Touristology and Web-Engineering; Business Model and Technological Scheme… always two hands remember? Are you sure you can allow yourself to forget about the technological hand? I don’t think/recommend/advise so, Touristologists!!!
In this post we talked about the kind of drivers (basically, economies of scale and innovation base on controlling a community of users) that unleash a Business Model that will allow you to manage your chain of value.
Now, it is time to deal with the Technological Scheme that will allow you to implement this Business Model.
Ready? Steady? GOOOOO!
If we think about the feature of managing a virtual community and to offer to them the 3 C’s… a portal seems a very interesting option. You can analyze the open source solution offered by Liferay or the proprietary one offered by Oracle.
I teach my Touristologists how to deal with the most important social networking sites nowadays BUT ABOVE ALL I teach them to create one of their own. I love to see their faces the first time I say “You have to create communities each one of them will represent a component of your chain of value, then you have to create users, then you have to assign them to the communities and give to them public and private pages, finally, you have to add widgets inside this pages according to the role users have” To them it seems an impossible task to do, but then they began to work, to deal with bad thoughts and feelings and they end up with wonderful presentations like this one… thanks Gerard, Angie, Jonatan, Laura for being EXCELENTS TOURISTOLOGISTS and proudly say “You don’t have ONE website you have a platform able to create, distribute and send the 3 C’s in a customized way to any device”

If we think about the feature of trying to satisfy the tourist from the beginning to the end of the trip, getting 3 C’s from all the members of the chain of value and offering it/them in an integrated, customized and synchronized way using any device. We can use the power of Web Services and Web Scrapping. Nevertheless, a question remains… What kind of technology should we use in mobile devices?
As you remember, when I talked about mobile I went beyond smartphones and tablets. I stand on the shoulders of giants (paraphrasing Newton!!!) and using the vision of Mark Weiser…. I talk about ubiquitous computing using any device, it can be smartphones, tablets, glasses, watches, or any other wearable computing device… At the end of the day, they would allow people to connect to their environment. When is this connection more necessary than when you are travelling?
Until now I was undecided about the paradigm mobile web or native application. Right now, I make up my mind…
In the server side access to the members of the chain of value via restful services or webscrapping.
In the client side a mobile web base on JavaScript and optimized with Backbonejs (Maybe you prefer Angular, Ember, Meteor… it’s your choice!) offering Single Page Applications to any devices!
I don’t say that native applications are not good. I only say that in Touristology in order to provide the right servuction from the beginning to the end of the trip, I have to use any device in a personalized and synchronized way (Web 3.0 remember?). They can be mobile, laptop, smartTV, glasses, watches, boots… you name it! And, in my opinion, this is better achieved with single page applications.
Jordi! I don’t know what the heck you are talking about! Take it easy Touristologists… We have plenty of time to discus all these ideas in class. If you are ready to learn I confidently declare that YOU WILL LEARN!!!!…. And not only that, you will become a game-changer for the tourism sector.
The other day I read an article where an expert in Tourism and Technology claimed that 2014 it will be a regular year…. Not any big revolution will appear… well… let’s see who is right!!!
Interesting times for Touristology and Web-Engineering! A quiet 2014? Expect the unexpected. Welcome to a new era… Touristology one!