| Date: 1 & 2 March 2011 Trainer: Theodore Panayotou Location: CIIM Building, Nicosia
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Overview
The days of mass Cyprus tourism are counted. Rising costs, intensifying competition from inexpensive yet less spoiled destinations and changing customer preferences have sealed the fate of undifferentiated general interest tourism, in all but the lowest cost destinations. In relatively high costs (for mass tourism) destinations, such as Cyprus, hotels that fail to get the message and start changing their offering should expect falling demand, reduced occupancy rates and narrowing profit margins. Owners and managers can keep their hotels reasonably full only by giving deeper discounts necessitating further cost cutting which inevitably leads to a reduction in the quality of service, which in turn leads to further demands for even deeper discounts and further deterioration of service and profitability. It is a vicious circle. It is a slide along the slippery slope of loss of uniqueness, loss of competitiveness and loss of sustainability that ends with bankruptcy.
The hotels that wish to avoid the inevitable collapse must begin to change in fundamental ways: diversify the product, the target customer, the marketing and promotion, and the channels of sourcing customers. They must enrich their offering from just sun-sand-and-sea and general interest tourism to experiential and special interest tourism; they must target more educated, experience-seeking tourists with special interests; they must promote experiences and special interests in their unique selling proposition; stop relying exclusively on tour operators for customers and all-inclusive packages by diversifying their customer sourcing channels (e.g. the internet, specialized agents, etc). From providing just within-the-hotel services they should aim to manage the total customer experience throughout their clients stay in Cyprus. Indeed the hotel managers’ and staff role will have to change from providing services to staging experiences; from providing the basics to paying attention to detail; from treating tourists as customers or clients to treating them as guests. This would require both training and change of attitude, change of mindset and indeed a change of culture.
Objectives
The purpose of this two day seminar is to introduce experiential hospitality tourism to hotel managers in a practical way and to demonstrate its significance, indeed its absolute necessity for regaining the competitiveness and sustainability of their establishments. Throughout the programme participants will be presented with several examples of business strategies that can be implemented to upgrade the Cyprus service to clients and offer a more comprehensive and experiential type of offering. The theory of ‘Experiential Economy’ will be discussed and the different stages that an economy is progressing to reach the stage of experience offering rather than product offering.
Participants will also be exposed to the marketing differentiation and practices needed to be employed to further promote and strengthen their marketing and promotional activities. By the end of the seminar, participants will be provided with the tools needed to develop their own action plan for their business unit.
Objectives of In-House Consulting
To train hotel managers how to formulate and implement an action plan for introducing experiential hospitality tourism and gradually shift from their current emphasis on mass tourism to experiential hospitality tourism to increase the quality, profitability and competitiveness of their tourist product.
Audience
Hotel Managers and department heads.
Faculty: Theodore Panayotou
Theodore Panayotou is Director of the Cyprus International Institute of Management (CIIM) and Professor of Environmental Economics and Management at CIIM and at Harvard University. He holds a PhD from the University of British Columbia with specialization in Environmental and Resource Economics. Dr Panayotou has an extensive research work having written over 100 books, monographs and papers published internationally on subjects ranging from environmental economics and climate change to resource management and tourist development. In 2007, he was recognized for his contribution to the Nobel Prize won by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in that year. He has served as advisor to many governments at the highest level including Brazil, China, Cyprus, Indonesia, Russia, Thailand, and the US and several countries in Central America, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. He advised the World Bank, UNDP, UNIDO, UNEP, FAO, and USAID and served on the Board of Directors of the Center for Tropical Forest Science at the Smithsonian Institution, and the China Council for International Co-operation on Environment and Development.
Instructor’s Experience in Sustainable and Experiential Tourism
Dr. Panayotou has been involved with tourist development since the early 1980, beginning with Thailand as advisor to the Government on sustainable tourism while serving as Economist with the Rockefeller Foundation; he also provided environment-and-tourism-related advisory services to Malaysia, Singapore and other Southeast Asian countries. In the early 1990’s Dr. Panayotou prepared a policy paper for the Cyprus Tourist Organization in which he made concrete proposals on policies and actions to avert the loss of character and uniqueness of the Cyprus tourism. At the same time as part of a World Bank study at the Cyprus Development Bank he proposed a similar set of measures including the instrument of transferable development rights which was eventually adopted for historical and cultural buildings but not for unique natural environments as originally proposed. Throughout the 1990s Dr. Panayotou, while at Harvard, has served as advisor to the Presidents of Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador and Panama on the development of nature-based, culture-based and heritage-based tourism.
From 1998 to 2003 Dr. Panayotou, advised the Tourist Organization and the local Government of Minorca on how the island could differentiate its tourist product from that of Majorca (to avoid the problems of mass tourism) by investing in nature-culture- and-heritage based tourism. In 2005-06, as member of the Cyprus President’s Council of Economic Advisers Dr. Panayotou prepared a Tourist Strategy paper with concrete measures to upgrade the quality of the Cyprus tourist product away from mass tourism towards heritage-based and experiential hospitality tourism. In the last two years Dr. Panayotou has delivered a number of workshops on tourism competitiveness and sustainability to the Cyprus Tourism Organization and several public lectures to the Cyprus Hotel Managers Association on experiential tourism.
Content
The decline and eventual demise of mass tourism in Cyprus
- The changing fortunes of Cyprus tourism: not a “passing storm” but a “game change”
- History and current status
- Global changes
- Local changes
- Commoditization, rising costs, intensifying competition, changing preferences, better informed and more demanding customers
A vicious circle and a bleak future
- Loss of competitiveness, price discounts, reduced quality of service/loss of uniqueness and authenticity, deeper discounts, and so on
- Steady loss of quality, profitability and competitiveness of Cyprus mass tourism and the demise of the tourist industry
Escaping the vicious circle
- Stop competing on cost, begin competing on quality, service and uniqueness
- Rediscover the authenticity of Cyprus tourism
- Shift from mass and general-interest tourism to experiential and special-interest tourism
The experience economy
- The progression from agrarian to industrial to service to experience economy
- From commodities to goods (standardization) to services (customization) to experiences (personalization)
The positive relation between differentiation, pricing and profit margins
The rise of experiential tourism
- The experiential tourist: looks for unique & memorable experiences, demands more,
stays longer, pays more, tells others and comes back
- The nature of experiential tourist product: pre-trip, on-site, post trip; local culture, local history, local people and local nature; matching personal interests, participatory experience, learning new things, sense of accomplishment; creation of authentic experiences and unique memories
From Tourist Product to Total Tourist Experience
- Reversing the trend
- From tourism as a commodity/ product/ service to tourism as hospitality and experience
- Experiential hospitality tourism: features and benefits
- Sources of authenticity, differentiation and uniqueness
- Choosing the right bundle of experiences
From Tourist Product to Total Tourist Experience (cont’d)
- In-hotel experiences at zero or minimal cost
- Exploiting existing experiences outside the hotel at zero or minimal cost
- Cost-sharing partnerships with other hotels, organizations (e.g. COT, Antiquities), municipalities etc. to provide new experiences
- Managing the total customer (guest) experience
Facilities and human resources for experiential tourism
- Facilities needed: more “software” (settings, designs and scripts) than “hardware” (buildings and equipment)
- Human resources: selection, training, motivation, reward; new roles
- The new roles of hotel managers: script writers, producers and stagers (in the “theatrical” sense)
- Service delivery as an integrated production that results in memorable experience
- The tourist (guest) as an active participant of the experience creation, not as a passive receiver
Reaching the Right Customer: Marketing Experiential Tourism
- The right customer of experiential tourism
- The current customer may not be the right customer
- Locating the right customer
- Marketing tools and channels
- Managing the pre-trip experience
- Managing the post-trip experience
Preparing an Action Plan
- Long-term vision
- Brain storming/focus groups
- Strategy
- First steps
- Training
Contents of In-house Consulting
During the in-company workshop and consulting participants will be advised further for the steps to follow to formulate their action plan, and pilot project for introducing experiential hospitality tourism in their operations, human resource development and marketing of their tourist product.
Fees and General Information
This is a Vital Importance seminar and participants are eligible up to full subsidy (zero cost for participation) based on HRDA criteria or should they have to pay the amount could be significantly low.
The normal cost for participation will be determined after completion of the relevant documents.
Criteria for the subsidy is set by the HRDA – the two main points affecting eligibility are (i) size of the organisation, (ii) cost of the individual attending to their organisation (please refer to HRDA’s “Guide and policies for subsidy” for full details on the HRDA website www.hrdauth.org.cy
Fees include tuition, educational materials, coffee breaks and meals
Due to CIIMs non-profit status NO VAT is charged
