Tourism Innovation Programme 2014-2015
Innovation Lab 2
The Lighthouse, Poole
Thursday 13 November 2014
Agenda
1.00 - 1.15 • Feedback on Journals and Journal system
• Time since the last Workshop
1.15 - 2.15 • Observation task feedback and capture main points from
your observations
• 3 groups
• Present back to whole group
2.15 - 3.00 • Presentation: Google's 5 stages of travel and the
Bournemouth customer journey
3.00 - 3.30 • Examination of potential projects
• Allocation of groups and group leaders
3.30 - 4.45 • Smaller groups develop ideas to first presentation stage
4.45 - 5.15 • Next steps allocation of innovation project leaders
Three innovation projects:
Process group
Use of Near Field Communication (NFC) to:
 enable better visitor interaction with the destination by embedding NFCs at a selection of
locations within Bournemouth. These NFCs would be programmed with content information
about ‘recommended’ providers to the visitor economy – restaurants, hotels, attractions but
also events.
 encourage visitors to leave reviews (eg ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ tags on tables in restaurants
directing people to either TripAdvisor or instant message to restaurant)
Project champion is Trevor Ayling
Digital group
Significantly improve the Bournemouth website by:
allowing individual businesses who sign up to post information, add pictures and videos of their
venues
• providing accurate and timely website analytics which the individual business user or organisation
can access at any time i.e. not a weekly, daily or monthly report
• syncing content with ‘Best of Bournemouth’ app
•
Project champion is Nicole Gore
Product Group
Development of ‘sensory experience enhancements' to key 'hotspots' across Bournemouth. The
station was used as an example. It currently offers no indication that the visitor has arrived at an
important seaside resort, but the addition of graphics, a soundscape (eg seagulls and crashing
waves) and above all a re-introduction of ‘the human touch’ - welcoming hosts drawn from a
volunteer cohort will significantly enhance the experience it was felt. This could involve extending
existing Ambassador programme to human ‘welcome hosts’ at key hubs - station staff, seafront
staff, taxi drivers etc
Project champion is Anna Chamberlain
Feedback from the Journals
None of the group present had used the Journal system, citing lack of time. They were encouraged
to correct this and use the system as a space for reflection and thought.
Observation Task Feedback
In reality none of the group had actually used the observation task as intended - none reported an
actual ‘on the ground’ observation.
Overall
• The projects felt grounded and owned by each of the groups.
• Of the 3 the most immediately deliverable is the website improvement project. Experience has
shown that it’s really important that an accurate and complete specification is provided to the
website development company:
- two way exchange between the businesses and the web site - the businesses can post:
 text, images and video
 links to their website and social media etc
• In terms of Behavioural Economics or put another way; the anthropology of the visitor economy,
the following ideas came from the lab’s discussions and will help to shape the proposed projects
(these are preliminary thoughts at this stage of the programme):
1
‘Recommendation Trust Quotient’ and Existing Relationships
For all of us there is a correlation between trust, our human relationship with another person and
readiness to accept a recommendation. In other words, people trust human recommendation
sources that they know; they are more likely to act on a recommendation from a known source.
1.1 There is probably, also the sophistication that we may accumulate a 'store’ of
recommendations from which we select when deciding on an action
1.2 The relationship between the recommender and the recommendee is also sophisticated
1.3 There is a hierarchy of trust where the relationship between the individual making the
decision to purchase and the recommending person is important.
1.4 Family and friends relationships are important influencers but are insufficient to produce a
high 'recommendation trust quotient' if the ‘related to’ individual has neither experience nor
expertise.
1.5 Where the friend or family member has experience but not expertise; the degree or depth of
experience is important. So a family member or friend who has visited a restaurant once and
dines out 3 to 5 times a year is less reliable or trustworthy (has a lower recommendation
trust quotient) than someone who regularly dines out or works in the hospitality industry
1.6 So, for the non-expert family member or friend, frequency is important – the frequent diner
or user being preferred, having a higher recommendation trust quotient
1.7 On the whole the expert who is in the industry is preferred over the friend or family member
with experience
1.8 Possibly the highest level of recommendation trust quotient is where the expert has actually
stayed at the hotel, dined at the restaurant or visited the attraction
1.9 For known Individuals, whether family or friend, there is therefore a hierarchy of propensity
of ‘willingness to trust’
As far as the method of receiving the information is concerned; face-to-face contact is the most
trusted, probably because we can read non-verbal cues as well as listening to speech. We get so
much more information in this way than from a voice only conversation or from a text or email. A
non-visual real time conversation is probably the next most trusted. A Social Media post with
photographs or videos possibly comes next. This will be followed by text or email
There is also obviously a ‘portfolio’ or taste component, which adds further subtlety; differences in
individual music, food, movies, hotels, price preferences, are all influencers. Equally, time valuation
varies between individuals - some will prefer to drive from Bournemouth to London, others will
consider this a waste of time and prefer the train….
2. Recommendation Trust Quotient and Non Existing Relationships
In a non-personal context where a scoring system is the basis of recommendation, using, for
example, the star system familiar from Amazon or TripAdvisor, then the quantity of reviews is an
important dimension. So, if there are 112 good reviews and 1 bad review for a product or service
then it is likely that the recommendation will be accepted – simply on the basis of the crowd sourced
recommendation (112 people can’t all be wrong).
2.1 There is also a 'likelihood' element to this; we ask ourselves unconsciously whether it is likely or
unlikely that an organisation could organise 112, 'planted' quotes? We also, unconsciously, read the
nature of the comment/recommendation, seeking the truthfulness of the comment; believing it to
be unlikely that an organisation could create 112 planted quotes with individual prose styles (and
spelling mistakes)
2.2 For media there are clearly well-developed, if subtle, production value recognition aspects to
propensity to accept a recommendation. So a highly managed/produced 'vox pop' video clip
where a marketing company has set up a series of interviews on the street and inserted them
into an advertisement, or where a 'professional' recommends (“9/10 dentists recommend this
toothpaste”) is likely to be less trusted than a vox pop where there are lower production values.
Again here, the ability to read veracity and authenticity is important in prosperity to trust.
2.3 Because we are also highly tuned to these 'micro-signals' of truthfulness or veracity, we might
wonder why marketeers or advertising companies bother with the '9/10 dentists recommend'
type of advertisement. Equally, we might wonder about the overproduced destination advert,
with warm seas, good looking people and endless sunshine
2.4 In the current Instagram, Snapchat and Pearlshare videos online there is a subtle balance
between storytelling and footage of 'real' situations. The story is told through actors and setups
but the attempt is to create ‘real’ or believable situations via story telling
3
Co-operation and Trust
From an anthropological perspective we are a ‘We-species' not an ‘I-species' and it follows that
there have to be evolutionary advantages to acting cooperatively. In earlier times this behaviour
helped both when protecting the group against predators more eyes are helpful and also a group is
useful when foraging for food. For chimpanzees, our nearest animal relatives, the group is also
useful for aggressive or protective behaviour; chimps will band together to see off a lion which is
attacking the group
3.1 It is likely that this ‘primitive’ behaviour underlies the rival group or rival tribe behaviour seen in
our current society in, for example, sporting rivalry, especially in football. In other words the tribal,
protective group which is common in chimpanzee populations appears in human society in self
identification; for example with clubs or societies, or perhaps political parties. It also obviously
operates in the work environment and to some degree underpins branding. The expectation in a
brand is that all 'brand members'; all the employees in a particular hotel chain or restaurant group,
will exhibit broadly the same types of behaviour. They are members of the ‘brand tribe’
3.2 From this group or tribal behaviour perspective the customer or visitor literally meets the
tourism business as a 'different tribe'. What the business attempts to do is to dilute this by finding
touch points, or moments of common or shared interest or understanding.
3.3 However it’s obvious that many visitor economy situations reduce identification or familiarity
rather than increase it; they are so different from home, office or family. The uncertainty of way
finding in the town has been mentioned, the hard industrial feel of the station, the lack of connected
conversation from the taxi driver and the lack of interest from the hotel in our personal journey.
Much of the visitor economy feels like process and transaction not connection and interaction
3.4 For Trip Advisor, we have discussed the particularly frustrating situation where the customer
offers no direct feedback or report on a product or service at the point of consumption or
experience but waits until they are in a private space to make a comment, there is no group / tribe
advantage to offering the feedback. This is possibly because the business is seen as a different tribe.
In other words the contractual nature of the exchange with the hotel, restaurant or attraction
means that the feedback action acts to maintain the difference between the visitor’s tribe and that
of the organisation about which the feedback is being provided. A rival tribe doesn’t require
cooperative behaviour - since there is no biological or evolutionary advantage in being cooperative
3.5 Thus the more contractual the relationship (and the less human) the more likely it is that private
negative comments will be triggered
3.6 Also it is likely that another aspect of anthropological behaviour is 'encoded' in cultural
behaviour where experience suggests in the UK that a negative comment is likely to produce a
defensive response and, if not an argument, then at least some form of debate. This is a defence
against a different tribe – the receptionist arguing with the customer, defending their organisation.
Often too these are ‘system responses’ where the employee will say something like 'It's the booking
system – it won't allow us to do that…'
3.7 The ‘private negative Trip Advisor behaviour’ also demonstrates the importance of the 'balance
of the bargain' in contract-based exchanges, in that the aggrieved
customer seeks to balance
out the contract, in a private space but in a broadcast fashion. Whilst the act of making an entry on
the Trip Advisor website is private the result is public. The customer knows that this is an effective
balancing act because it acts to diminish the 'reputation currency' of the organization
3.8 So, if all this is correct, what appears to be a negative act on the part of the customer from the
perspective of the organisation is actually a positive act from the perspective of the aggrieved
customer. The private communication which is then public neatly gets round the problem of the
customer having potentially to argue with the receptionist, waiter or manager. This 'private
comment which is actually public' behaviour was obviously not available very easily before the
advent of the Web. The behaviour ‘balances the bargain’, maintains tribal difference and is
consequence free. In other words it is hard behaviour to alter.
Trevor explained another interesting aspect to this 'private/public' aspect of social media; the kudos
or personal power of positive posting. He explained that he had 11,500 followers and he regularly
used Trip Advisor for discovery about products and services and the visitor economy market. It was
clear that in the case of Trip Advisor the 'kudos badges’ that a regular reviewer can obtain had status
value for Trevor and for others. Interestingly this compares with Foursquare, where a similar badge
or kudos system applies. However the recent customer journey research in Bournemouth shows
that Foursquare is little used.