The Post-Experience Economy: Travel in an Age of Sameness Skift Global Forum 2018
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THE POST-EXPERIENCE ECONOMY: TRAVEL IN AN AGE OF SAMENESS SKIFT GLOBAL FORUM 2018 BECOME A LIVING BUSINESS. $212 billion is at stake as customers switch to more relevant products & services.* Travellers expect more than points. Are you continuously adapting around their needs? ACCENTURE.COM/LIVINGBUSINESSTRAVEL *Accenture Hyper-Relevancy Research, 2018 Skift 2 Masthead Founders Research Marketing Founder & CEO Senior Director of Research Vice President of Marketing Haixia Wang Natalie Bonacasa Rafat Ali Senior Research Analyst Digital Marketing Manager, Co-Founder & Rebecca Stone Events General Manager, Skift Table Gabi Donchez Jason Clampet Senior Research Analyst Seth Borko Growth Marketing Manager President Elihn Glass Research Associate Carolyn Kremins Meghan Carty Design Director, Enterprise Sales, Research Chief Financial Officer Senior Designer Daniel Calabrese Ping Chan Michael Cunniff Research Sales Associate Designer Anne Duffy Editorial Andrea Yang-Yanez Executive Editor/Founding Editor Advertising & Sales Cover Illustration Dennis Schaal Bing Qing Ye Head of Sales Skift Managing Editor Pamela Firestone Technology Tom Lowry Head of Sales, Skift Table Anthony DeRico Developer News Editor Mike Linden Hannah Sampson Director, Business Development Lisa Weier Parilla Developer Senior Hospitality Editor Rachel Bronstein Deanna Ting Sales Director Danielle Wagstaff Operations Senior Editor, Skift Table Kristen Hawley Executive Sales Director Senior Events Manager Deborah Knudsen Regina Yuen Travel Tech Editor Events Manager Sean O’Neill Sales Director Europe Kate Irwin Ryo Mochido Aviation Business Editor Account Director Events Editorial Director Brian Sumers Amy Cogan Elizabeth Osder Business Travel Editor Sales Manager, Skift Table Events Editorial Producer Andrew Sheivachman Jeremy Vargas Joanne Laipson Europe Editor Account Manager Office Manager Patrick Whyte Lindsay Bashan Ali McGhee Business Reporter, Skift Table Staff Accountant SkiftX Ernest Capasso Erika Adams Branded Content Director Tourism Reporter Katherine Townsend Dan Peltier Director of Creative Strategy Assistant Editor Matt Heidkamp Sarah Enelow-Snyder Editor Alison McCarthy Editor at Large Greg Oates Associate Brand Strategist Dawn Rzeznikiewicz Research Editor Jeremy Kressmann © 2018 Skift Inc. All Rights Reserved SkiftX Project Manager Gianna Greco 978-0-9986958-6-0 Video Producer Richard Chen Skift 3 TRAVEL STARTUP COMPETITION AIR PITCH 2018 The Air Pitch Startup Competition at Skift Global Forum 2018 in New York City offers the winning startup the opportunity to take their innovation to the next level at the Accenture Amadeus Alliance Innovation Center in Dublin, where they will work with travel-industry experts to turn their ideas into a reality. The Innovation Center at the Dock in Dublin is the global flagship and hub to innovation spokes worldwide, where the Accenture Amadeus Alliance is defining breakthrough offerings and new solutions, with a laser focus on the airline industry. POWERED BY AND Table of Contents Skift Magazine / Issue: 11 P.8 The Post-Experience Economy: Travel in an Age of Sameness Every company is already marketing experiences and the smart innovators at the edge are thinking about a post- experience economy. If everyone is marketing experiences, and if everything has become an experience, what does it mean to be truly different in travel? P.20 8 Tenets of the Post-Experience Economy By the Numbers P.24 Fastest-Growing Experience Categories P.25 Shifting Up the Progression of Economic Value P.26 External Factors That Lead to Transformational Moments P.38 Skift Global Forum 2018 P.39 Sponsors P.40 Speakers P.48 Schedule of Events Skift 5 May 27, 2019 Singapore Super Early Bird Tickets ON SALE NOW $600 USD FORUM.SKIFT.COM/ASIA Offer ends October 31, 2018 TRAVEL IN AN AGE OF SAMENESS 8 Skift Every company is already marketing experiences and the smart innovators at the edge are thinking about a post-experience economy. If everyone is marketing experiences, and if everything has become an experience, what does it mean to be truly different in travel? By Andrew Sheivachman If you’ve traveled recently, you’d be being left behind by consumers who are forgiven for thinking that a revolution hungry to spend money on memorable has occurred in how airlines, hotels, experiences. A vacation mediated by and activities have evolved over the a la carte ordering via mobile phone last decade. is antithetical to our vision of travel’s future, where the now-disappointing and What shiny new brands and digital mundane elements of a trip become a marketing can’t hide, though, is that the strength instead of a weakness. same old core problems afflicting travel sectors persist and have become even So what will drive this post-experience worse over time. The age of the selfie has economy? We’re not sure precisely, but made it easier for brands to rely on style it’s worth asking the question, fostering over substance, to promise something some debate, and putting forth a few different that is, in fact, deeply clichéd. ideas on what it must embrace. Travel has always been an experience, Greater serendipity, for one, allowing facilitated by the services provided by travelers to stumble travel companies, and it’s time to fix upon new, unanticipated what’s broken. discoveries. This self-de- As commodities termination will be key like economy We’ve all seen how an abundance of to the post-experience flights and options has affected how people travel economies, as travelers and the state of competition in the travel become co-creators. The standard hotel industry at large. In just 20 years, travel idea of co-creating your rooms have buying practices have undergone a series travel experience is a become marketed of revolutionary changes. While choice theme that has received has increased, so too have the number some attention. Richard as experiences of intermediaries, adding to confusion Sharpley, a professor instead of in the buying process. of tourism & develop- products, the ment at the University of As commodities like economy flights Central Lancashire, has legacy travel and standard hotel rooms have become described the third and industry is facing marketed as experiences instead of final phase of tourism’s an identity crisis. products, the legacy travel industry is evolution as “the post-ex- facing an identity crisis. perience economy in which tourists have become not passive The post-experience economy, as Skift consumers but active co-creators of the sees it, represents a paradigm that travel tourist experience.” brands will have to embrace at the risk of Skift 9 Travel brands must strive to constantly tend not to happen in a hotel lounge facilitate that moment of unexpected or around other tourists. discovery that can turn a trip from something banal into an unforgettable A 2017 SkiftX survey on transformative experience. Without a solid core experi- travel found that 38.8 percent of those ence, though, creating the grounds for polled said the people around them serendipity becomes nearly impossible. led to a transformative moment, while 35.2 percent said a spontaneous and The research behind the original experi- unexpected adventure did the same. Just ence economy, a term coined by consul- 8.7 percent, for contrast, felt transformed tants Joseph Pine and James Gilmore by their accommodation. in the 1990s, posited that companies can charge more for their offerings by Discovery and serendipity have been transforming services into experiences. superseded, particularly in popular Compare Starbucks to your local hole-in- destinations where the main attractions the-wall coffee shop, for instance, or are swamped with tourists from across consider the impact of Disney on the the globe. Have you really been to Paris expectations for the family vacation if you didn’t take a selfie in front of the experience. Transformation follows after Eiffel Tower? Have you been to Rome experiences, according to their thesis, without proof you posed in front of creating a product that ensures an Trevi Fountain? Can planting trees in a impact can be made on a customer’s hurricane-ravaged forest really change psychology. who you are or transform your outlook? Something funny has happened in travel The answer, it should go without saying, over the last decade, though, that doesn’t varies from person to person, and from align exactly with this thesis. Hotels, moment to moment, in ways no one can airlines, cruise lines, and other sectors predict. Marketing commodities like a have started selling commodity products seat on an airplane or a room in a hotel as as if they were experiences. Marketing transformative is a particularly misguided for these sectors followed suit, appealing strategy; customers lose all their context to travelers on an emotional level and for making a buying decision and come promising a certain experience instead away disappointed when of a service. But make no mistake, most reality doesn’t live up to What is memorable of these companies are selling travel the hype. services, and calling a service an experi- about a trip, most ence instead doesn’t make it so. The travel experience often, comes down almost never lives up to interacting with The industry has been ill-served by the to expectations sold to term transformative travel and all the travelers, unless you are the people and moralistic pandering that comes with it. willing to pay for a luxury culture around you. By marketing trips as personally trans- experience; and even The unexpected formative,