Description
A Community Journey Tourism Mapping proposition and technology: tracking the social value creation
Research approach and objective:
The customer journey approach looks at touchpoints during the user experience (Stienmetz et al., 2021) to identify the stress and pain points along the process to improve it (Liang, et al., 2023). Customer Journey Mapping is usually applied to examine the tourist perspective focused on satisfaction (Liang et al., 2020; Shaw et al., 2011; Stienmetz et al., 2021). However, there is a gap in studies mapping the tourism journey from the host perspective. Since tourism is a source of social value creation (Chim-Miki et al., 2023), identifying the touchpoints between the community and tourists can provide valuable insights into opportunities to improve social value creation along the tourism journey.
Our study adopted the perspective of Chim-Miki et al. (2023) that considers Tourism social value creation as the generation of economic, social, and environmental competitive advantages focused on the local people or the generation of tourism outcomes that can minimize needs and society problems. We used the customer journey approach to propose the Community Journey Tourism Mapping (CJTM). Our proposition is supported by the Service-dominant logic (Vargo & Lusch, 2008) since managing the touchpoints along the tourism development in the community is a source of value co-creation. Besides, technology has a vital role in the tourist experience and social community life and in supporting the decision-making to manage the tourism destination. Identifying the technology associated with the touchpoints among tourism stakeholders is relevant to driving social value creation. This research has twofold objectives. First, it aims to design a Community Journey Tourism Mapping to examine the touchpoints between tourists and residents that can enhance social value creation. Second, it aims to identify how technology can support the community's tourism journey.
Methodology
This study is a theoretical article with a framework proposal. The methodological design had three steps. First, we performed a systematic literature review on sustainable tourism development variables from the residents' perspective and separated the variables, which are social value creation indicators. Second, we combined the User Journey Mapping and co-creation perspective to design a framework named Community Journey Tourism Mapping as a tool to plot social value creation along the tourism development pathway in the host community. Third, we highlight how technology drives the touchpoints between community and tourists to improve social value creation opportunities.
Main findings
The results showed that the community's journey tourism can be evaluated through four steps: awareness, pre-trip, on-trip and post-trip. The generated framework analyzed these phases considering six dimensions:
1. Community activities: This section analyzes the community's awareness of the opportunities and challenges related to tourism activity.
2. Touchpoints: It indicates the interactions between the tourist and the community and inside the community.
3. Community feelings: It expresses the community's positive, negative, and neutral feelings at each phase of the journey mapping.
4. Indicators: It points out items that can evaluate the effects of tourism on the community and are KPIs to assist decision-making and the generation of public policies that promote tourism development centered on society
5. Associated technology: It maps the technological tools mediating the interactions and optimizes touchpoints along the journey steps.
6. Social value creation: It shows how, in each phase of the journey, tourists and residents can co-create value for the host community by promoting tourism that generates socio-economic and environmental benefits.
Implications:
The main research implication is to provide a framework that is a decision-making tool for developing tourism centered on society: The Community Journey Tourism Mapping. It allows for an analysis and graphic visualization of the journey of tourism development in the community from the resident perspective. It is a novelty approach that offers a new strand of studies related to the consumer journey perspective. Also, our research output provides a complementary view to tourism analyses from the residents' perspective, contributing to the development of the well-being of the destination and pointing out how technology mediates the interaction between tourists and residents toward creating social value.
Keywords: Community Journey Tourism Mapping; Social value creation; Touchpoints; Technology.
References
Chim-Miki, A. F., da Costa, R. A., & Oliveira-Ribeiro, R. (2023). Tourism coopetition for a better world: a cycle of creation, appropriation, and devolution of social value. Current Issues in Tourism, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/13683500.2023.2254448
Rong-Da Liang, A., Tung, W., Wang, T. S., & Hui, V. W. S. (2023). The use of co-creation within the community-based tourism experiences. Tourism Management Perspectives, 48, 101157. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmp.2023.101157
Liang, A. R.-D., Nie, Y. Y., Chen, D. J., & Chen, P. J. (2020). Case studies on co-branding and farm tourism: Best match between farm image and experience activities. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 42, 107–118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhtm.2019.11.009
Shaw, G., Bailey, A., & Williams, A. (2011). Aspects of service-dominant logic and its implications for tourism management: Examples from the hotel industry. Tourism management, 32(2), 207-214. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2010.05.020
Singh, A. (2016). The Process of Social Value Creation, Contributions to Economics, Springer India. DOI 10.1007/978-81-322-2827-1_5
Stickdorn, M., & Schneider, J. (2012). This is service design thinking: Basics, tools, cases. John Wiley & Sons.
Stickdorn, M., Hormess, M. E., Lawrence, A., & Schneider, J. (2018). This is service design doing. " O'Reilly Media, Inc.".
Stienmetz, J., Kim, J. J., Xiang, Z., & Fesenmaier, D. R. (2021). Managing the structure of tourism experiences: Foundations for tourism design. Journal of Destination Marketing & Management, 19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdmm.2019.100408.
Temkin, B. D. (2010). Mapping the customer journey for customer experience professionals. Forrester Research, Inc
Vargo, S.L., Lusch, R.F. (2008). Service-dominant logic: continuing the evolution. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 36, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-007-0069-6
