The team at EBI Consulting was recently hired by an organisation who has been in the travel industry for more than 60 years. Starting as an outbound operator for youth travel in its European country, it became the dominant player in its sector for 40 years. But two things changed their situation. The first was the internet and the ability to buy tickets online. The second was deregulation of the airlines in Europe. These two factors necessitated a fundamental change in their business model. Today the organisation is an inbound operator focusing primarily on the provision of English language courses.
It should be noted that many of its larger international competitors no longer trade, all having gone bankrupt for a variety of reasons but at the heart of many them was the failure to adapt technologically to the marketplace as it changed. One of the key common mistakes they made was to try to solve their technological problems in house. Hiring or using their IT staff led to numerous mistakes and long delays even as the IT world around them roared ahead. The travel industry, by its very nature, is a people industry, not a tech industry. Technology is a productivity tool for the travel and tourism industry not an end in and of itself. Nonetheless it is quite amazing how many in the industry forget this fundamental distinction.
The organisation with which EBI was working had fallen into this trap. The IT team was a legacy team whose role was to build and maintain the IT infrastructure across the organisation’s businesses and sites. However, the team was not focused on social media whilst its competitors were. The consequence of this lack of attention to the new global reality in the travel industry was dwindling market share for its core youth and student demographics.
EBI has advised its client on the need for it to reorganize how its sales and marketing team as well as its IT team deal with Social Media. The issue is not the competence of the staff but how their time is allocated and how their role is changed by the dynamics of this interactive world. Although there are factors the organisation needed to address, it was, in our view, critical the organisation move into the 21st century in terms of its interface in the technological world.
The team at EBI have had substantial experience in the change management of operations that technology, especially as it relates to digital marketing, brings to an organisation. Check out www.ebiconsulting.ca to find out more.
