4 Innovation through Technology-Facilitated Co-creation .1 Impact of Technology on Tourism
4.4 Classification of Technology-Facilitated Co-creation Processes
4.4 Classification of Technology-Facilitated Co-creation Processes
Through the use of ICTs, co-creation can be taken to a whole new level. ICTs have enabled new processes of how, when and where consumers can play a role in the creation of their experiences. With ICTs in place, co-creation can occur anywhere throughout the customer journey and the service value chain. Recent studies point to a wide range of ICTs. For instance, virtual communities, such as Second Life (Binkhorst
& Den Dekker, 2009), social networking platforms, blogs or micro-blogging, such as Twitter (Wang & Fesenmaier, 2004) and social networking sites, such as Facebook, YouTube or Wikipedia (Ramaswamy, 2009a) enable tourists to become engaged and contribute to both the tourist experience production and consumption. Tourists are able to connect with their social media networks to facilitate experiences (Kim &
Tussyadiah, 2013), share and exchange information and latest updates. Through ICTs, consumers are connected to a vast network of stakeholders in which they can co-create experiences and value on multiple levels, extents and forms of engagement (Neuhofer et al., 2012).
4.4.1 Technology-Facilitated Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing has been a popular concept in a number of service industries and is becoming increasingly facilitated through ICTs in tourism. The technological
developments of the past years have provided great opportunities for crowdsourcing by bundling crowd efforts through social media and networking channels online. For
instance, AirBnB is a peer-to-peer platform of homeowners offering and renting their houses to tourists who want a place to stay with locals. The platform, entirely based on offers from the crowd, provides a variety of accommodation options, ranging from a shared flat in London to an entire castle in Edinburgh. Another prime example of crowdsourcing in the destination context represents VisitBritain. It facilitates crowdsourcing through a mobile travel application. The application UK Top 50 is entirely consumer-generated in that it lists the top 50 locations of the UK ranked by the accumulated number of tourists’ Facebook check-ins. The more users check-in online, the higher the ranking of an attraction in the application (Neuhofer, Buhalis, & Ladkin, 2013).
This example demonstrates that VisitBritain, instead of controlling and predefining popular sites to visit, places its travel suggestions in the hands of the consumers, who determine the must-see places of a destination through their collective behaviour.
Beyond AirBnB and VisitBritain, a number of best practice examples in tourism successfully demonstrate the potential of a bottom-up approach built on integrating the consumer as a resource for innovation. This means that consumers are not only
considered as a source for contribution, but they become the main actor in the process.
Consumers give businesses critical insights into understanding what they truly want by making them generate their experiences and own personal value obtained through this collective, participatory contribution.
4.4.2 Technology-Facilitated Co-production
Co-production in tourism and hospitality has been mainly focused on the idea of giving consumers choices. The personalisation of service encounters through ICTs can be mentioned as an example of application. Personalisation is achieved through the constant evaluation of consumers' preferences (Gupta & Vajic, 2000). Thus, it is
essential not only to engage consumers but gather relevant information about their needs and preferences. This process can be facilitated through ICTs, which provide excellent tools to collect, store and retrieve information on an unprecedented scale in order to facilitate tailor-made experiences (Piccoli, O’connor, Capaccioli, & Alvarez, 2003).
For instance, the best practice example Hotel Lugano Dante has introduced innovation processes through a system called HGRM, Happy Guest Relationship Management, to create enhanced experiences (Neuhofer et al., 2013).
The platform amalgamates all interactions of staff and guests throughout the entire guest journey. The hotel engages with consumers by collecting information pre-arrival, hotel stay and post-departure stage. The key is to gather information, such as name, buying patterns, pillow, mini-bar and newspaper preferences and other consumption behaviours to personalise the guest’s stay based on individual preferences. A further example of co-production elements in the hospitality industry is the Inamo Restaurant in London. The eTable technology enables guests to adapt the colour scheme of the
electronic table cloths, control the dining experience, manage the ordering process, waiters, bills and discover the local area, leading to a fully immersive, interactive and co-produced restaurant experience. Beyond the hospitality context, mobile services play an increasingly important role in tourism (Egger & Jooss, 2010), by supporting consumers with location based and context based services, gamification and augmented reality apps on the move (Buhalis & Wagner, 2013). These can be used to personalise settings, find relevant information in the tourist’s current geographical location, context, including season, weather, time, and by doing so, create a personalised service and experience environment for the tourist.
4.4.3 Technology-Facilitated Co-creation
Social media tools, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TripAdvisor and more recently Pinterest or Vine, have allowed tourists to become generators of content. By being connected to their social networking sites, tourists can share experiences with friends, peers, tourism providers and other consumers, and co-create while still being in the travel location (Tussyadiah & Fesenmaier, 2009). Thus, tourists do not only co-create with their physical surroundings, e.g. destinations, hotels, attractions, sights or restaurants, but effectively extend their co-creation activities to the online space (Neuhofer et al., 2012). Numerous DMOs provide best-practice examples of how to foster co-creation with tourists. For instance, Sweden, Thailand and Puerto Rico have implemented innovative solutions for users to connect, upload and share images, stories and videos with the travel community (Buhalis & Wagner, 2013). By doing so, co-creation not only occurs with the DMOs but with consumer communities, who can create their pre- and post-holiday experiences together.
Moreover, the cutting edge example of Sol Melia’s Sol Wave House successfully demonstrates the use of Twitter as a tool for extended co-creation. Being the world’s first Twitter-Hotel, hashtags are used throughout the entire hotel to allow guests to co-create with employees, dedicated Twitter concierges (B2C co-creation) and other guests staying at the hotel (C2C co-creation). Additionally, KLM’s initiative of social seating underlines the importance of encouraging customer-to-customer co-creation by using ICTs to facilitate that consumers connect, meet and can have an enhanced in-flight experience. In reviewing several different technology-facilitated examples of
co-creation, it is evident that consumers are encouraged to actively engage in a number of co-creation efforts. Businesses need to adopt novel and unconventional approaches, which ICTs can support to foster differentiation, innovation and competitiveness of tourist experiences. The classification in Table 1 provides an overview of the foregone review by synthesising distinct characteristics for a more differentiated understanding of technology-facilitated co-creation.
Table 1 Classification of technology-facilitated co-creation processes
Notion Crowdsourcing Co-production Co-creation
Consumer Involvement
Active participation in idea generation, content generation, voting, funding
Active company-driven product or service exchange participation
Active consumer-centric experience and value co-creation
Role of the Consumer
One in many (Consumer in a crowd)
Two-way company-led involvement (Company and consumer)
Multi-level involvement (Company, consumer and consumer communities) Role of the
Company
Company defines
crowdsourcing goal and leads activities
Company develops product/services and gives consumer a choice
Company facilitates co-creation of experiences and value
Experience Outcome
Crowd-generated, participatory experience
Customised, personalised co-creation experience
Rich, personalised, connected, co-constructed experience and value
Value for the Consumer
Value through participation in process, value through contribution to outcome
Value through customisation and personalisation of product and service
Value through co-created experiences and the co-creation process itself
Innovation through ICTs
Crowdsourcing activities through technology platforms and open calls
Co-production through technology-supported devices for personalisation
Co-creation of rich, meaningful experiences through social and mobile tools in the travel process
To provide tourism organisations and marketers with practical implications of how to innovate through technology-facilitated co-creation experiences, valuable insights can be gained by looking at existing examples across the tourism, hospitality and airline industry. For this purpose, Table 2 provides a summary of best-practice cases that apply innovative approaches of co-creation. In depicting these diverse organisations from a variety of industries, it becomes evident that customer involvement can take many different forms under the umbrella of co-creation. Specifically, this overview shall assist tourism practitioners to take a closer look at existing successful examples to understand (a) the various forms of consumer involvement, (b) the range of ICTs that can be used and (c) the various processes (crowdsourcing, co-production, co-creation) that can be applied. Whatever type of process is facilitated, several implications for companies can be defined. These include to (a) put the tourist consumer and his/her needs first, (b) allow for an active involvement in the co-creation process and (c) define which process, based on the particularities of the sector, is the most suitable one for a technology-enhanced experience.
Table 2 Tourism industry best-practice cases
Type of creation
Industry cases Technology-facilitated innovation Crowdsourcing
AirBnB Crowd-based peer-to-peer platform of home-owners creating one of the largest private-house renting platforms for tourists
Visit Britain Crowd-sourced user generated content through tourist Facebook check-ins to attractions in order to generate the Top UK 50 Places mobile application
Co-production
Hotel Lugano Dante
Co-production by personalisation of the hotel stay, including mini-bar, pillows, newspapers, food and beverage through a customer-relationship platform Inamo
Restaurant London
Co-production by personalisation of the dining experience including table ambience, order pace and bills through the eTable technology
Co-creation
Sol Melia’s Sol Wave House
Co-creation through Twitter in the entire hotel through hashtags with employees, Twitter concierges and guests
KLM Co-creation through social media by facilitating a social seating in-flight initiative