Tourism's Future - Tourism: Principles, Practices, Philosophies - page 461

Emergence of the Knowledge-Based Society
and Workforce

One consequence of the rise of technology is that certain of the developed nations have already
entered an era in which one of their greatest competitive advantages is the information or knowledge
they possess, rather than their ownership of natural resources or their access to cheap labor. Assuming
that such a trend continues and expands to other countries, it behooves the tourism industry to
examine how the travel behavior of people in a knowledge-based society might differ from that of

people from a manufacturing or more traditional service-based setting.
If the world s leading economies are any indication of trends in this regard, we can expect travelers

from knowledge-based economies to be more experienced, more discerning, and more demanding

'

in
brief, more sophisticated. In particular, we can expect that they will be seeking more individualized
experiences, often characterized as special-interest travel. Such travelers are more interested in
enriching their lives through experiences rather than hands-off entertainment. They seek authentic,
interactive, highly involved, quality travel experiences, focusing on in-depth coverage of the special
interest topic or destination at hand.
Pushing the limits even further, certain individuals and groups are now espousing the potential of
virtual reality

—

(VR) as a replacement for travel. This technology represents perhaps the outer limits of
the knowledge-based industries in that it purports to provide simulated experiences that conceptually
are equivalent to the real thing. It is asserted that by 2039, by merely strapping on the necessary
technology, people will be able to

a destination without actually visiting it. By this time, it is
believed that personal computers will be sophisticated enough to bring full immersion virtual reality
(FIVR) into the mainstream. At that point, tourismmay be revolutionalized since people no longer have
to travel great distances or spend large amounts of money to explore the sights and sounds of another
location—they can simply go online. For this reason, a number of travel rms will be going out of business
around this time, or else drastically changing their business models to account for this new medium.
These online holidays are not necessarily as good as, or intrinsically better than, the real thing.
Although on a different scale of technical wizardry compared to graphics of previous decades, they are
still somewhat limited in their accuracy with respect to towns and cities. Currently, many of them lack
suf cient detail, are often sparsely populated, and miss out on subtle characteristics of foreign
culture

'' experience ''

things that make real-life travel such an enriching, worthwhile experience. Decades of
re nement will be needed before VR is entirely convincing.
Nevertheless, this new phenomenon is so profound in its depth of interactivity

—

— as well as sheer

that it presents a serious threat to old-line travel agencies. 20 convenience, accessibility, and ease of use —

Moving from a Service to an Experience Economy

Another fundamental change that has been occurring is what Pine and Gilmore refer to as the creation
of the . 21 This change is seen as part of an ongoing evolution from the product

and service economies of the past. In such an economy, consumers seek a quality experience from an
investment of their time and money. In a related vein, there is also a changing relationship between
hosts and guests. In brief, people are seeking genuine experiences rather than staged ones.
As visitors acquire an increasing number of travel experiences, they also become increasingly
sophisticated, more discerning—and consequently, more demanding. Additionally, because of the
foregoing enhancement in sophistication of tourists, travel itself may be losing some of its uniqueness,
cachet, and status among well-educated, well-to-do individuals. To counter this possibility, policy
makers and

experience economy

need constantly to seek equally sophisticated ways to challenge
and stimulate the tourist of today. To do this, we simply need to keep in mind that the world and its
peoples are endless sources of wonder. It is up to us to explore and find the deeper sources of wonder
that have true meaning for the experienced, sophisticated traveler.

'' experience designers ''