at the same time as jet airlines and mass air transportation in the 1960s. Just like American hotel chains, the tour operators mass produced identical products at low costs and prices, according to the predominant Fordistic way of organizing business activities at that time. Two-thirds of the world charter traffic took place in Western Europe compared to just one-third in the United States. This trend continued and expanded during the 1970s and the 1980s when charter flights constituted one-third of total international air transportation. In Western Europe, Spain was the most popular destination of charter tourism, while the Caribbean and Hawaii occupied that position in the US. A third but smaller wave of tourists crossed the Atlantic.
Even though mass tourism developed differently at the two major markets of the world, both were managed in the same way. Both produced the same services to an undifferentiated group of mass tourists. Economies of scale and standardization were achieved by way of hotel branding in the United States and vacation branding in Western Europe. In the US, the hotel brands were, for example, Holiday Inn and Hilton Hotels, while the leading European tour operators included Nouvelle Frontiers in France, Thomson Holidays in UK, Jahn Reisen in Germany, and Tjaereborg Rejser and Spies Rejser in Denmark. Mass production was achieved by way of large airlines and hotels corporations in the United States and the enormous flight and hotel buying power of package tour operators in Western Europe.
Customized Tourism
Since the 1990s, several factors have radically changed the preconditions of world tourism. The world economy has globalized and liberalized, creating a global division of labor and accelerating economic growth and prosperity. Mass production of consumer goods at lowest possible costs is no longer the driving force of business, although productivity is rising more than ever and enabling radical price cuts. Nowadays, people want customized products that adapt to a dynamic age and individual lifestyles and because of globalization and economic growth consumer alternatives are bigger than ever. To meet these changing demands, companies have to change fundamentally from supply-driven to demand-driven organizations and products must be differentiated according to changing demands.
The transformation of business was accompanied and driven by a globalization of competition and markets that created dramatic economic growth and changing conditions of competition and consumption. To stay in business, companies had to organize on a global scale. Economies of scale did not disappear, they were just woven into a global network like system of interrelated organizations. Inside this network, an increasing number of industries emerged and eventually, each industry came to be dominated by a handful of corporations. The revolutionary breakthrough and accelerating developments of information and communication technologies since the 1990s created the tools needed to make globalization come true. Furthermore, the universal digitalization of business and any other social activity brought to life new kinds of goods, services, communications, and business combinations. Especially, the Internet set a new standard that really gave the customer the upper hand and created a buyer’s market.
Hand in hand with the business and technology revolutions that have developed since the late 20th century, radical social and cultural changes have taken place. Increased wealth, higher educational levels, a social dissolution of traditional relations and norms, huge information and communication potentials of the digital age, all this has contributed to bringing about a more individual lifestyle. People want to differentiate according to their personality and will no longer accept to be an anonymous member of a group or the masses. They want more quality in life, too, and each person is eager to decide for himself what is good for him.
As an integrated part of globalized business and individualized markets, the tourism industry was forced to reorganize and adapt their strategies to this changing world. The supply-driven pre-1990 mass tourism had to be customized according to the individual and upgraded demands of new and much more critical and demanding customers.
Modern Tourists
Pre-1990 mass tourists were homogeneous and predictable. They followed the same line along the whole vacation. They felt secure by travelling in numbers, and they took vacations where everything was prepaid and prearranged. Present-day tourists are different. They are spontaneous and unpredictable. They do not follow the same predictable lines either in travel or stay. They purchase different services in different price categories during the same trip. Current tourists want to be different from the crowd. They want to be individual and in control and make decisions for themselves.
Compared to previous generations, present tourists are used to travel and they are better educated and informed about the destinations they visit. Their attitudes are also different from the mass tourists. Unlike previous generations of tourists, they are concerned about the environment and cultures of the host countries they visit and take an interest in the different ways of life. Modern travellers are much more individual, wealthy, knowledgeable, experienced, independent and flexible, and more destination-focused than the mass tourist (Figure 8).
FIGURE 8 Old and New Tourists
| Old Tourist | New Tourists |
| InexperiencedHomogeneousPredictableDestination unimportantGet sunburntEscape | ExperiencedHybridUnpredictableDestination importantActiveExtension of life |
Source: Based on Poon. Tourism, Technology and Competitive Strategies, 144.
Modern tourists make demands on all parts of their trip, especially experiences at the place of destination. These different demands imply that the tourist industry must market its products to individual travellers and not to groups or masses. In many ways, the production of tourist services is still based on economies of scale in the background of the supplying organizations, but their products have to be differentiated and multiplied instead of just one mass product, so-called ‘dynamic packaging’. Customization of products enables tourist companies to provide flexible travel and other tourist services that meet the demands of modern consumers, including, for example, cruise lines with many different activities and vacations addressing different needs such as wild life, health, culture, shopping, bathing, etc. Fulfilling these new consumer demands require demand driven organizations and management which are able to focus on customers and able to innovate and individualize products. In the globalized and liberalized world of modern technologies, tourists can go almost anywhere and pick whatever companies they want to meet their demands when visiting a certain destination. Many companies have rushed to supply similar products to modern travellers, causing prices to go down, creating new routes, destinations, services and firms. The dynamics of tourism opens for consolidation on a global, regional and national level, but also for many innovative new companies that see new opportunities in the changing patterns of supply and demand.
The changing behavior of tourists can be seen everywhere in developed countries, in North America, Western Europe, East Asia and Oceania, including the rising middle classes of emerging societies. Everywhere tourists want experiences that add quality to their lives. That is also why they travel more often and although they are different and individual, you can identify certain common characteristics. In many ways, every generation seems to act in rather similar ways, and this allows the tourism industry to segment travelers according to age.12
Many present-day middle aged people and older people are well off, well educated, live longer and travel more than previous generations, and they also demand high quality travel experiences. These ‘junior mates’ or ‘baby boomers’ are the first post-war generation that qualifies for the designation ‘new’ tourists. They travel often and demand all kinds of cultural and learning activities, now that they no longer have children at home. They focus on life quality, and often organize their trip themselves. The next generation, born in the 1960s and 1970s, often consists of families with children living at home. They demand vacations suitable for both grown-ups and children. The generation of the 1980s and decades to come is so to speak born into a life based on individualism, welfare and new technologies. They want personal
