TTRA Reflections

“Accurate forecasting is crucial to enable hoteliers to efficiently allocate hotel resources and refine pricing strategies” is just as true today as it was when this group decided to study hotel demand using a DMO’s web traffic data.  Their belief was that other forecasting models of the day were very susceptible to accuracy reduction from “any dramatic changes in the economy” and the accompanying shocks to the tourism industry.  Their idea was to focus on hotel demand combined with looking at “a new type of online data, namely, the web traffic volumes.” 

What peaked my interest about this article is that just seven short years ago these researchers saw the thought of looking at website visits as an indicator of visitation the new frontier for research.  Another interesting idea they brought forward was the use of varying types of online pulse data such as search engines and social media to predict various economic activities in the hospitality industry. 

As for the website visits, the researchers saw them as the logical next step in the purchase process after a consumer finished combing through search engines.  They found website visits to be “even closer to the actual conversion.”  The data from various traveler surveys further corroborated the importance of a DMO website in trip planning. 

 The researchers utilized Charleston South Carolina as the target destination for their case study.   Just as we would today, they utilized Google Analytics for the website data and STR for hotel demand and occupancy.  The main research question was to find out whether the website traffic data from a local DMO helps to improve the accuracy of the forecast for hotel rooms and hotel occupancy rates.   

To confirm the relationship between web traffic data and hotel demand, one approach was to conduct a Granger causality test.  The results showed “a significant reciprocal Granger causality between the two sets of variables: web traffic volume tends to Granger-cause hotel demand/occupancy, while hotel demand/occupancy would also Granger-cause web traffic volume.”  They looked at  several other models as well but the bottom line was that they found that “the significance of DMO web traffic data in predicting the demand for hotel rooms validates the crucial role of DMOs in promoting a destination and connecting travelers with local tourism and hospitality services.“  

I found this ultimate validation very interesting from the standpoint that CVBs are often found in the position of having to justify their value.  This study was also very forward thinking in that it was seven years ago and they were certainly on the right track to connect the value of looking at website visits to predict future hotel demand.  Companies like ADARA today used this as a foundation to build a business on watching searches and demand to predict trends in visitation. 

Submitted by:  Dee Ann McKinney      Missouri Divison of Tourism

Editor Note: The study the author is reflecting upon is available free to the public until September 2021 as a part of the Tribute to TTRA’s 50th anniversary from the Journal of Travel Research.

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Shock Events and Agility

By: rina kurniawati, lecturer of tourism department at sahid polytechnic jakarta

No one in the world could ever predict the crash of two sophisticated Boeing 737 Max, happened last year, killing hundreds of passengers. Also, the spread of the epidemic outbreak of the corona-virus that killed hundreds of people in China. No matter how sophisticated a person, business entity or country, there are always unpredictable events that happen beyond the control of human capacities. The advancement of technology is not compatible with invisible forces that can totally change conditions, flipping it into chaos. These shock events will certainly have an impact on the stability of the business, either loss of income, market, or closure of business operation. The occurrence of these shocks shows how vulnerable is the tourism industry to shock events. No single entity is immune from the impact of external forces.

Although the role of technology has received a lot of attention in the tourism field which is considered a key aspect that drives in the operation of the tourism industry. Yet there is another important thing that one should not forget about- the need for safety. Apparently, people do not necessarily need more high tech airplanes, they simply need to have an airplane that can land. Same with the destination, people travel to destinations considered safe and will avoid those that are considered unsafe. Although China has advanced technology, it still cannot predict the occurrence of epidemic diseases.  Indeed, the tourism industry needs safety as its basic foundation to operate. This does not mean the technology is bad or not important, but it is less important compared to safety.

In today’s world that is full of uncertainty,  sometimes organizations have to deal with shocks which may not be favorable. These shocks may require responses different than the regular business operation, particularly within the short term horizon where the immediate impacts are felt.  Businesses,  directly or indirectly impacted by the events, need to be agile in responding to such shocks to sustain the continuity of their operation.

The act of agility can take different forms to respond to the problems. In certain circumstances, business closures may be unavoidable to reduce the impact of shocks. As businesses are inactive, they need enough savings to cover up the operation for the days that they are not in operation. Starting to have an insurance plan is a good idea to prepare businesses from unexpected events. Business needs to change the methods of the products or services in a quick way to address the problems. Late response to address the problem can cause more damaging effects and distrust from the consumers. Businesses also need to regain the consumers’ confidence when the problems have been resolved. The role of communication is important to send a positive message that businesses are ready to re-open.

The case with airplane crash demand management to focus on product performances, innovation, and safety while resolving the negative images portrayed by the incidence. Leaders have a crucial task to acknowledge problems and explain the course of action to tackle the problems. Showing humanity and empathy for the issues are needed rather than respond with defensive and denials. Similarly, evacuation of people in the destination affected by epidemic diseases and temporary business closures are taken to minimize the spread of the diseases. Safety is a primary priority for the tourism industry.

Shock events teach us that we should not only learn from experiences to avoid the problems we might encounter in the future but also be able to prepare for unexpected events. Humans have limitations that we can never have an accurate prediction for the future, although we have the most sophisticated technology on our hands. The fact is the tourism industry is vulnerable to shocks and we need to understand it. When shocks occur, we need to fully notice the consequences on our businesses and to work on aspects that we can control and manage accordingly.

Navigating Shifting Sands: Tourism Research in Changing Times

By: Carolyn Parker, Research Director at Angus & Associates Ltd

“We need a Greta Thunberg of tourism” suggested a keynote speaker at the Travel and Tourism Research Association International Conference. The ritzy end of Melbourne’s Collins Street was a curious backdrop to the challenges laid out to, and discussed by, tourism researchers from around the world, writes Angus & Associates’ Carolyn Parker.

The Travel and Tourism Research Association (TTRA) International Conference held at the end of June and hosted for the first time by the organisation’s Asia Pacific chapter was an event that set out to explore ‘shifting sands – tourism research in changing times’.

As a first time attendee, the event was notable to me for the sense of community (“you’ll feel like you’ve come home” I was advised by an Australian peer). Representing around thirty countries, delegates generally faced the same research challenges and had much to share with, and learn from, each other. Event evaluations facilitated by Visit North Carolina are in essence the same as those Angus & Associates’ conducts here in New Zealand. At lunch I sat next to an academic who studied an event in Europe that we also studied when it came to New Zealand as part of its’ world circuit. In Japan they are researching the effect of different messages about introducing an accommodation tax in a mountain village (turns out the message makes no difference – what does is the past experience of visitors in paying accommodation taxes, and their loyalty to the destination).

The event brought together academic and practitioner researchers from around the world. The delegate list comprised a small contingent from New Zealand and representatives from destination marketing and management organisations, government officials, academics and commercial researchers and consultants (think Travel Portland, Statistics Canada, Visit Guam, Griffith University, and Destination Analysts).

Historically a North American centric group TTRA in recent years has taken steps to be a truly international Association, bringing the International Conference ‘down under’ a very practical step in delivering on this mission. Although, the Grand Hyatt at the glitzy ‘Paris End’ of Melbourne’s Collins Street, bursting with Louis Vuitton, Bvlgari, Prada, Hermes, and Dolce & Gabbana-type boutiques, in some ways felt like it could be any number of places around the world.

As we’re starting to see in New Zealand, destinations are exploring the use of big data to compliment more traditional data sources. The feeling was however, that traditional data will retain an important role. We learnt about the process of establishing International Visitor Surveys in several Pacific Island nations from the International Finance Corporation, and about options for measuring Airbnb-type activity from AirDNA. We were also challenged by the view of some that visitor numbers are ultimately a vanity metric – these delegates suggested that it’s the value of visitors (in all senses of the word) that really matters.

Also of interest was research used to assist destinations facing challenging circumstances. The Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board took us through research they conducted to inform and evaluate their Everyone is Welcome initiative, launched in response to negative sentiment towards the US (for the marketing gurus among you check out L.A. Tourism’s stunt to create one of the world’s largest, human-powered welcome signs – done in the flight path of LAX). Lorraine Taylor from Colorado talked with me about her work researching the role of the local tourism organisation in the recovery of the tourism industry from the Gold King Mine Spill (and having looked at situations New Zealand tourism organisations have faced in recent years as part of this).

How to achieve sustainability in terms of the access of visitors to unique and important places was a theme that emerged in multiple ways – visitation of Tane Mahuta here in New Zealand was discussed, as was access to Hawaiian waterfalls, remote villages in the Solomon Islands, and Aboriginal lands in Victoria set to become a world heritage site. We were challenged with considering how tourism research can best serve these places and those connected to the land so that sustainable solutions are found.

So where did we end up with our ‘shifting sands’? We were challenged to be brave with big data (but were also cautioned that some opportunities may die as consumers reject tracking activity); we were urged not to ignore the seniors market (many have been in the ‘dreaming’ phase of their trip for 30-40 years, and they’re excited!); to consider how we might think differently if we considered visitors to rather be short-term residents; and that for some popular sites enforced ‘rest periods’ would likely be very beneficial (but potentially problematic for those trying to address seasonality issues). Let’s just say the sands continue to shift!

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Shifting Sands, the Next Economy & Tourism

by Dianne Dredge, The Tourism CoLab 

Sand is awesome. It gets in your hair, in your shoes, on your beach towel, and in your food. Sand challenges the comfort zone. It’s also the original, all-natural version of ‘serious play’ where creativity and innovation are needed to solve complex problems — like building that turreted sandcastle complete with moat and drawbridge. So when TTRA’s 50th International Conference in Melbourne was themed “Navigating the shifting sands: Research in changing times”, I grabbed my bucket and spade and headed to Melbourne!

Challenging the status quo

Australia, and indeed the the global community, is in need of some very serious discussions about the future of tourism. Serious, long range, honest discussions. Uncomfortable discussions. But also creative and constructive discussions that acknowledge the shifting sands that are transforming tourism.

Most tourism conferences usually start with the unquestioned premise that growth is good. Passenger movements, bed nights and per capita spend remain the key metrics by which governments and tourism organisations measure their success. It’s a model that is built on the assumption that the resources on which growth is based are infinite, and that our social and environmental systems can continue to absorb the impacts resulting from this growth. This year the TTRA 2019 conference organizers took a courageous step by inviting two keynote speakers who were always going to challenge that assumption:

Prof Tim Flannery, mammalogist, palaeontologist, environmentalist, conservationist, explorer, public scientist and Australian of the Year (2007). Tim Flannery’s keynote was a powerful and very personal account of his participation in a Reconciliation Ceremony on the island of Malaita in the Solomon Islands. To his long list of expertise above, I would also add storyteller and sage! His message was clear: tourism and travel can unleash complex relationships and cultural sensitivities. Tourism needs to be culturally appropriate, respectful, and the level of change acceptable to those communities should be set by the community itself, not outsiders.

Professor Flannery’s recounting of his personal journey and vulnerabilities in making the reconciliation trek, left no doubt that travel can be a transformative personal journey, especially when mutual authentic exchange occurs. The Reconciliation Ceremony that Professor Flannery attended was in response to open wounds arising from historical conflicts between locals and outsiders. Left untended for some 80 years, difficult relationships between indigenous people and travellers had escalated to dangerous levels. In Flannery’s story, it became clear that the impacts of tourism can take generations to appear, and even more time to heal.

Prof Pauline Sheldon, University of Hawaii Professor Emerita, United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) Ulysses prize winner for contributions to knowledge in sustainable tourism, and TTRA Lifetime Achievement Award Winner, was the second keynote. The remainder of this article focuses on unpacking her contributions.

Shifting Sands

Professor Emerita Pauline Sheldon gave an inspiring keynote that highlighted a number of trends that are converging to reshape our economic, social and political systems. Drawing on diverse works including the Stockholm Resilience Centre and Johan Rockström’s call to recognise planetary boundaries, Kate Raworth’s work on Doughnut Economics, and Naomi Klein’s treatise on the failures of our current economic system, Professor Sheldon called for a rethink of the current ‘growth is good’ discourse. Can the planet really cope with international arrivals growing at a rate of around 3.3% per annum and reaching 1.8 billion international tourist arrivals in 2030?

Professor Sheldon’s address was a call to think — really think — about those figures and what that means for our planet and its fragile ecosystems, for places (and especially those already flooded with visitors), and for people, cultural traditions, languages, values and ways of life.

The climate crisis, biodiversity loss, water and food security, labour and employment issues associated with Industry 4.0, and the challenges of inclusive development, are just some of the challenges that are changing our relationship with the Earth and with capitalism. But tourism, enjoying seven decades of positive growth, and characterized predominantly by SMEs with low propensity to innovate, has been slow to acknowledge, let alone take up the challenge of transitioning to this next economy.

It’s clear we need to shift our thinking about tourism — and quite dramatically. We need a new relationship with capitalism, and a new relationship with Nature. We also need to redefine what we think of success in tourism, and to put the wellbeing of planet, people and places — not just profit and growth — on the agenda. In short, Professor Sheldon suggested we need to move from the ‘Me’ to the ‘We-economy’.

Alternative capitals

Professor Sheldon argued for a broader interpretation and valuing of the different kinds of capital that can be created in tourism. We also need frameworks and metrics to help us learn and better understand and manage the diverse kinds of value generated by tourism. Acknowledging the value of alternative capitals, it’s possible to start re-imagining and re-engineering the tourism system. Identifying and measuring alternative capitals helps to value a wider range of material and non-material resources that are generated by and/or used in tourism. It also brings to light the impacts associated with the way different capitals are traded, exchanged, accumulated, spent, and exploited.

Diverse Economies of Tourism

Some interesting conceptual work over the years traces and describes diverse economies in general, and more recently in tourism. We know these economies by different labels, but all are trying to capture alternative capitals or describe other kinds of non-financial transactions (e.g. emotional, psychological, and relational). The almost tunnel-vision emphasis on the accumulation of financial capital, growth and profit over the last century, and its acceleration since the 1980s, has meant we’ve lost sight of these other kinds of capitals. We’ve forgotten how to value benefits and costs of our social, environmental and economic transactions in broader and more holistic terms.

Tourism is full of diverse economies, and some, such as the collaborative, gig, and experience economies, have had a transformative effect on tourism in recent years. These economies generate diverse value and other kinds of capitals well beyond financial value. Sharing, for example, is said to contribute to trust, deeper social connection, cultural understanding, and so on. These diverse economies — and what’s being traded and shared, and the impacts and motivations of these exchanges— are deserving of more attention if we are to navigate the shifting sands of tourism.

Highlighting the work of Anna Pollock, John Fullerton, Daniel Christian Wahl and others, Professor Sheldon has suggested that we look beyond sustainability towards the regenerative economy. The regenerative economy requires redefinition of our economic systems with the key aim of supporting thriving, living systems. It requires redesigning our industrial system of production and consumption around circular patterns of resource and energy use and draws inspiration ecology. It also draws attention to the need to move from a vicious cycle of resource exploitation to a virtuous cycle of nurturing regenerative cultures.

Professor Sheldon briefly touched upon a number of cases where these ideas have progressed into something more concrete, but argued more work is needed to measure and demonstrate the value of such approaches. In all the locations discussed, change-making work is a work in progress.

The Aloha Challenge in Hawai’i is one such project that identifies locally and culturally appropriate and relevant goals, metrics and indicators that track the State’s progress toward achieving the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Given the importance of tourism to this economy, it’s a useful case for conference participants to delve into.

But changing the system won’t happen by itself. Professor Sheldon ended her presentation with a reflection on the need to change mindsets in order to progress real, lasting change in tourism. Due to the long boom in tourism, mindsets can be locked into certain ways of thinking, so her call to action included the following:

• Nurture human values, encourage caring, and how all tourism stakeholders can take personal responsibility. The rise of the purpose economy illustrates that tourism can be both profitable and address a higher purpose.
• Overcome locked-in mindsets by opening up a debate about new economic thinking. Educate and involve everyone in these discussions.
• Create and implement new metrics that reflect a holistic approach to capitals, to investment, to the regeneration of the natural assets and social resources that maintain quality of life and planetary well-being. These metrics should also help us learn what to do, not just measure our performance.
• Support those who are building the bridges and forging new pathways between sectors, silos, and disciplines. We need innovative thinkers to create new working contexts and institutional landscapes for the change that is needed.

The shifting sands described in these keynotes were a highlight of the TTRA 2019 conference. The ideas, cases, and challenges laid out are the small grains of sand that will undoubtedly provide participants with a lot of serious play opportunities as they head back to their daily work. But they are the materials through which sandcastles are built, and change happens. Like I said, sand is awesome.

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