e-Consumers in the Era of New Tourism

The role and characteristics of the consumer has evolved through a series of economic, social and technological developments. The power to control the market has passed from the producer to the consumer. As Karl Marx acknowledged by the end of the nineteenth century, production and consumption are related with each other inevitably, inherently and dialectically. Prosumers create exchange value for the companies; therefore, they inspire a fundamental change in the economic system, and this change has significant implications for the production process. Technological developments such as the introduction of personal computers, the Internet, social media and mobile devices accelerated the digital revolution and the metamorphosis of consumers into a new type of prosumers. Developments based on digital technologies continue to draw the borders of a new world with unique characteristics and dynamics. Briefly, consumer behaviour is influenced by the digital revolution, and it changed the classical understanding on production.

Mobile communication has increasingly become a part of daily life. Tourism industry, as all other industries, has been affected by the advances in mobile communication. Because almost all definitions of tourism are based on travelling from one place to another for various purposes, the term ‘mobile’ is used as synonym for the words portable and moving. In this context, mobility is in the nature of tourism. Mobile communication, although currently not at the desired stage, will have a growing role in tourism. In today’s world, airlines, travel agencies, tour operators and hospitality businesses develop mobile applications and new business processes that take advantage of mobile technologies. This chapter attempts to reveal the relationship between mobile communication and applications in tourism.

Customer loyalty has become one of the primary goals of hospitality business. Since customer-based communication channels provide important strategic marketing management tools, hospitality business use electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) as a tool to achieve customer loyalty. Analysing the customer loyalty data online has enabled businesses to measure the antecedents of e-loyalty, namely perceived value, e-satisfaction, and trust. This study examines e-loyalty or reward programs in the framework of these concepts for hospitality business. To create effective e-loyalty programs, it is necessary to pay attention on the basic dimensions, such as customized quality, perceived value, satisfaction, trust, etc. These dimensions and the effectiveness of hotel examples are evaluated for the purposes of this study.

Digital technologies have become completely indispensable in our daily lives; therefore, there is an urge for demand on new technologies and services based on these technologies. The change in marketing trends is mainly affected by the traditional methods that are insufficient to attract and maintain consumer interest. The new marketing communications tools embrace new approaches based on nontraditional tools and the old ones are no longer considered as appropriate for the new consumers of this age. Gamification is a very new marketing communication strategy that aims to unite loyalty programs with the most recent innovations in game design. This chapter attempts to explore the use of gamification as a tool for marketing communication in tourism. We argue marketing communication efforts in tourism and give examples of this tool in tourism enterprises, after a clarification of what gamification is and is not.

This chapter addresses the symbolic representation of touristic destinations. The main contribution of the chapter is to highlight the rivalry in symbolic context via tourism promotional materials. This chapter is an attempt to decipher the Turkish way of challenging symbolic competition. We discover tourism strategy is based on reconciling Western values such as technology and comfort with the values of the East: hospitality, timelessness, and exoticness. The current tourism promotional videos highlight a local color, which align with self-orientalism in Turkish tourism promotion. This type of promotion, when considering the non-monolithic and differentiated structure of tourism, has some drawbacks in the era of symbolic competition. The chief interest of this chapter was to answer a single question: The relationship between the destination and the tourism promotion: “how is the destination represented?” To answer the question, the relevant literature is scrutinized and a semiotic analysis is conducted. The analysis shows that Turkish tourism promotional videos focus on a kind of self-orientalism. This focus slightly indicates the institutional gaze permeated in Turkish tourism promotional materials. This gaze, along with the discourse, posits Turkey as a Third World country to compete with its, primarily, symbolic synopses: unchanged and unrestrained. This gaze concurrently reproduces an image of Turkey as an Oriental country, which does not match with the tourism strategies for the next decades. This sort of promotion pose a problem when making efforts for the country’s promotion in several areas and besides encompasses all touristic activities. The first section of the chapter presents the current literature and the theoretical framework on tourism representation. The second section includes semiotic analysis in tourism studies and a case from Turkey. The last section comprises the conclusions and suggestions for the future trends.

In line with the rapid expansion of smartphone or mobile phone usage, phone applications have become a key channel for making accommodation reservations. However, a majority of hotels in Bangkok do not realize the impact of mobile device application awareness on the hotel business. The aim of this study is to discover the importance of mobile applications on the decision-making process of customers, especially among luxury hotels in Bangkok. This chapter also clarifies the effectiveness of using mobile device applications for making hotel reservations, check-in, and check-out including the payment process. Furthermore, this research emphasizes the importance of mobile applications on hotel marketing. In this research, data collections are adapted. Secondary sources are required to uncover different types of booking resources to hotels in Bangkok and their popularity, through the growth rate of mobile phone and tablet application usage. The basis of this research emphasizes the Sofitel So Bangkok hotel and Leading Online Travel Agent, a tour agency in Bangkok, to influence the awareness of using mobile device applications in making accommodations and helping the business owner aim mobile device application marketing at the right target. Mobile device applications become an income generator for many major hotels in their businesses. According to this research finding, the trend of hotel reservations through mobile device applications has increased significantly. Therefore this research result suggests that hotels in Bangkok should adopt mobile device applications to promote their business especially rooms and facilities bookings. Consequently, developing their own mobile device applications for the hotel business is highly recommended to increase competitiveness of the hotel business in the future.

The fast changing world of technology affects many areas of society in a positive way including tourism. The use of emerging technologies such as virtual reality, multimedia, and mobile technologies is changing the tourism industry through showcasing the wonders of undiscovered nature hidden beneath the undiscovered municipalities, such as the Panguil River Eco-Park (PREP) in Pangil, Cabuyao, Philippines. Potential visitors can now reach these hidden wonders of nature without actually being in the vicinity with virtual reality tour. Uncertainties as to what to expect in the vicinity would be reduced, giving them an opportunity to explore and roam around inside which has led to the development of the 3D Mobile Virtual Tour Application (MoViT) for the Panguil River Eco-Park which was developed and designed employing story conception, concept scripting, feasibility analysis, script writing, system evaluation, revision, integration, and system operation. Based on the result of the usability testing, the study was able to provide an experience of the eco-park giving the potential visitors a “feel” of the eco-park. Moreover, the staff of the Eco-park was asked to validate the design of MoViT app and persuade visitors whose initial intention is to just swim in the river and is not interested on visiting the other points of interest such as the waterfalls. The results showed that the respondents were able to use the virtual tour guide application and were able to determine the different points of interest with ease, and they were able to have the “feel” of the eco-park.

Rapid growth in the info-communication technologies for the last two decades has modified and sometimes reorganised the disciplines, and marketing is not the exception. Either new software such as applications or hardware like smartphones enabling new tourists for more information search has helped or forced professionals develop new marketing tools. This study focuses how East Asian tourists perceive new tourism marketing in specific to mobile applications, gamification, semiology and e-loyalty. Mean results of five East Asian tourist nations revealed that they are friendly to new applications and new marketing.