3 TRENDS FOR 2018

Understanding consumer’s behavior is one prime factors leading to a business’s success. In today’s world of constant, accelerating change, it is even more critical to stay updated on current trends happening on the market. Below are 3 trends that every business professional need to keep up with in 2018 according to Trend Watching:

1.      A-Commerce

Under the tremendous impacts of Artificial Intelligence and automation, consumer’s behavior are shifting towards the outsourcing of certain retail experiences. That means hunting, negotiating, perchasing and delivery management will all be automated. World leading retailers such as Amazon, eBay and Alibaba are using automated warehouses, drones and AI route planning to minimize customer’s waiting time from order to delivery.

2.      Glass Box Wrecking Balls

In 2018, a business is a glass box. It means outsiders can now easily observe what’s going on in a company: the people, the processes and the values. Ignited by a heavily connected world, such transparency in business has greatly empowered those who have been mistreated my malign individuals and organizations. It is suggested that companies should establish a working environment that employees feel safe and respected to speak up against any wrongdoings.

3.      Virtual Companions
The relationship between people and their virtual entities has reached new heights in the year of 2018: from assistants to companions. Tech firm Gartner has revealed a shocking prediction that by 2020, the avarage person will have more conversations with bots than with their spouse. Since there is growing realization that social media is isolating people from the real world, tech companies have started to create highly functional chat-bots that have unique personalities to assist and befriend their customers.

FIND MORE ABOUT US

Hello dear blog readers. We are Dzung, Mia, Rita, Sigrún, Patrick, and Vivian and we are a group of international students studying at the Lapland University of Applied Sciences. We are attending a course called Marketing and eCommerce in Tourism and we are here to write about several topics - stay tuned if you want educate yourself with these very interesting blog posts we will publish.

The blog posts will be inspired by big picture of Marketing and eCommerce in tourism, which is for example the latest market trends, marketing and sales channels, eCommerce processes and more. Each post will be a puzzle to this big picture, so in order to see the big picture you, dear reader, will have to take a look at our blog post and put the pieces together.

Enjoy reading!

NEW SOCIAL MEDIA IN TOURISM

Have you heard anything about Telegram? 

Telegram - new social media, which was launched 5 years ago in 2013. It is mainly used as a messenger, but with Telegram Channel -  you can write posts to large audiences. Channels can be public with a permanent URL and each post in a channel has its own view counter. Unlike Snapchat, Instagram or Facebook, this social media is made as a list of text with pics, links and reminds us a big monologue with various thoughts. No response can be made, only froward of favourite message to 'saved messages' can be done. Last but not least, new members can see the entire message history in a channel once they join — all the way to day one. 

One of the main advantages about Telegram is that it is protected from snooping third parties, so it is safe to use. No one else expect you will check your message history.

Another cool thing about telegram channel - a unique Bot made for you channel! Bots are simply Telegram accounts operated by software – not people – and they'll often have AI features. They can do anything – help, teach, play, search, broadcast, remind, connect etc.

Telegram is highly popular nowadays in Russia, but not yet in Europe. The most popular Russian-based channel Travelhacks has more than 44k subscribers and this number is only growing! There are mainly country overviews, travel notes, life hacks, cheap tickets and much more. As for English-written channels, there is only one English-written channel about tourism - Most wanted B&B. Unfortunately, not much posts are available, they might still coming soon!
Hope that very soon situation will be changed for the better and Telegram will become popular across the whole world!
Have you already downloaded the social media of future? 

Why Customer Relationship Management?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a term or a tool that companies use to manage and analyse customer interactions and data. The goal is to improve relationships between customers and businesses along with making more profits for the business itself. Happy customer = Happy business!

Digitalization in a tourism company

Opportunities and challenges of digitalization in tourism

Digital travelling. Source: Pexels

Digitalization, the verb that we hear more and more often in the past years.  Everything is becoming easier, faster and more comfortable with the all of the "smart" devices around us. It has touched all of the world industries in some way and tourism is no exception. Lets take a look at how this transformed the tourism industry.

Today's world is faster then ever before andtime is valuable for a lot of us. We don't want to waste it, not even when picking our holiday. Companies are realizing this and

Why social media?

Is it really that important to utilize social media nowadays?



It is everywhere and everybody uses it. Using social media is now easier than ever before. We can access all the apps easily through our mobile phones that we carry everywhere. There is an app for almost everything; food, transportation, hotels, maps, the list goes on and on.

Though, because it appeared quickly, social media has developed a reputation of being a passing trend (DeMers, 2014).


So why is it important for tourism business as well?

Service-dominant logic marketing approach

What is Service-Dominant (S-D) Logic Marketing?

Service-Dominant (S-D) Logic is a mindset for a unified understanding of the purposes and nature of organizations, markets and society. The foundational proposition of S-D logic is that organizations, markets, and society are fundamentally concerned with exchange of service - the applications of competences (knowledge and skills) for the benefit of a party. That is, service is exchanged for service; all firms are