Facilitating smartly packaged nature-based tourism products through mobile CRM applications

• In the nature-based tourism (NBT) context, mobile applications may contribute to major aspects of the travel process, from anticipation and planning to documentation and sharing of the outdoor experience. For destinations and service providers, mobile technologies serve the purpose of building, maintaining and improving customer relationships between destination suppliers, their customers as well as between customer-peers. Therefore, mobile customer-relationship management (CRM) applications can facilitate and improve the daily operational work in the small-scale NBT domain by optimally combining the key components of the NBT tourism system, i.e. recreation activities, lodging, food, infrastructures, transportation and other services and features of the servicescape, intelligently offered as ‘smart package’. After a brief state of the art review, the chapter presents findings from an explorative assessment of existing mobile apps designed for outdoor experience facilitation. The chapter provides theoretical and applied insights into the capacity of mobile technology for smart packaging of NBT products.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

Keyword

mobile technology

smartphone

tourist experience

smart package

smart tourism destination

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kap (subject category)