Tourism: leaders or followers ?

Tourism is a service industry. Its primary role is to detect, react and to cater for the needs and desires of people for rejuvenation, recreation, entertainment and education.

Major break-through innovation is not common in this industry and has usually been related to the exploitation of natural features, eg

• The evolution of alpine tourism during the mid 1800s. People had been previously fearful of mountains and had even considered them ugly and foreboding places,

• The emergence of cave tourism during the mid to late 1800s tapped into an emerging romanticism with the natural world,

• The rise and commercialisation of beach culture in Australia after WW2 and through the popularisation of surfing by American competitors attending the 1956 Olympics.

Thomas Cook’s 1870s innovation to standardise, industrialise and package holiday experiences for the masses is the industry’s equivalent of Henry Ford’s automotive production line. Much subsequent innovation in the industry has been incremental and has added value to Cook’s basic concept.

Innovation in tourism and travel has been largely adaptive; generated through breakthrough technologies in other fields of endeavour. It has often been major innovations in transport and I.T. that have helped make the tourism sector more productive. Major changes to booking systems and information distribution grew out of the global breakthroughs in information technology during the 1970s and ‘80s.

It was the invention and commercialisation of steam rail that popularised travel to distant places for pleasure, including the opening up of Australia via the Trans-Continental Railway. The growth in car ownership after WW2 introduced the notion of self-directed touring holidays, including caravanning and camping. The advent of the jet aeroplane began the rapid process of global shrinkage. The next major transportation break-through – space travel – will spawn an exciting new dimension to the industry. In 2004 one of the world’s most innovative businessmen, Richard Branson, announced his bid to enter space tourism when he launched a new company, Virgin Galactic.

Major tourism innovation often starts in large successful companies, such as airlines, where the process of innovation is programmed into the corporate planning, decision-making and resource allocation. Innovation tends not to function as well in the destination-focused small business tourism environment, which is often fragmented and characterized by high labour intensity and many different suppliers. At this level, staff and funding is usually limited, it’s difficult for operators to set aside R&D funds and where business is often consumed by the day-to-day needs of the customer. The grass roots level of the industry is also hampered by the level of competition between operators. However, a new idea or approach can provide small business with a point of difference or a market edge for a short period of time.

Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) can partially overcome this obstacle by imitating and applying innovations already in the marketplace. They can also increase their capacity to innovate by co-operating with other enterprises. Innovation at the destination level often relies on state and regional tourism organizations, as well as industry professional bodies. The collective mandate helps to overcome local and individual reluctance to share, as well as encouraging clustering.

Similarly, the research work of leading tourism education institutions should be harnessed. The blending of academia's intellectual rigour with the practicality of tourism operators can be difficult to achieve, but industry conferences, seminars, ‘think-tanks’ is often where the two can productively combine.