The big opportunity of the incoming agents in the Mediterranean to go against the crisis

Semantic web, Web 2.0, collaborative marketing.… All these sound Chinese to most of us in the travel world. When your job has been going to the airport every week to check the arrival list “your” Tour Operator sent you and contrast it with the actual arrivals : then make sure, all got their luggage, their visas, their folder with the information and they are all the transfer bus heading for the hotel you have no reason why you should think you need to do any kind of marketing and even less any e-marketing.

Well things are changing, the tourists have created a new relationship with the destination, we know have a C2C relationship and this model the incoming agent is not in the scene simply because he is not there where the conversation takes place. C2C means Customer to Customer relationship, this means that when the 2 potential customers, Mr. C1 talks to Mr.C2 the incoming travel agent needs to listen to them, needs to be there, close to the conversation and change its services adequately to make them more “sexy”. Change it can only mean that instead of offering pre set sight seen trips to Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, Egypt or Sicily he could offer a la carte guided tours after he identified the customers interests. If someone does not like museums why on earth give him a museum brochure. Listen what he likes and then when he arrives to the airport surprise him with a service. I like fishing, well when I arrive to Larnaca and see that my rep has book for me about the fishing in Cyprus and the types of fish I could catch then I will feel special , he/she gained my trust and this is priceless.

The question now is… can this happen online? Well yes, not only it happens now but is already a trend in other sectors. We need the leaders in our area to invest on “semantic tourism”.