By Ian Clayton

I wonder how many of you had the chance to see Basil Springer's article in the Advocate, about breakthrough thinking. Amongst other things, Basil makes the point that the past is a context for the future. It was an inspiring article; good to have a historical prospective on where we are, I thought.

Tourism - A Historical Prospective:

In the early days of tourism, only the rather rich traveled. They did not call themselves tourists, just travelers; some thought of themselves as explorers and adventurers. They discovered new lands and new experiences; the pyramids, the Orient Express, a few came to Barbados. They came to soak in the pools at Bathsheba, to breathe the thick, salt air and feel invigorated. Health travel was a big thing then. They returned home and told their friends, and others followed to discover different aspect of the land.

In this time of the traveler, the industry grew by Word of Mouth (WOM). It was the dawn of the Travel Agent (TA). They wrote the tickets, booked the resorts and became trusted advisors to their clients.

In time travel became available to ordinary folk and the tourism industry was born. Destinations needed more than WOM to be visible. The product had to be promoted so that many could be made aware of it.

Promotion.

It is not enough to be Aware of a destination, it’s a start, but there has to be Interest, and Desire before anyone will Act. Promotion is the process of generating Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action (AIDA). Interpersonal communications is pretty good at doing it all, but it just does not have the reach, so print, radio and TV is used to broadcast to a mass audience. These media are good at making people aware and interested and creating desire, but they can't close the deal. So the Travel Agent became the sales agent and destination representative. Over the years the structure of the tourism industry changed little. Wholesalers, tour operators, industry and conglomerates took on various roles, but in essence it was fairly stable. Destination Authorities and tourism enterprises promote their product using the traditional media of broadcast communications. The messages are simple, standard advertisements of very brief exposure to a captive audience. The agents make the bookings.

However, with the Internet the rules have changed. Today I read with interest Basil's latest article on rules and laws: "Laws are rules to fools but guidelines to wise men", and I thought it had some relevance to this discussion.

The Internet offers a new opportunity to engage clients in interpersonal communications. It is not widely used in this respect, maybe because people are still playing by the old rules, but the opportunity is there and we shall talk about it more in future articles.

The Internet changes the rules for broadcast communications. The Internet has many of the attributes of broadcast communications, but it is not limited to simple advertisements and there is no captive audience. It is an interactive medium, allowing users free choice over what content they look at. It is in fact a hybrid of Interpersonal and mass communications, with the capacity to deliver vast amounts of information, interactively and instantly to many different audiences from a single source. Like the traditional media it can generate Awareness, Interest and Desire. Unlike the traditional media it can effect Action and close the sale. This worries the Travel Agent. Internet Technology,

"Internet TV" and "Internet Radio" worries the broadcast industry. That is part of the reason why broadcast is going digital (US Federal regulations require that all TV signals be digital by 2006). Digital TV will mean that video and TV will be delivered with technology that is similar to computer networks and the Internet. This convergence will dramatically change the user experience and open new opportunities to integrate TV with the Internet. It will have a huge impact on the way promotional messages are constructed and delivered.

In the words of Barker & Gronne: "The World Wide Web is inherently different from the traditional broadcast media, and an understanding of the differences is essential to optimising efforts in the new medium. Advertisers who do not understand these differences and who attempt to apply traditional concepts and approaches indiscriminately to this new medium are likely to fail miserably". (Advertising on the World Wide Web, Barker & Gronne, Copenhagen School of Business).

I suspect that we are all going to have to learn to use all media differently. The future will require new creative effort in message composition and media integration.

Coming next:

We will explore the differences and congruencies of the new and old media over the next few weeks. Please stay tuned for the next article on "The Internet as Media" when we explore the Key Features of the Internet