Tourism is All of Us: Tourism Industry

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Quality Tourist Facilities in Cyprus

Open publication - Free publishing - More polis camping

Paphos is probably the area of Cyprus with more tradition in what we call Quality Tourism, a term I hate using since there is not such a thing as Quality Barometer. Tourism is an activity that obtains quality when the end user obtains an experience that gives him or her personal satisfaction, so there is no way to measure this.

Nevertheless there are certain very basic things such as cleanliness, friendliness and other that are Good Experience Factors.

Today, Sunday 21st of June I took some time with my family to visit the free north part of Cyprus, the area of Polis in Paphos district. Probably still the most virgin tourist destination in Cyprus with spectacular views and quiet beaches.

After our bath in Pomos, a small village 15 kms from Polis, we stopped at the Camping Site of the Cyprus Tourism Organisation to have a last swim there and an ice-cream with the kids.
And it then where I fully understood the term of Quality Tourism Facilities. The pictures were taken today. Enjoy the view and I strongly recommend you visit the place. Honestly if those incometent people were not running the place then you would be in the one of the most spectacular sceneries in the Mediterranean. In Greek we have a saying.. “ Τοπος είναι ο ανθρωπος” meaning “how good a place is is how its people is”.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Mobile web is a challenge for Tourist Destinations and Tourist Products.

According to Yahoo 30% of the British surf on the net when they are in the loo. Yes 30% of the British consumers actually use their blackberries, iphones etc when they sit on the toilet.

This is defiantly a huge challenge for the tourism world. While using the loo usually is a relaxing moment and it can be a crucial moment when it comes to decision making. This can sound weird but I am sure that the correct marketing message can be sent from destinations and tourist products-services so as to influence a decision.

Mobile web is still something that the Travel world and especially official destination sites did not take into account seriously. Very few travel pages have a mobile version, many a readable but still hard to use and slow. What is even worse is the online booking systems, when it comes to making a booking using a mobile device is still hard and confusing.

So, now in times of crisis we need to be creative, we need to invest in thinking and acting, we need to test and get feedback from users, we have to lead and not to follow slowly.

The tourism industry needs to take initiatives in making things easy for the end user since is the end user that brings us food to our table today and he/she will bring us more tomorrow with des intermediation.

Here I would like to thank Richard Sedley for his twitter that inspired this post and Gerd Leonhard for his vision on Mobile Web.

Yahoo article here

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