Journal of Creating Value | 2021
An Interview with UNWTO’s Executive Director Manuel Butler on the Challenges of Creating Value in Tourism
Abstract
Creating superior value for customers is a critical task for tourism organizations anywhere in the world, especially those committed to recovering as quickly as possible from the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and emerge stronger in the new normal. However, despite the importance of having a plan to create value in the coming years, the mechanisms that are involved from within and outside tourism organizations remain fuzzy and, in most cases, are subject to heuristics and trial and error. The above highlights the complexity of the phenomenon of value creation itself—greatly influenced by the ever-increasing and varied number of agents that play a role in the tourism ecosystem—the powerful technologies that connect them, and customers who prioritize continuous innovation and higher quality of service. In this context, the rapid advances made in data science and the popularization of the tools that support it, to name just a few, are proving a life jacket for many tourism organizations, which have started to realize new ways of facing the challenges of creating value with more confidence. Notwithstanding the progress made to address complexity and uncertainty through these new tools and techniques, creating value remains an area that deserves further exploration and a dedicated focus of research.