The end :)

Hi everybody! How is it going?

This will be our last post in our blog. It has been a nice experience for us to share with all of you our class contents from our point of view during the last weeks. We are very happy because we feel that we have learned quite a lot in this cours, even if we couldn't be in all the lectures it has been very enrichising because we have been investigating by our own quite a lot to design the post contents.

We hope it also has been interesting for all of you.

Thanks for the feedback and support.

Pol and Yolanda.

Distribution and intermediation inside Tourism companies

Hi there! How is it going?

Today we have a very interesting post for you! Let's learn a little bit more about the distribution and intermediation in the Tourism field.

First of all, you should know that a touristic product is basically the result of  the cultural and natural resources offered in a destination and the services and infrastructures developed around.

The aim of the distribution inside the tourism companies is to increase the customer's accesibility to their services informations besides make it easy to realize the bookings and purchasements online.

The distribution channels can be direct or indirect. In the first one, the agent who has created the touristic service negotiates directly with the customers. On the other hand, in the second one the intermediaries (touroperators or external agents) intervent between the initial travel agency and the customers.

Also, there are electronical intermediaries such as:

-CRS: It was first created and used by airlines, but nowadays is also applied in tourism intermediaries. It consist basically in a computerized system that saves and retrieves information mostly related to air travel.
-GDS: Operated network that makes possible the transactions between travel agencies and travel service providers.  

The election of the most convenient distribution channel can involve several long-term commitments with other companies and is one of the most important decisions within the marketing mix strategy.

As a general rule, the companies choose the distribution channel that has the lowest costs and is at the same time consistent with the previous definitions of the product and its market targets.

-Direct or indirect channel: Decisions are based on aspects such asthe characteristics of the target market and the product, the objectives of the commercial strategy, etc...

-Distribution alternatives: Decisions are taken depending on factors such as: Channel flexibility, coverage degree, intermediation costs, compatibility with distribution channels, etc...

As you can see it's not easy to choose a channel while developing a Tourism business, but anyway... What do you think about it? Please do not hesitate to share your point of view with us :)

Hei Hei!

Sharing Economy

Hei people! How is it going?

We are going to introduce you to one topic that I'm sure you know something about. We want to talk about a very popular concept this days, the shareable economy and it's application in tourism world.

The shareable economy isn't anything new. In fact, I like to see it as a way to comeback to the practices people used to do decades ago. In the last years of incredibly economic growth, we people got used to pay for anything we needed without any problem and we wanted everything new and shining just for us, but this wasn't sustainable and life put us back to the earth almost 10 years ago when the economy crashed.

Since then, some of us realized the way we used to do things before was sustainable and effective. I mean, we used to work with the exchange and reuse things and this is absolutely logical. If someone have something you need and you can offer some skills, knowledge or goods with them why don't do that instead of paying money for it?

This is what sharing economy is about, people exchanging skills, knowledge, goods or whatever in order to optimize their resources and producing like this a sustainable development. From this idea has appeared many companies or platforms in the recent years, like Couchsurfing, Bla bla car, Wallapop... which tries to help people to contact each other to do this exchanges. It is also really remarkable the role of social media in this context.

Simple view to sharing economy (pixabay: edstar23)

In tourism we can find lots of examples of this platforms such as Trip4Real or my favorite one, Couchsurfing, which I mentioned before. However, considered as part of sharing economy in tourism we also find the popular Airbnb. This company is the result of a perfect business model and it is a great way to do business, althought I wouldn't say that it represents the spirit of sharing economy. In this case the prices of this accomodation platform are quite near to the hotels average (or even higher sometimes), and is the company which receives almost all of the money. 

In addition, sometimes Airbnb contributes poorly to the sustainable tourism concept. The fact that people use their home like touristic apartments increases the tourism destination's depopulation. In my opinion, Airbnb is different kind of hotel service, nothing else. 

On the other hand, a great example of this shareable economy in tourism is once again Couchsurfing. This service is free and it is based on cultural exchange, totally representing the sharing economy spirit.

We encourage everyone to be part of the sustainable development by using sharing economy whenever is possible!

See you in a couple of days with our next post guys!

The importance of the CRM

Hyvää huomenta!

How are you doing? Today we are going to talk about the Customer Relationship Management, known also as CRM.

Initially started as a tool to manage the database, but nowadays small businesses serve the CRM as an important tool to deal with operational challenges such as a decline in sales, customer attrition or alignment between the company's sales targets and sales commissions.

Why my company needs to use the CRM?

-To organise your business tasks.
CRM includes emails, tasks, calendars and  everything you need to synchronize in a simple and clear tool. That's why by applying business intelligence to your company you can have access to all the relevant informations about your company from any device, in any moment, anywhere in the world.

Nowadays in any moment, from anywhere you
can access to manage your business.
(Image: www.clasesdeperiodismo.com)

-To avoid losing your business data.
The era of post-its and paper annotations is already over, they have deomstrated their inefficiency in front of the current available storage systems. Saving all the information in computers or external devices is very risky, it can break, or someone can steal it, losing all the informations you have.
Using external servers or saving the content in the cloud helps to centralize and prevent important and serious losses of companie's informations.

-Competitors information’s can help to develop your company.

Use competitors information’s can help you in order to know your business position in the market 

and to surpass them if you have the relevant information about their strategies. Also, while sharing 

information with the rest of your own employees can help to improve their knowledge and put it at 

the service of the companie's interests. 

-Improve your social relations with customers and your business weaknesses.

Social CRM was born from the need to recover business links with customers, especially in the

era of social media where each opinion can be multiplied or affect the image of the business brand,

given that customers have the possibility to share their own opinions. This also helps companies to

identify and know the users preferences concerning a product or a service.

Users opinions in social media can affect the image of the business brand.
(Image: www.theodisseyonline.com)

Terveisin!

Service-dominant logic: Consumer trends and their behavior.

Hei! Is it time to read some interesting things? I think so;)

Today we are going to go deeper in the wizarding world of marketing by talking a little bit about different concept such as the service-dominant logic marketing approach or the consumer trends and their behavior.

First of all, what is this thing called service-dominant logic marketing approach? What it says to us is a new perspective on how to see the service selling against the way we used to see it as a good. It shows us that a service must be most of all co-created, relational and has to have a financial feedback. In other words, we have to create our service with the consumer and generate value to people.

According to this, is important to be aware of what's happening in the world, which are people's new needs and always pay attention to the new trends in order to find new consumer segments and targets. Today this task is much easier due to the social media and internet itself (there are some really useful websites such as Trend Hunter). There's plenty of ways to see which ways people is moving in and on what they seem interested.

Social media as a way to know our costumers (pixabay: businessjack)

We have to be able to recognize different kinds of signals to decide where to focus our marketing efforts depending on consumer's behavior. It is necessary to find a target, and it can be based on very different aspects such as demographical, behavioral, geographical, sociographical or psychographical.

Without knowing it, we all produce trends with our actions (pixabay: businessjack)

This is a short journey to the marketing's surface, but you should go deeper into it because there are lots of more interesting things about it......

Kiitos! See you soon!

Curiosities of Chinese and German Tourists

Hyvää Päivää!

We are back today with an interesting post! Here in Rovaniemi we receive lots of tourists from all around the world! But did you ever think about the differences and peculiarities that they have concerning their stay and leisure here in Lapland?

Here we are going to analyse two very different targets that represent a big part of the most upcoming nationalities, the Chinese and the Germans:

The Chinese Tourists: 

Chinese tourists were mostly coming in big groups of charters but in the last ten years the number of independent travelers has growth. They want to visit scenic spots, taste local food, join some leisure activities and buy local products. They use to stay in Lapland for 5 days and they demand deeper tourism experiences and closer contact with the local society.

The German Tourists:

Germans mostly come in summer months with leisure purposes. They are basically interested in local culture, summer activities, sauna, water activities and gastronomy.  They are always seeking excursions in national parks and natural areas, that's why Lapland is the second most visited region after Helsinki. They use to stay with their friends in camping areas, hostels or rented cottages.

We want to emphasise that in the last decades has growth the amount of Chinese tourists visiting Lapland. Despite the increasing number of chinese tourists who organise their trips by their own, the majority of them continue hiring the travel packs of the big touroperators, which result in a massive tourism in the region that isn't respectful with the nature and the local's values.

By contrast most of the german tourists come by their own, respecting the nature and trying to experience the local culture. This target of tourists promote a sustainable tourism around.

As a conclusion, coming from Spain we know before hand which are the consequences of the massive tourism model and we hope that the local organizations start committing to create a sustainable tourism model that helps to develope the economy of this beautiful region without damaging his best attractions.

Terveisin!

The importance of social media, PINTEREST

Hello Hello! How is it going people?

Who in this world still doesn't know the vital importance of social media? We are talking about a truly revolution in our way of life and how we do business. Today's topic is going to be about Pinterest and how this social media tool can influence the tourism industry in the next years.

Pinterest is said to be one of the online platforms that most attracts social networking users in recent times. For this reason we will see what is Pinterest and if it can be a valid marketing tool for the tourism industry and especially for the hotel sector.

Pinterest Logo
(Image: http://seranting.com/)

The concept of Pinterest is simple: You search the images you want and "pin" your account (in the "boards") so that others can see them. This covers a wide range of sectors, from cooking, fashion, travel to day-to-day photos.

With the creation of new profiles for companies, the social network seeks to create their own official account to interact with their customers in a more direct and highly visual. In tourism and especially in the hotel industry, it is not enough to reach our customers and customers online with our products and services, the images of what we sell can influence sales.

One of the best features, in my opinion, is that we can connect our hotel website with these images through the URLs that Pinterest allows us to add to those photos, so that our followers can expand their information about our products and services, While generating more traffic in our reservation center.

Pinterest is a visual network that can help to sell experiences.
Image: https://redforts.com/es

Here you have some tips to use this social media tool in order to succed:

1. Create a complete business profile: With the description, schedules, prices and contact details.

2. Links to the website: So you can divert traffic from Pinterest to your central and increase sales.

3. Links with other social networks: To increase followers and the presence of business on the internet.

4. The key is "visual": Add photos of your products or services and save on your boards those that have made users to continue promoting your business.

5. Organize your boards, be creative: Organize your boards, separate them by themes and choose simple and creative names that are easily understandable.

6. Find and follow the leaders: It is important to follow other users of the sector which are successful in this social network. You have to identify what helps them to succeed and gradually adapt our profile to be more successful.

7. The most important thing is not just to sell, but also the public knows the company: Do not focus exclusively on sales of products or services in Pinterest, share other quality content to reach a bigger audience and create a unique brand image as a tourist company.

Hei hei! Kiitos for visiting our blog:)

Yolanda

Animal Welfare in Tourism

Hei! Mitä kuuluu?

Well guys, here it is our first official post!! To start with it, we're going to talk about some serious issues. Sometimes, we humans forget about our ethics in order to get what we want and have fun... isn't it true? We think if we can pay something we can have it, and that is not always like that.

You might be wondering why am I saying this. Well, the reason is because we're going to talk about animal welfare in tourism services and it is a great example of what we were saying. We love animals and we want to spend time with them don't we? We want them to be part of our lifes and experiences, to be as social as we are and we want them to love us as we love them.

This can be easily possible with a dog or a cat for example, animals that has been domesticated during thousands of years, but it is not that easy with other kinds of animals. That's why we pay money (usually quite a lot) to enterprises, such as zoos, farms, riding tours with any kind of animal... which in exchange provides us with experiences or getting in contact with them, and then we think the animals are as happy as we are and they love us so much... Surprise people! They don't.

                                       Huskies and reeinders as an attraction  (Photo by : Yolanda Olivera)

Animal Tourism in Lapland

Anyway, after this introduction, at least nowadays we are a little bit concerned about the animal's rights and this is reflected in the animal based enterprises's policies. In Lapland, there are 157 of this companies.

This kind of tourism is so popular in the region because of obvious reasons. What all of we foreigns think about Lapland before coming here? Reeinders, huskys and unlimited wildlife everywhere. Then it is something that tourists really want to experience and it is so profitable for local tourism companies.

If we look at the marketing this companies do, for example the big ones as Lapland Safaris,  we can see that there is a concern about informing people somehow about how they care about the animals they have, but it is also true that they are not really specific. If we instead look at the people's opinion in websites as tripadvisor about their experiences with animal tourism products in Lapland we find good comments and almost everyone say animals seem healthy and happy. Despite we hope it is true, we are also a bit skeptical about it and we always recommend to everyone to pay attention in case you take part of one of this animals based products.

Finally, we would like to encourage people to participate more in products based on wildlife observation, which helps animal's conservation and it doesn't alterate nature, instead of services with captive animals.

Enjoy your time in Lapland and anywhere in a responsible way!

Hei hei:)

Who are we?

Hello everyone!

Welcome to our new blog! Before starting with very interesting posts let's introduce ourselves ;)

 I'm Pol, a 21 years old guy from Barcelona.

I'm Yolanda! I'm 22 years and I'm from

Ainsa, the most beautiful town of the 
Spanish Pyrenees!

We used to study tourism in the same university in Barcelona. Although we were in the same class we didn't really know each other... and since we came here together we are forced to be friends... haha joking! Actually it is going great in here and we are quite a good team.

For us was really shocking to arrive here in Lapland. We were used to be at 15 degrees in Barcelona in December and then suddenly we found ourselves with more than 30 degrees less in the Arctic!! To be honest, the first impresion was awesome!

Since the first day we are here we absolutely love this place. Rovaniemi, Lapland and their people has made us feel like we are at home. We are having lots of fun, learning so much and definitely keeping amazing, unforgettable and once in a lifetime experiences in our mind. It is impossible to explain how wonderful this place is, so you can have a look to the Rovaniemi's tourism website to get to know a little bit what this place have to offer.

Rovaniemi views from Ounasvaara hill

So, in this blog we are going to share important topics and interesting tips about Marketing and eCommerce that have learned during our studies in Lapland University of Applied Sciences in Rovaniemi.

See you soon!