DELIVERING THE NEW EXTRA-ORDINARY
Martin Raymond of The Future Laboratory stated recently that (during COVID) ‘we have spent our time fretting about the new normal, when we should really have been planning the new extra-ordinary.’
This is the challenge facing tourism destinations and businesses. What constitutes the extra-ordinary and who is already rising to this challenge?
The solution lies within the paradigm shifts that have taken place within tourism over the past five years - shifts that we already taking place before the pandemic hit us.
A number of paradigm shifts have emerged in tourism over the past five years that are shaping the way we need to think about experiences that deliver the new extra-ordinary. They are:
1. HYBRIDITY & TRANSFORMATION: the appearance of novel, unique solutions, in product development, experience creation and tourist engagement that are blurring definitions and making it increasingly difficult to categorise and accredit these initiatives – and does it matter anymore to the customer if a product receives a 5* or a 2* assessment by a tourist board? Initiatives that boldly go where few have been before to make a positive transformational impact in their destinations
2. OUTLIERS: as part of the era of the hybrid, we are seeing the rapid emergence of projects that would have been regarded as being ‘left-of-field’ or quirky but now these niche outliers are fast becoming mainstream – ‘who would have thought it’ ideas are now becoming the expected, often delivered by hybrid-thinkers or the new pirates as they have been described.
3. CO-CREATION: multi-faceted, multi-layered, co-created, and collaborative unique experiences capable of commanding high value and capturing guest attention and involving the guest in their design will become a demand driver for destinations.
4. CO-DEPENDENCY: a cornerstone of co-created experiences is the need for destination stakeholders to work together and recognise a co-dependency tourism eco-system rather than a business-centric, ego-system.
5. ELASTICITY: the need for DMOs to be more agile, flexible, and fluid in their operations welcoming new ideas, different ways of working, and nurturing innovation.
6. TALENT: exploring the idea that an individual’s talent may well be more important to a tourism business or a DMO than a traditional skill or qualification – the fact that your night porter in a hotel is the best fiddle player in the village might be more important than his qualities as a nigh porter?
7. VALUE: the culmination of these shifts is resulting in our need to re-calibrate all aspects of perceived and real value of tourism in our destinations and, ultimately, deliver Maja Pak’s (Director of the Slovenian Tourist Board) call for new metrics of success.
Key to successful experience creation are the twin notions of co-creation and co-dependency. How can tourism (and other) stakeholders work and play better together within destinations to ensure optimal sustainable outcomes and exceptional experiences? For K Michael Haywood, (Professor Emeritus, School of Hospitality, Food and Tourism at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. In his 2021 e‑book Astonish, Smarter Tourism by Design): “There is a need for well-developed eco-systems (networks and clusters) for innovation within the tourism industry, its various interdependent yet operationally independent sectors, and all host communities and neighbourhoods.”
Co-created experiences demand the following conditions for success that reflect and incorporate many, or all, of the paradigm shifts described earlier. Co-created experiences involve:
· Multiple actors
· Multiple different experience components
· Engage all the senses (tasting, hearing, seeing, smelling, touching)
· Give reasons to make repeat visits and generates destination loyalty
· Make deep emotional connections between host and guest
· Drive up derived value
· Enhance visitor satisfaction
When these features are combined they deliver intense flow and deep immersion that takes our visitors, to , what psychologists and behavioural scientists refer to as ‘stamping’ getting closer to the upper echelons of Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ - love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.
So, what does ‘good’ (or the new extra-ordinary) look like in terms of the next generation of touristic experiences and how do we measure the success of these experiences?
The evaluation of the impact of an experiences needs to move beyond its economic value (price paid, yield, profit, and economic multiplier) to embrace all of the factors explored in this essay. The impacts need to reflect what ‘good’ looks like:
· Is the experience delivered in a co-created, co-dependent way involving many different actors?
· Does it deliver authentic, honest, innovative, and unique experiences?
· Does it keep visitors longer and enhance their satisfaction?
· Does it engender repeat visits?
· Does it generate deep memories and emotional connections with place?
· Does it help generate enhance perceptions of a destination?
· Does it develop personal interactions between host and guest?
· Is it produce changes in behaviour?
· Is it sustainable?
SUCCESS STORIES
There are a relatively few destinations that apply this type of systematic approach to experience development. There is impressive work being undertaken in Vadehavskysten in Denmark (www.vadehavskysten.dk) and exceptional experiences at the new mini-destination in Somerset (England) called The Newt in Somerset (www.thenewtinsomerset.com).
Undoubtedly, however, it is the extraordinary work undertaken by the award winning Slovenian Tourist Board (STB) with their national initiative, known as Slovenian Unique Experiences (SUE – www.slovenia.info), that is an exemplar and a benchmark. The STB have created a scheme for the curation of 5* unique Slovenian experiences that conform to the requirements of the national tourism strategy and are evaluated by a special commission prior to being accredited. Each proposal for an experience has to meet forty criteria within ten thematic groups:
· Local identity
· Authentic
· Unique
· Experiential
· Green
· Boutique
· Premium
· Added value
· Off-season
· Digitally enabled
The result is a wonderful palette of experiences across the country delivering the extra-ordinary.
THE DESTINATION IMPERATIVE
The successful development of high-quality tourist experiences requires a destination-wide effort. It also demands leadership at the destination level through a well-informed and well-resourced destination management organisation.
Over the past fifteen years, Stevens & Associates have applied a unique destination evaluation model in over one hundred destinations around the world. The model allows stakeholders in the destination to assess how effective and efficient their destination is managed by scoring a wide range of criteria. This internal diagnostic is then combined with an assessment made by an external group of experts and specialists resulting in an agreed overview.
In 2020, S&A put the findings from this body of work together into one illustration (see below). This image shows a sample of the destinations that have been evaluated. Those scoring best are at the top of the graph. What is most revealing and most interesting is the overall pattern that can be seen. This shows that all destinations appear to be doing the same things well and the same things not so well. On detailed investigation, the data showed that all destinations need to do the following activities better and, each of these factors directly relates to delivering extraordinary visitor experiences:
· Developing visitor experiences
· Investing in experience development
· Creating and nurturing new networks for collaboration
· Engaging hybrid thinkers
· Investing in people (skills and talent)
· Aligning policy and planning
