Top 3 Course Insights

The More You Know

Over the period of about a month, I was able to cram more information than I ever knew possible in that time period into my brain. The first thing I learned about was my passion for sustainable tourism and its impact on local communities. I have always tried my best to be a conscientious tourist. However, I have never really considered the impact that tourism makes on both the environment and local communities. This was first emphasized throughout certain parts of Bruce Poon Tip's Looptail book when discussing Planeterra. But the best part of doing field work is seeing textbook concepts and learning things in a hands on way. The more time I spent observing other people's travelling habits, the more I realized how important it was to me that tourists make only a positive impact on the places they visit. Whether this means not picking flowers in a national park, to not feeding wild animals, to staying in family-owned local hotels, the tourism industry has such a large effect on a large population. 

My second important takeaway is about the customer experience. I had never considered the numerous elements that can so easily make or break the customer experience, or the methods used to evaluate them. I had touched upon some of this in my intro to tourism class. Specifically, customer journey mapping or participant observation. However, this course took me one step further and I learned not only about what these methods were, but also how to appropriately utilize them to substantiate a hypothesis. I learned about the importance of quantifying and supporting claims with data collected in the field. Before this class, I had not put much thought into the intense, higher world of tourism academia. Most importantly, I learned about credibility and how to gain it when evaluating a seemingly completely objective experience.

The last insight I will discuss is in regards to group dynamic. It is important to manage your own expectations or perceptions of people, and embrace the value that a diverse group brings to the table. We had the opportunity to travel and work alongside a fairly diverse group. Most of the people being graduate students, some majoring in accounting or tourism, and a difference in ethnicity. We had a very eclectic mix of students. Initially, I was a bit nervous to go on this trip not knowing anyone prior to the first class. However, as I spent time with my new classmates I learned to appreciate differences in an unexpected way. For example, I thought I would not be able to befriend or relate people so much older than me (no offense Jill, EJ, or Sharon!). But I ended up receiving a load of valuable life and relationship advice from these new classmates. It is always a great experience when you get a non-academic takeaway in addition to classroom material. Overall, it was a fun trip and I was able to make some new friends, cooking coaches, or even stand-in older sisters/moms. Cultivating new relationships is one of the most valuable things you can get out of a class like this.

EJ's take-aways

I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect from this course, yet I knew when it was publicized that I wanted to participate. At this point, hours after giving the presentation to G-Adventures, my key take-aways are different than what I would have predicted when the course began in mid-December.

Evaluation methods

The work of the course involved evaluating the customer experience using a multi-method approach. This was entirely new territory for me and coming on the heels of the required graduate statistics class, the critical nature of data, data collection and analysis was reinforced. Each method was unique in its performance and sourcing. The methods also can’t be combined but can be used together to support a claim. I found this all really interesting, yet also quite challenging to sort out. I also saw limitations in many places since our class participated as data subjects, yet aren’t we automatically a little biased?

This experience provided a great introduction to customer experience evaluation which I hope to be able to apply to future courses or professional opportunities. I do really enjoy this type of material, and believe strongly in the importance of customer service, experience, and evaluation, so it is intriguing to me in terms of putting my knowledge and energy to work in these areas. And to ice the cake, my background in events and NGO fundraising contributes to an understanding of and appreciation for customer service --- which is closely connected to customer experience analysis.

Program Connections

Taking this course immediately following the Tourism Policy & Planning course provided a great opportunity to utilize some of the learnings when thinking about G Adventures and the experiences on the tour. In this case I was able to consider less about the standard customer experience and more about the tour design, company/vendor selection and information communicated to the group. Ultimately, this course offered the first travel experience following my first semester in the MTA program, which meant that learnings from the Sustainable Destinations course and the Policy course were fresh in my mind. This really helped me make connections on the tour and about G Adventures and their mission. Ultimately it helped me question how much G Adventures travelers learn about the community impact from their tours.

Energy

The last take away/insight is the energized connection I felt in myself regarding the work of G-Adventures and Planaterra. Reading Looptail provided a great understanding of the company’s purpose and its founder. I had known a bit about G-Adventures prior to enrolling in this course, but not enough to even know how much of a leader in the industry they have been. Learning about the company and Planaterra has opened up a critical space in my head about how I could contribute to the industry following the MTA program, which is extremely energizing because while I’ve only started the program 5 months ago, I am eager to have some sort of cosmic universe force helping to plot my direction with course, internships and how I spend my time and energy. Everything I learned today is of interest and I am motivated to learn more and to seek opportunities to be involved. 

Amazing Hiking-Nina

Three of our team spent our second day in Paraty hiking to Grand Island. Our CEO explained details to us about what we are going to do, how long the whole activity will take, and what we should wear and take with us during the hiking. What I did appreciate is that our CEO reminded us to pack an extra shirt and shorts because my shirt was totally wet after hiking for three hours and I could not help myself to jump into the water at the second I saw the beautiful beach. Our CEO also did a great job of estimating time and energy needed for the hiking.

The most impressive moment of this experience is we scarified our sweats, even blood maybe, for unforgettable views and experience in our lives. Suffers will be paid off, sooner or later. Although the hiking process was not a real suffer, I did doubt why I was doing this when my skin was burning under the super shining Sun. Every single sweat drops were paid off when we saw our three fantastic beaches each by each. The picture below shows how beautiful the beaches are. 

                                                 

This experience will remind me not to give up when I am facing any difficult moments in my future life. And the picture below is the view we saw after we actually climbed onto a small hill using all our hands and legs.

What I learned from this climbing is that if you are willing to effort more, you will get better view.

Moreover, I was impressed by the efforts that local people took on protect their environment. All of these colorful billboards in the picture below, which was took at one of the beautiful beaches, are about environment protection.

However, on the other hand, this may present that the beaches were not protected well before or are not under good protection now.  Positively, people are noticing that they need to keep the beached clean so that more people could have the chance to enjoy the wonderful place. Reducing environmental impact to destinations is one of the concerns of G adventure. This company has done a lot (i.e. using public transportations) try to eliminate environmental impact to the destinations where their tours go.

Overall, the hiking is one of the most impressive and wonderful experiences I had during our trip. I enjoyed the beautiful views and the fantastic surfing experience after a three-hour hiking. The experience is actual a local living experience since we are the only foreigners on the beaches I believe. And our team member and our CEO took care of me when I hurt my big toe by accident on the beach. Thank you all! I will never forget this day wet wonderful day!

Learned a lot from the course-Nina

The first learning I got from this course is the complexity of the industry of tourism. I traveled a lot previously, and had experiences of group tours and individual tours. I did not notice that the tourism industry is such a mystery industry. However, after taking this course I realized that every single components of a tour can be evaluated, monitored and analyzed with different methods. I may feel that one hotel is better than another before without knowing what factors contribute to my judgment. Now, after creating mystery shopping form with my team mates, I can tell more than 40 criteria that influence customers’ experiences at a hotel. I think participate observation is one of the most valuable and accurate method that could be used in managing customer experience in service industry because participate observation represents actual experience and how the customer feel about the service directly. The results from participate observation may provide outline of the gap between the experience expected by manager and the experience customer really have. See the amazing video.

Secondly, do not hesitate to try anything new. When we went to the Party boat tour, I did not plan to swim in the water, so I did not wear my swimsuit. However, I definitely regretted when the boat stopped and almost everybody on the boat jumped into the water. At that moment, I hesitated even though I really wanted to jump into the water. I did not convince myself at the first stop. After we departure from the first stop, I kept complaint about not wearing swimsuit to my friends, which made them crazy. Fortunately, we had a second stop. This time, I encouraged myself to jump regardless of fear or jumping in shorts and bra. That was amazing to jump into the water fro the top of out boat. I would never forget the feeling when I jumped from the boat and when I dropped into the water. I could not image how disappointed I would be if I had not done this. So, do not hesitate to o anything you are interested in as long as you can.

The last but not the least thing I learned from this course, or from G adventure is the effort of G adventure to sustainability of tourism. I really appreciated that our course chose G adventure as our analyzing customer. The most impressive thing is keeping the tour local. All the accommodations, transports and attractions of our tour are held by local companies. Foreign company owned hotels may have better condition and can provide upgrade lodgings, however, choosing foreign company owned hotels will not benefit local economy, sometimes even hurt local economy. What we want to see is a win-win situation where tourism will help local economy so that the destination would become better and better, and more people can enjoy the destination. 

Blog 2: Jill's Takeaways

Jill Christmas

Brazil & Argentina 3 Course Takeaways

Takeaway 1: The Variety of Evaluation Tools

Despite my perpetually getting them confused, the numerous different methods of evaluation for each aspect of the customer experience were useful and efficient for this project.   I can see myself using them in the future on other projects.  My personal favorite was the ITA Matrix because it makes the touchpoints visible and once the matrix is explained, it’s easy to see what areas need the most improvement.  Another I just enjoyed doing were the peak experience interviews.  People love talking about their adventures and I enjoy hearing about them so that suits me well.

Takeaway 2: Alternative travel style of Chinese millennials

This was my first experience traveling in an organized group tour with Chinese millennial students.  Aside from the observations made when I worked in Yosemite, I had never really thought too much about the dramatic difference in the preferred style of travel between westerners and Chinese people.  That difference is even more pronounced in younger age groups.  I learned a great deal about their priorities and desires which will never be something I can relate to but it’s good for me to be aware of in the tourism industry.

Takeaway 3: G Adventures

My familiarity with G Adventures prior to this course was minimal so learning about the company and their values was very interesting.  I enjoyed doing the user experience analysis because it allowed me to look through the G Adventures website which ultimately introduced me to the wide range of available tours in so many different countries.

Based on the topics discussed in Looptail and what we learned in talking to Jamie after our presentation, I feel that G Adventures has goals and values that are similar to my own.  Depending on my situation in the coming years, I would be interested in pursuing a position with them, preferably on the Planatera side.