.
- Hotel chains, European TO: outperform all the other sectros. Internationalization and size levels of the sector that were key factor of adoption for Web 1.0 seems also to be relevant for Web 2.0 this also applies to the inclusion of User generated contents (UGC).
Results for the US online Newspapers
- The Internet deconstructs classic business models.
- Newspapers responded slowly to the Internet.
- The Internet's economic model differs from traditional newspaper models built on advertising and subscriptions.
Similar to diffusion of innovations studies across a wide range of domains, this study supports two key findings related to the organizational adoption of technologies. Large and affiliated newspapers adopted significantly more Web 2.0 features than did the small and non-affiliated newspapers.
Comparison between US online Newspaper and tourism sector in Web 2.0 adoption
Internet has challenged both tourism and newspaper economic activity. Whereas the latter has to revisit his business model given that internet erase the glue between the vertical and the horizontal integration; the former has to change in more than one way, one of those were diffusion channels. The arrival of Web 2.0 has also changed the way that tourism sector links with its customer and newspaper with its readers.
The comparison of the adoption of Web 2.0 techniques across the two sectors shows that tourism’s ones are behind for almost all Web 2.0 techniques with two exceptions: Podcast and videoblogs.
This results go against the general assumption that tourism sector has higher parsimony attitude towards ICT change and shows that, if the innovation trend is perceived as useful for the business, they can adopt and adapt it in consequence.
The whole story could be found in
Miriam Scaglione, Colin Johnson and Jean-Philippe Trabichet (2010), How the Swiss Tourism sector is managing the change to Web 2.0, in Keller, P& Bieger, T (Ed.) Managing change in tourism : creating opportunities - overcoming obstacles: 59th AIEST, Berlin, : Erich Schmidt , 101-118.
Miriam Scaglione, Roland Schegg, Jean-Philippe Trabichet and Jamie Murphy (2009), Mass Media in the Web2.0 era., International Telecommunication Society, 4th Africa-Asia-Australasia Regional Conference, Perth, Western Australia, 2009.
Air Force 1 Ultra Flyknit 2.0 - Black
Subscribe
Ajouter un commentaire