The Scary Five. Scenarios for the Hospitality Industry

In 2013, Larry Mogelonsky published a thought-provoking future scenario of Hotels in 2023 as being totally dominated by Online Travel Agencies: the scenario depicts a situation in which a hotel general manager is fired by the OTA, along with his entire hotel, for insufficient market performance.

This could in fact be the outcome of a current power struggle in the hospitality market. But what else could happen if we look at a further evolution of the internet? Especially the role of the big media houses --Google, Amazon, Facebook, Youtube, Ebay--, which in view of their marketing power are already being referred to as the Scary Five?

This article (in Dutch) describes a scenario study currently being conducted about these developments. Drivers that have been identified are: net neutrality, the neutrality of search algorithms and the business model behind these companies acting as travel intermediaries.

Jeroen Oskam & Tjeerd Zandberg, "On-guest entertainment en de Scary Five. Toekomstscenario's voor de hotelindustrie". Hospitality Management 6 (december 2014), pp. 44-47.

A new state in Europe? Scenarios for Catalan self-determination

Historically, the political structure of Spain has been a source of conflict: peripheral regions as Catalonia and the Basque country have questioned the centralized power of the state and have claimed a higher level of decentralization in view of their distinct history, cultural identity and language. Recently, political and social discontent has escalated in Catalonia, leading to the unilateral announcement of a Catalan self-determination referendum for November 2014. Regardless of political or ethical preferences, it will be necessary to foresee the consequences of this process for Catalonia, Spain and elsewhere. A scenario approach focuses on possible outcomes of the current debate rather than on the arguments put forward in the controversy. Those in favour of Catalan independence have depicted a future for their country with a booming economy that will situate it at currently unattainable levels of prosperity. Opponents of secession argue that Catalonia will become a failed state. These future visions of an independent Catalonia can be described as scenarios, the underlying assumptions and plausibility of which can be analysed. EU membership and the effect of borders on international trade are identified as key variables. The alternative scenarios will also be crucial to evaluate the broader impact of “a new state in Europe”.

Article published in Futures, Volume 64, December 2014, Pages 51–60.
doi:10.1016/j.futures.2014.10.008.

Link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328714001694.

The Waddendijk as a "Leisure Landscape"

Does the northern Wadden coast, currently mostly a transit area for tourists on their way to the islands, have the potential for tourist and leisure development? The characteristics of a rural area bordering the World Heritage Wadden Sea would suggest that it does, but the challenge is to combine the attractiveness of a tourist area with the strict requirements of coastal protection.


Waddendijk Think Tank
In 2013 ETFI took the initiative of creating a 'Waddendijk think tank' with regional stakeholders representing the housing corporations, coastal protection, architecture, cultural festivals and tourist development. The conclusion was that any future development should respect not only coastal safety, but also the natural and cultural specifics of the area. Two ideas became key in the work of this think tank: the concept of Building with Nature, which seeks to integrate natural processes into the coastal protection system, and the idea of a Cultural Route with landscape art, leading to a kind of permanent Oerol festival on the continental shore. The Estuaire project in Nantes (France) would be a good example of a similar development.

Tourist experiences in 2050?

At the Future Forum Napoli (October 21-28 2014) I was invited to speak about future tourist experiences. I linked their development to the three drivers for the future of tourism identified by Ian Yeoman: the global distribution of wealth, the availability of resources and technology. For the characteristics of our 'experiences', I am following four developments with interest:

1. Commoditization or 'de-experiencing' as a result of declining wealth;
2. The way resources scarcity will affect the offer of 'experiences';
3. Tourist pressure on big cities;
4. The role mediahouses as Google may play in tourism marketing and distribution in the future. Will the internet be a neutral or a mediated platform? (See also my observations on Social media in 2030).

The Sharing Economy: a Sign of the Times, but What Sign?

One of the effects of the social internet and of mobile connectivity is that it creates a constant communication between supply and demand side. Not only can we shop 24/7, but we can also trade goods and services with other individuals, allowing us to share possessions and help others. What are the social origins of this wave of altruism, and where will it lead to?

Airbnb, Uber, but also leaving a dog with a host while you are on holiday, renting a bike or buying an apple pie from your neighbour: the internet has streamlined these interactions so that we now can use our resources more efficiently, we do no longer have to be obsessed with possessions and we can help our neighbours (for even more examples, see Forbes). In short, the sharing economy has unexpectedly put an end to the evil side of capitalism. So now, will we live happily ever after?

In his column "Don't believe the hype, the 'sharing economy' masks a failing economy", Evgeny Morozov gives a critical analysis of the phenomenon that, as the author states, has turned us into "perpetual hustlers": the rapid rise of the sharing economy is caused by "capitalism's newly found technological capability to convert every commodity that has been bought and removed from the market – temporarily becoming 'dead capital' of sorts – into a rentable object that never leaves the market at all." While the internet does help to more effectively distribute existing resources, and for many of us the trading system may alleviate the effects of the financial crisis, the sharing economy fights the symptoms, but not the disease.

According to Morozov: "Sensors, smartphones, apps: these are our generation's earplugs. That we no longer notice how thoroughly they banish anything that even smacks of politics from our lives is itself a telling sign: deafness – to injustice and inequality but, above all, to our own dire state of affairs – is the price we'll pay for this dose of immediate comfort".

Read the whole article Evgeny Morozov, "Don't believe the hype, the 'sharing economy' masks a failing economy", The Observer, 28 September 2014.

(Originally posted on the ETFI blog, http://etfi.eu/blog/2014/10/220604-the-sharing-economy-a-sign-of-the-times-but-what-sign).

Who were the Maidan snipers?

In the propaganda war surrounding the Ukraine conflict it is hard to find any reliable information. However, when sources as little suspect of belonging to Putin's propaganda machine as Estonian minister Urmas Paet or the German ARD television allude to the presence of snipers different than the officially accused Berkut policemen, this becomes alarming. Paet and Catherine Ashton "discussed a conspiracy theory that blamed the killing of civilian protesters in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, on the opposition rather than the ousted government" earlier this month. On April 10, the German news show Monitor reported that shots had been fired not only by policemen loyal to Yanukovich, who claimed to have fired only at armed protesters, but also from the Ukraine hotel and other locations behind the protesters. From these positions, both policemen and protesters were targeted. Despite the indications for the involvement of an unidentified and professional sniper-unit, State Prosecutor and Svoboda militant Oleg Machnizki has closed the investigation (full transcript, in German, after the break).

Why did we go to war?

One hundred years later, we are still discussing what caused the First World War, and who is to blame. What we should have learned is that while isolated incidents and the reaction to these in itself may have seemed rational and understandable, the sum of these incidents became a catastrophic leap into death and destruction. With this hindsight we could have avoided a similar chain of events one century later.

In the escalation of tensions in Ukraine, we have seen the following critical incidents:

1. Interference in domestic affairs
If Ukraine was a sovereign state, an intervention in its internal affairs could only have been justified in the case of severe violations of human rights. But what was under discussion were the country's international relations. The EU support for protests against an elected president was a casus belli - not for Russia but for Ukraine.

The next 10 years. Trends and scenarios.

(Published in: Hotel Yearbook 2014)

Watching trends
How will the hospitality business evolve in the next 10 years? Businesses are hungry for information that helps them identify business opportunities and risks in advance. Trendwatchers address this need by watching their crystal balls for the latest updates on consumer likes and behaviour. However, these trends are hardly reliable for long-term strategic planning. They are too volatile and often caused by “self-inflicted” innovation.

Somehow, predicting a trend is like deciding what to have for dinner. When such a “trend” is detected, we decide to influence the near future. If a fashion designer states that “next year, red shoes are hot”, this is not an analysis but a directive statement. In other words, “trends” are commercial propositions rather than insight into the future.

This makes trends capricious and unpredictable by nature in the long run. Besides, were trends a trend themselves? In years without growth, more prudent consumers may slow down their trendiness. Yet, our businesses still face drastic changes we have to analyse and anticipate.

"They call me the plantation negro"

A few years back I was asked to look into traditional Caribbean song texts - the main research question being whether and to what extent these would show a different sexual morality. While analyzing these songs I found it hard to interpret the sometimes shocking racism of popular and apparently uncontroversial songs.

In particular:
"They call me the plantation negro,
for work to me is an enemy.
I leave working to the ox,
for God created work as a punishment".
(A mí me llaman el negrito del batey, / porque el trabajo para mí es un enemigo. / El trabajar yo se lo dejo todo al buey, / porque el trabajo lo hizo Dios como castigo).

The history of these songs led me to the following explanation:

"The censorship guy". Homage to Manuel L. Abellán

Manuel Abellán (Barcelona, 1938-2011) was a professor at the Universiteit van Amsterdam when in the late seventies, early years of the Spanish democracy, he managed to enter into the archives of the Francoist censorship and started his endeavour of reconstructing what had been purged and of identifying those who had been responsible - many of them still respected politicians, writers or scholars who had slipped through the nets of the Transition's imposed amnesia.
The following piece was published in the special issue of the electronic journal Represura, homage to Manuel. My title comes from one of the anecdotes of Manuel's research and his contacts with the former Francoist esteblishment when, after being introduced to former Franco minister Fraga the latter recognised him as "the censorship guy", to which Manuel replied "No, no, the censorship guy... that would be you".
Besides my professor, Manuel was an admired and beloved friend until he passed away in December 2011.

“El de la censura”
Jeroen Oskam

         Empecé a trabajar con Manuel Abellán en los años ochenta, en la Facultad de Letras de Amsterdam. Acababa de salir su primer gran estudio sobre la censura franquista. En Amsterdam daba clases, principalmente, sobre Historia Contemporánea de España, una asignatura cuyo atractivo era una visión coherente que vinculaba sucesos dentro pero también fuera de España con la evolución del pensamiento político y cultural – superestructura, decíamos hace tiempo –, de tal manera que no era raro que una clase sobre la Primera República terminara tratando de la actualidad política holandesa. Para el estudiante que yo era entonces, eran oasis de lucidez en un ambiente donde se confundía romanticismo y palabrería con erudición.

A Big Data Police State?

If you look at the long term future of social media, I do not believe that privacy is the main concern. It is of course not the best place to share those things you would not want to be public. But the larger part of 'posts' will be hardly compromising for its users.
That is, if taken separately. The long term trend in social media appears to be building search algorithms that can make sense of all these posts, and attach a meaning behind them to individual users. As Facebook developer Rasmussen explains in a BBC-interview about the value of newsfeed posts:

"It's by far our biggest data source. The engineering challenge of building a search index that can manage that volume of data is big. We're well underway to making the system scale that far - we just aren't there yet."
It means a friend searching for "Friends who like football" could identify you if you had once written something like "Come on United!" in your feed.
[...]
"There are really interesting techniques around sentiment analysis," Mr Rasmussen says, "where people try to take text and figure out whether it's someone saying they like something or don't like something.
(See: BBC News - Technology, "Lars Rasmussen: the brains behind Facebook's future")

 A few months ago, when we started an ETFI-project on the future of social media, I spoke of a scenario in which both industries and governments would adopt a more repressive attitude. The fact that social media as Twitter have created temporary openings of free speech in totalitarian countries is a matter of technical unpreparedness rather than a feature which is inherent to the new media. On the contrary: indepth indexing of newsfeed posts will be an unprecedentedly powerful tool for repressive organisations.

Trendwatching: my 2013 predictions

Just as others, I failed dramatically in my 2012 predictions. After visiting the Horecava Food Fair, I foresaw that ice cream would become hot, as well as the break through of the culinary bitter ball. This time I will stay on the safe side and just look at the non culinary world:

1. The Syrian civil war will affect the stability of Iran.
2. The U.S. successfully increases its energy production. All else remaining equal, prices will grow moderately. Geostrategical disruptions of energy supply though will lead to a further price hike.
3. Painful sacrifices of purchasing power, in combination with a still deepening recession, lead to rising tensions and social violence in Southern Europe. This will strengthen the traditional left and drive the right to the far right. 
4. Also elsewhere, austerity measures will lead back into recession. Bad times for consensus politics. In the Netherlands, the Conservative-Labour coalition will not make it to the end of the year.
5. The prestige and credibility of monarchies will crumble. In Europe, we may see one disappear. It is a logical result of growing transparency.
6. Coursera will affect universities as Napster has changed the music industry. Eventually we will all be able to learn from eminent scientists. Being in an actual class room will be like being dragged on to the stage to dance with Bruce Springsteen.
7. If electronic warfare has become fully effective, we may also see the digital equivalent of the Great Train Robbery.
8. There will be no Elfstedentocht ice skating tour. Not because of the whether; there would simply be too many people for the (up to now) required 15 cms. of ice.
9. Those who have high expectations of 2013 will be disappointed.
10. Barcelona will win whatever there is to win. At least got that one right.

The disadvantage of peace and harmony (a Christmas thought)

I am color blind, but I did not discover that myself. You only know when other people tell you they see colors that you don't. It is the same as being stupid: you don't understand the things you cannot understand, so others have to tell you.

This principle shows why we have to rely on other opinions to understand the flaws of our system. As far as I am able to see, this is an important ideological problem of our contemporary world. Without alternative perspectives, we will be unable to see what happens, if it is rooted in our system.

The rational allocation of resources dogma

What would be the right price for a house? One of the most visible symptoms of the current crisis is the oversupply in housing. Demand is stable: housing is a basic necessity, and being evicted can drive people to suicide (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and counting). This means that prices would have to drop to the level where buyers step in. They do not.

We do not have a mechanism that rationally measures the value of a house.

Black snow in Omsk

Last week, Omsk was covered twice in black snow. While unusual, one does not need too much phantasy to come up with plausible explanations. No reason for concern, according to federal authorities. Not as bad as when it snowed white powder in summer, although the aluminium silicate crystals did not prove to be unhealthy either. But just to be safe, let's keep our children inside, refrain from sporting activities and not touch the snow with our hands ...

The future of social media

Last October 31, ETFI professor of Scenario Planning Albert Postma painted scenarions for the long-term future of social media at IPK's World Travel Monitor^® Forum 2012 in Pisa. His presentation included the opinions or visions of several international colleagues, including my own. I see two important trends. In the first place, a growing gap between different types of news consumers, with some able to access far more sources of news than would have been thinkable in the past, and others, overwhelmed by the vast offer of news, limiting themselves to 'low-cost' news (or fun, bizarre etc. news; see "In a bizarre world ...").
A second trend is growing pressure on the freedom of expression the internet in general, and social media specifically, have generated, both from commercial parties (especially the entertainment industry) and from political power.

For the other opinions, see ETFI's Youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/stendenetfi.

Incoming Tourism

Interview about an ETFI-research project on possibilities for incoming tourism in the north of the Netherlands:

“Fryslan needs to anticipate shifts in consumer behaviour .“ Frisian tourism entrepreneurs should be prepared for Spanish tourists, watersport companies need to offer a variety of products and the world heritage site the Waddensea must have a visitor centre.
All these recommendations are the outcomes of a scenario research towards trends in the field of tourism within the next five years. According to Oskam, entrepreneurs should be aware of shifts in consumer behaviour. This will allow entrepreneurs to anticipate trends.
More articles on the scenario reasearch can be found here.


See also: blog.etfi.eu

Youth exclusion

Youth exclusion is one of the main disastrous effects of the current crisis in the long run. The majority of Spaniards under 30 is currently unemployed, without counting those who are studying or otherwise unavailable for the labour market. This is up from structurally high youth unemployment.

The Spanish youth live at home with their parents. Just 45,6% of people between 18 and 34 are independent; no more than 21,5% of those under 29 and able to work are economically autonomous. The lack of perspective of employment or an independent home strengthens a cultural emphasis on family life: parents do not want their children to leave home at any cost and the youth do not want to leave home if that would mean losing quality of life.

According to El País, the youth mature sooner but they are more infantilicized. The repercussions of leaving this age group inactive are improductive investments in education, a lack of innovative impulse and a future work force that will be unprepared for their responsibilities.

This situation cannot be solved as long as four destructive factors coalesce:adverse economic circumstances, a speculative housing market, an obsolete education system and overprotective parents.

What is scenario planning?

Explanatory video on scenario planning (in Dutch, English subtitles).

In a bizarre world ...

Now that the traditional newspaper business model has become obsolete, apparently internet newspapers' main challenge is to fill the space between the advertisements. It does not matter how, in fact there seems to be a distinction between 'low-cost' news and news with value which can be offered in the printed press or behind paid access.
The 'low-cost' or copy-paste news is identical in most newspapers, which are obviously generated automatically.

Especially popular are the sections of 'bizarre', 'weird' or 'fun' news. Is this genuine news, or pure fiction for marketing purposes? Take the following article:

Belgian couple headed for Lourdes arrives in ... Loudes
A Belgian couple that wanted to visit the image of the Virgin Mary in Lourdes, did not arrive in the pilgrimage site in the French Pyrenees, but in the town Loudes, according to the French magazine La Montagne. Loudes is situated in the also picturesque Haute-Loire and, like Lourdes, in France, but a few hundred kilometers from the place where Bernadette saw the Virgin Mary half a century ago.

The Belgians did have a GPS in their car. Unfortunately they had typed in "Loudes' instead of 'Lourdes'.

Source: HLN.be (http://www.hln.be/hln/nl/959/Bizar/article/detail/1472833/2012/07/19/Belgisch-koppel-op-weg-naar-Lourdes-belandt-in-Loudes.dhtml) and La Montagne (http://www.lamontagne.fr/auvergne/actualite/2012/07/19/en-route-pour-lourdes-un-couple-de-belges-se-retrouve-a-loudes-1224910.html).

Strange. Even if this were interesting or 'fun', who made this story? Did the Belgians call the newspaper, or a Loudes policeman? Was there a reporter involved, or do we just submit our weird and fun stories through the newspaper websites?

So far, 134.342 people liked this story on Facebook. In a bizarre world where we no longer understand who took our money, we stay informed through random weird stories, that may be true, or just fun.