Tourism is known to be one Industrywho lives from leisure activities. Crowdsourcing is voluntary Performance, which also takes place in free time. So how can crowdsourcing in tourismMarketing insert?

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Crowdsourcing as a marketing gimmick

No wonder that there are already some interesting approaches and ideas for the German-speaking area, as the two go well together. The spectrum ranges from jointly developed marketing and product ideas through the collection of travel and geodata and the use of location-based services to interactive real-time travel reports.

In 2011, the search for a name for the new B 29 bypass tunnel in Schwäbisch-Gmünd made a name for itself nationwide. Because the citizens of the city were asked to submit names for the tunnel and afterwards in the Internet to vote on the proposals. The city administration sorted out only pornographic and criminally questionable suggestions and put all others on hold Choice. “Bud-Spencer-Tunnel” was the name of the winner from the net with some 10.000 votes, which came not only from the city but from all over Germany. In the end, however, the municipal council decided against the vote from the network. Small consolation: An outdoor pool was named after the Italo-Western hero.

Crowdsourcing in geo and travel data projects

Such name searches are not new, but only a few achieve such a medial one awareness : In 2010, for example, the Quellenhof wellness hotel in the Passeier Valley (South Tyrol) built a new wellness facility for its Alpenschlössel, for which a name was sought by vote on the hotel blog. The campaign itself was also communicated with its own newsletter to regular guests, as well as via social networks (Facebook, Twitter). In the end, a majority of 70 guests decided very well in favor of "Schlössel-Spa".

Crowdsourcing can be used to actually convey information far more sensibly than just looking for a name. For example in the collection of geo and travel data. The study "Crowdsourcing in geo and travel data projects - what makes OpenStreetMap, Waze & Co. successfully?” of the Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft has collected and evaluated various of these projects. The background for the study is the research project "OpenTravelTimeMap", which Objective had set to research concepts and technologies for a worldwide, free travel time map based on the wiki principle.

Cards via crowdsourcing

The most well-known geodata collection is OpenStreetMap, founded in Great Britain in 2004 and meanwhile mainly via universities all over the world Welt spread. Approximately 500.000 people are currently registered (as of November 2011). The aim of the project is to collect free geographic data about roads, rivers, forests, etc. This data is available to all users free of license fees, who can then use it to create street, hiking or cycling maps, route planners or other information worth knowing draw up. The geodata are recorded by volunteers with the help of GPS receivers and entered into the database with software on the home PC - the so-called mapping, however, is technically relatively complicated. That will be financed Projects about donations.

TomTom, a commercial manufacturer of personal navigation devices, has a completely different approach. In order to improve and constantly update traffic data, the data of the device owners are evaluated and made available to all customers customers made available. Map ShareTM corrects, updates and personalizes existing maps. With IQ RoutesTM, the route calculation of the navigation is precessed on the basis of actual speeds driven. HD TrafficTM is a traffic service that reports real-time traffic incidents and offers alternative routes. The (partially anonymized) data of several million users is available.

Jointly evaluate travel data

There are other crowdsourcing projects that evaluate travel data: At ORF's Ö3ver, “authorized traffic reporters” report traffic jam reports with their Ö3ver number to the traffic desk, which then reads out the corresponding reports on the radio. The ADAC offers a traffic jam scanner app for the iPhone with which you can anonymously send your position and a traffic jam report to the ADAC. GPS data is also sent, which then recognizes the movement of the car and the resolution of the traffic jam. At Facebook on the other hand to organize groups who warn fare dodgers about ticket checks.

The collection of location-related data is an aspect that has already been mentioned in the evaluation of geospatial data, but can be used much more directly for tourism marketing: namely when the data is linked to the respective location of the user on mobile devices and the provides relevant travel information directly. The technical term for this is Location Based Services.

Crowdsourcing and location based services

One of the best-known services, also due to the temporary connection with Google Maps, is Qype, which was founded in Hamburg in 2005. Since summer 2006 it was initially only available for German cities, later also in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Polish. Similar to the American predecessor yelp.com, which was founded in 2004, registered members rate places such as restaurants, hotels, attractions, discos, fitness studios and swimming pools. The entries contain address, opening times, telephone number, a link to the website, and the position is displayed on Google Maps.

Users can submit personal ratings and recommendations with text comments and up to five stars. Until the summer of 2011, the reviews were displayed and highlighted in Google searches in local search results and on Google Maps. Google now uses its own Google Places service. However, mobile, location-based use not only makes it possible to rate places, but also to "check in" at a real location and thus tell friends or other users where you are at the moment. You will use the GPSSystem located. A recommendation system in real time, so to speak. The best-known example of this is the social Network Foursquare, where users receive points for every check-in and occasionally badges. Users can also share public tips about locations with other users. German foundations with similar Features are Friendticker from Berlin or Dailyplaces from Frankfurt. But also Facebook, Yelp, Gowalla, Quype and Google enable location recommendations via check-in.

Crowdsourcing and interactive travel reports

It doesn't just stop at rating and recommending: Finally, entire travel reports can be designed interactively using crowdsourcing. On Alpintouren.net, for example, users describe mountain tours in detail – with directions, photos, GPS data and maps. The youth tour operator ruf specifically relies on such travel reports from its customer community for marketing. They can then, for example, as holiday reporters, document their trip in short videos as crazy as possible and upload them to YouTube - they receive the cameras for this from the organizer. But some of the customers also take the photos in the catalogues, add to the travel descriptions of the tour operator or answer them Ask from new customers. Wikitravel is a project that aims to create a complete, up-to-date, and reliable worldwide travel guide whose content is freely available.

But it can be even more interactive: A project by the German blogger Kai Müller in spring 2011 deserves special mention: The Irish Tourist Board sent him on a four-week tour of the Emerald Isle and he reported on it on . The readers were able to make suggestions as to where the journey is going and give them small ideas Tasks - so-called missions. The missions with the highest votes had the greatest chance of being completed by Kai Müller and determined his itinerary, which was also displayed on a map.

A look abroad

It is possible that such particularly innovative projects have so far only worked abroad: At the end of 2011, the Canadian Tourism Commission (CTC) launched "Explore Canada Like a Local", a crowdsourcing-based travel planning tool: Vacationers and Canadians can find their favorite places in the country here in shape of photos, videos, comments and tags, give ratings and share their discoveries on their favorite social networks. The website integrates Google Maps and location-based services such as Foursquare, Yelp and Gowalla and offers users the possibility to create travel plans. You can sort by topic (Art and culture, city breaks, culinary, luxury and outdoor), by destination (metropolises, sights and favorite places of the residents), or browsed in travel lists of other visitors (e.g. strolling in Toronto or eating out in Montreal). There is a mobile app for smartphones.

And wizardistanbul.com was more than just a simple one Online Travel guide that provided a wealth of information about the city: Users could also ask questions directly, which were answered within minutes. Even very specific questions are possible. Conveniently, you didn't even have to log in for this, but on the Facebook-Fanpage click the “Like” button or send the question on Twitter to @WizardIstanbul.

Crowdsourcing in tourism - risks & opportunities

“Let the crowd think for you!” - so the authors of AustriaAdvertising-Blog Crowdsourcing defines and also explains their understanding of crowdsourcing: Namely as a new and, above all, inexpensive form of market research, while the authors Honestly admit: “We tourism professionals often shy away from (…) 3, 4 or even 10.000 euros in market studies or professional guest analyses invest.” It is precisely this one-sided view of crowdsourcing as a convenient and, above all, (apparently) cheap marketing tool Problem, which often causes such projects to fail right from the start.

Because even if communities are often spoken of in modern German, crowdsourcing is actually about it Peopleworking together on a project. And that takes time and Money, is not necessarily cheaper than traditional marketingMethods and definitely not free! In many cases it is necessary to push the community first until a critical mass is reached. Because nothing is more annoying than searching for information about a place via Quipe or Google Places for which there are no ratings or comments yet – and that is exactly what alienates many users.

Create participation incentives

The experience of successful crowdsourcing projects shows how time-consuming this is and that incentives to participate must also be created in some cases:

Dirk Föste, who is in charge of sales and marketing at ruf-Reisen, explained in an interview with Matias Roskos what is responsible for the success of the community: a total of around 25 people oversee the various online activities. Travel and material prizes with a total value of 5.000 euros are also advertised for the holiday reporter videos, and the young people are also allowed to keep the cameras. And finally, the target group is very internet savvy.

In idealistic projects such as OpenStreetMap, however, according to the Salzburg crowdsourcing study, idealistic goals also play a role: For example, users want to be able to freely access geographic data, enjoy working with others or act out of a kind of local patriotism and want blank spots on the map to fill. However, the majority of the OSM participants are also particularly interested in technology and like to try something new. However, OSM also specifically promotes this sense of community, for example through “mapping parties” where local users meet and hold conferences. It is essential that real meetings take place between people.

Success or failure: a question of attitude

After all, success or failure is also a question of the right attitude: For example, the Austrian management consultant Hannes Treichl reports in his blog that, according to a study by Tourism Australia, 79 percent of Australians would be willing to advertise their country - and that in a large-scale crowdsourcing - have already implemented an impressive advertising campaign. He is also dismayed: “In my opinion, Austria lacks the (political) consequence of a common approach Implementation similar campaigns.”

And perhaps those responsible all too often lack an understanding of the value of genuine enthusiasm for tourism destinations from private individuals, as this example shows: In February 2009, the student Helmuth Lammer joined Facebook founded and maintained an unofficial website for the Vienna MuseumsQuartier. Lammer gained more than 25.000 fans within two years. In April 2011, the MuseumsQuartier offered him two annual tickets and a goodie pack for the site. When the student did not want to give it up, the MuseumsQuartier applied to Facebook simply merging one's own fan page with that of the student Lammer.

Outlook for the future: share instead of source?

But maybe recommending and rating is just the first step and maybe it will soon be about more - namely sharing and no longer just information. Various car-sharing offers, ride-sharing agencies, shared-living communities such as Couchsurfing.com or home-exchange sites such as homeexchange.com have already shown where things could go: namely, that instead of sharing information about hotels, you can share your entire home with others. So far, this has been viewed by many as too great an intrusion into the Privacy valued, and the hurdles are very high in barter or co-living communities, because you have to find a suitable counterpart in each case. Nevertheless, the followers of Collaborative Consumption, as this trend is called, firmly believe in the success of this form of economy, because in times of scarce resources people have to rethink and move closer together.

That could be the success of the Silicon ValleyIdea Airbnb.de explain: Born out of an air mattress rental in one's own home, it has become a global platform for apartments that are not exchanged, but simply rented: Over 100 accommodations in almost 000 cities and 20 countries are already on offer. As the Focus reports, 000 new users register on the platform every hour, and the bookings increase by around 192 percent every month Companys offers more rooms than even large hotel chains.