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.

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).

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.

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

What is scenario planning?

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

Where is the trip going? (Wohin geht die Reise?)

"On May 17th 2011 Jeroen Oskam and Gaby Seemann were invited by the project group 'Netzwerk Toekomst' to take a glimpse into the future. Oskam not just highlighted the importance of being prepared for the future but elaborated why the ETFI rather works with uncertain factors and scenario planning than with common forecasts. Ongoing developments such as a decline in out of home expenditure and increase in investments in energy and living rather than food and tourism shape tomorrow's tourism. A decrease in income and increasing costs for tourism due to higher energy costs will change the tourism pattern. Moreover, in house gaming and online communities such as Facebook and Twitter make the current and future generation of children rather stay inside and not meet or play outside which will drastically change their way of travelling and leisure behaviour in the future."

From the Ems-Dollard Regio Magazine:

Open publication - Free publishing - More etfi

International Tourism Futures Conference

Panel discussion: the Future of Tourism and the Future of Tourism Education

From November 2-5, 2011, the European Tourism Futures Institute organized the 'Tourism Futures' conference at Stenden University, as a meeting for international futurologists, tourism researchers and professionals with the objective to find and discuss answers to the situations tourism will face in the next decades. Conference topics were the hotel of the future, creative cities/city-sumers, slow marketing and the global shift of political power. As keynotes the programme featured Márcio Favilla, as Director of Competitiveness at UNWTO and dr. Katharina Grünberg, from the scenario team at Shell, about their organisations’ tourism future study and scenario studies in general, respectively. Ari Björkqvist presented Haaga-Helia’s project on the future of hotels and conference centers, while Ian Yeoman looked at the hotel of the future from the perspective of the future of sleep.

The international conference was combined with the regionally oriented Fryske Toerisme Kongresdei.

Conference website: http://www.etfi.eu/conference.
Conference presentations can be downloaded from http://www.etfi.eu/conference/programme .

Stenden university claims a leading role in Tourism Research

Article in Science Guide, November 16, 2011:

16 november 2011 - Stenden Hogeschool wil een leidende rol in het Europees toerisme onderzoek. Op het Future Tourism Congres (FTG) is besloten een grote samenwerking aan te gaan met verschillende grote Europese universiteiten. Belangrijkste doel is het gelijktrekken van de dataverzameling in Europa.

Future or Futures?

(Opening of the Academic Year 2011-12)



Today I have been asked to give an extremely short presentation about the European Tourism Futures Institute. I believe that time will be sufficient to concentrate only on one single letter in the name of the institute: that will be the S that turns future into a plural futures.
When this name was first launched, we were asked whether this was a mistake: can you speak of multiple futures, while everyone knows there is just one future? This is a deliberate choice of our institute, that is crucial for our research strategy.

Leeuwarden in search of tomorrow's tourist

Newspaper article (Leeuwarder Courant, April 28, 2011) on a workshop organized by Stenden's European Tourism Futures Institute and delivered by dr. Ian Yeoman, at the local City Hall: