Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
more control and more ability to discriminate accurately and quickly between tourist operators
and their offerings. This new '
Prosumer
'
is enabled and empowered and takes command in
designing unique and customised travel experiences. The smart tourist marketer will listen,
provide platforms for this new desire for control and take a new role of facilitator of dreams and
memory-creation.
The tourist as a 'prosumer'
The new emergent empowered tourist consumer enabled by the Internet - no longer alone,
digitally connected and well informed - will seek out authentic, customized, environmentally
aware and friendly tourism experiences; specialist niche interest activities and independently
customized tourism will fl ourish. As such, tourism providers must become truly customer
centric - they must listen to the 'voice of the consumer'. The rise of prosumption begins to
challenge classic top-down or 'outbound' marketing and management philosophies of 'we
market to you' or 'telling and selling', to a 'bottom up' experience whereby the consumer can
become a more active participant in the overall brand experience as opposed to a passive receiver
of information and products. As such the 'New Tourist' is no longer content in terms of simply
waiting for new products and services to arrive and will continue to demonstrate a more active
behaviour in consumption thus blurring the traditional boundaries of producer and consumer
and importantly allowing for shifts in business thinking, thus facilitating new paradigms of
marketing and importantly branding.
Prosumption presents real opportunities for tourism providers and is viewed as a megatrend
that the Tourism industry must respect and turn to its advantage. The very nature of tourism
determines a degree of inseparability between production and consumption of the tourist
experience. Historically, however, consumers had little ability or power to truly customize and
shape their tourism experience to best suit their needs, wants, desires and indeed their dreams.
Customer-produced experiences will continue to accelerate in the twenty-fi rst century. The
phenomenon of corporations creating goods, services and experiences in close cooperation with
experienced and creative consumers, tapping into their intellectual capital, and in exchange
giving them a direct say in (and rewarding them for) what actually gets produced, manufactured,
developed, designed, serviced, processed or experienced will increasingly become the norm
across many business sectors including the tourism arena. The web has given rise to a more
powerful consumer - liberating and empowering them but at a deeper level there is a new
consciousness paradigm. The new consumer is searching for real value and needs to know what
is behind the brand name and promise. By encouraging and facilitating co-creation, the
dimensions of the brand become more transparent to the consumer and indeed the consumers
themselves become the lead authors of the brand experience - thus leading to greater trust and
more involved, stronger relationships between organizations and individuals. In summary the
continued growth of prosumers challenges traditional business logic where:
fi rms create value unilaterally;
consumers are passive;
products and services represent the value.
Prosumption brings new frame of reference by:
focusing on the customer-company interaction as a new value creation;
co-creating value through customer and company collaboration;
