Natira Wongpaitoon Mdes Service Design Innovation 2014 London College of Communication 1
tutors Alison Prendiville Cordula Friedlander MDes Service Design Innovation London College of Communication University of Arts of London November 2014
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Acknowledgments
First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Alison Prendiville as well as Cordula Friedlander, who gave me such a great opportunity to open a door of service design. Also, I would like to thank you for all the inspiring challenges, useful critiques, and guidances throughout this project, those could really lighten the course and made it so much passionated. Secondly, I am so grateful for having Paul Sims as my associate lecture, who inspired me with lots of practical advices and Agile management which they could not be applied only to my educational purpose, but capable to apply with my daily real-world challenges.
I would like to thank Veronica Lai and Veronica Massoud, our beloved former students for sharing the common passions and career path experiences. Also, Katie Buchanan from Wilson Fletcher, who appeared in the class with her great work that could really arouse and impress us. Moreover, I am definitely thankful to Wilson Flectcher (Stephanie Fletcher and Putri Mcvicker) for having me for an internship interview. Further, I would love to thank Local Alike team, especially, Noon, Aum, and Bo for all your kind information and insight. I hope you would find this project helpful.
In addition, thanks to Fy for being with me through all the ups and downs as well as sharing thoughts and ideas and FYI, your incredible dancing skills could really rid all my stress. Also, thank Chuck for helping each other along the study and observing my kitchen, hopefully, we could embrace a great career of service design in Thailand together.
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For Zeina, thank you so much for always being my lovely orange juice and my very first classmate here. I would love to thank Amy for scheduling the Korean trip for Xue, Ann, Chandi, Boris, and me (the food were impressive!!). Besides, I would love to give my thankfulness to Steven and Lucie for an awesome Agile team. For Caroline, Kim, Ayumi, thank you guys for sharing laughters, smiles and stress through out the course. I am so blessed having such fun and amazing classmates whose passions and energy could rise the temperature of our studio. And it will be incomplete without mentioning about all the neon post-it that we blew in the air. Nonetheless, to unforgettable workshop I enjoyed the most with Cranfield pals, Sunny Wang, Cesar Portilo, and M Waleed Noaman, all of you made me so energetic, so I would love to thank you for that.
Special thanks to Mint, Jane, Plearn, and Pim for all their plentiful encouragement and liveliness that could fuel my strength to overcome all hectic circumstances. I also would like to thank Tern and Pinn who always support my learning process and being my language consultant. You guys are amazing!
Lastly, to my dearest Namwaum and Mook, London wouldn’t be this much fun and cool without you guys. Thanks for being such lovely flatmates and eating all my experimental cooking without any complaint.
Last but not least, special gratitude to the most important support, MOM DAD and my BROTHERS, for always having my back and I could not have come this far without each one of you. Thank you so much for always supporting me even you actually did not really understand what I was studying. So here I am, eventually graduated, I owe it all to you guys. LOVE you to pieces :)
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Summary
This report will be documenting the research and developing process in the area of raising an awareness on community-based tourism together with “Local Alike�, barrier of current target group and how to reach potential customers. This includes the study of travelling and technology trend within the contexts of Social Impact and Customer Engagement.
The research explores an awareness on Community-based Tourism as a tool to relieve a poverty in remote areas by introducing the social impact and engagement concern to attract more people and boost awareness among travellers. The study also focuses on how technology and travelling trend can be applied to eliminate barriers for potential customers, specifically for Thai travellers as a pilot research due to the time constrain and resources limitation.
Several methodologies employed to conduct the research are categorised into two main sections: Primary Research which includes general observational research, expert interviews, semi-structured interviews, online survey, co-designing & co-defining tools, workshop, and rough prototypes whereas Secondary Research includes reviewing case studies, literatures and reports.
Summary
The finding reveals a lack of community-based tourism acknowledgment among people who interested in travelling as well as people who wish to explore. The barriers also illustrate a misleading concept between service and customers resulting in less participation. Consequently, there is an inadequate distinctive characteristic of the service to identify itself from other travel agencies as well as experience sharing across online platforms. In addition, information provided is overwhelming and ambivalent for the users leading to several issues.
The design process presents conceptual service and implementation process with service design methods approach such as personas, user journey maps, visualisations, brainstorming, storyboarding, and rough prototyping. To solidify design outcome, an iterative design method was employed for user testing, which includes feedback from potential targets and organization for the development. The final output will be a service proposal documenting service ideation and service journey on the website as a major touch-point and physical handbook to compleate the service experience.
The report concludes with evaluation on the project outcome as an attempt to increase the notion of CBT and generate more customers for Local Alike by combining social impact with travelling as a motif. The challenge also conducted by in-depth testing with a variety of potential users who have done the primary research and a group of participants who were new to the project. It assesses their perceptions towards travelling with social concern and how their exploration on the service would raise understanding on community based tourism.
Contents
Acknowledgments Summary 1.0 Introduction 1.1 Background 1.2 Area of Research 1.3 Project Aim and Objectives page 13-22 2.0 Research Methodologies 2.1 Primary Research 2.2 Secondary Research page 23-26
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3.0 Research Finding and Analysis 3.1 Awareness on Local Alike & Community Based Tourism 3.2 Barrier of Current Target Group & Potential Customers 3.3 Travelling & Technology Trend 3.4 Social Impact and Engagement 3.5 Research Conclusion page 27-52
Contents
4.0 Design Process 4.1 Concept Generation 4.2 Design Development 4.3 Branding 4.4 Prototype 4.5 User Testing and Feedback 4.6 Iterative Improvement page 53-70 5.0 Design Outcome page 71-82 6.0 Project Conclusion 6.1 Evaluation 6.2 Conclusions and Recommendations 6.3 Further Development page 83-88 7.0 Supporting Materials Bibliography Appendices page 89-112
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1.0 Introduction
1.1 Background 1.2 Area of Research 1.3 Project Aim and Objectives
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1.1 Background
1.1.1 Personal Premise The initial project proposal was inspired and formed from my personal undergoing and observation on local voyage. For some folks, overseas travelling might have been one of their ultimate goals of life while I, personally, believe that the local-blending voyage with the environment and the natives is profoundly a true answer. Parallel with the repaid growth of technology nowadays, most of the travellers are consuming online informations, getting more persuaded by the social media, as well as updating news via online gadgets. Furthermore, there are so many websites providing those information along with practical services; for instance, Tripadvisor and Lonelyplanet. They are one of the most efficient and highly demanded tools for those who want to plan a trip or do some travelling research. The more frequent places people reviewed or rated, the more popular and demanding among travellers they will be. However, it might reveal that those places will become more touristy in succession. Mentioning this to my home country, Thailand, there are similar cases when local communities are poured in by tourists. Besides, the persons who take advantages from the tourism are the developers who provides venues, transportation,food, and accommodations resulted in the inflation and many other dilemma. Also, their original value and primary cultures and identity of those areas have been faded away since it has become a crucial channel of money making for some groups of people.
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My motivation and passion for this project started from two key questions: where can travellers blend themselves to live like the locals and learn cultural differences as well as how to support the locals as being a part of tourism industry by eliminating the advantage takers in order to preserve the genuine value and their originality of the tracts. Fortunately, on my first phrase of exploration, I discovered “Local Alike�, a young start-up who positioned itself between local communities and travellers. As a small social enterprise, their project was progressing gradually. Thus, with this opportunity, I was hoping to provide a service design approach to create an end-to-end service experience by raising two key questions: How to raise awareness on community-based tourism and How to reach potential target audiences. To answer these questions, the discovery stage was first begun with the definition of Community Based Tourism along with Tourism and Technology, especially on the impact of Social Engagement.
1.1.2 Tourism Industry What is Community Based Tourism? Community based tourism (CBT) has emerged from the misleading concept of ecotourism as it had perceived the popularity for an alternative tourism to overcome the poverty alleviation and become an essential tool for sustainable development. In spite of that, the abundance of community-focused led ecotourism to encounter criticism as another mass market tourism (Satarat N. 2010). As a result, CBT has relabelled from ecotourism, focusing more on the concrete concept of participation and involvement of indigenous people and the associated costs (Halstead, 2003: 7). The approach based on people-centred, community-orientated, and resources-based (Armstrong et al, 2003 quoted in Morris, 2008: 48). It aims to empower the community dynamic, enhance community engagement on decision-making and ensure that the incentive of involvement come from the community itself (Armstrong et al, 2003: 2). It is therefore essential for local inhabitants to contribute in the process of implementing and executing tourism activity in their community and certainly with their consent and support (Brass, 1996). Therefore, as observed by Leksakundilok A. (2004a: 163), CBT could also balance and harmonise a wide range of resources that local participants are interested in and have the potential to be involved in relation with preservation of the local culture, conserve heritage and inherit traditions. This action would lead to the principle of democratic ethics; people must have ownership of their future, especially in their property (Gasco J., 2013: 720).
Responsible Ecological Social Tours (REST) simply describes CBT as “tourism that takes environmental, social and cultural sustainability into account. It is managed and owned by the community, for the community holding the purpose of enabling visitors to increase their awareness and learn about the community and local ways of life� (REST, 2003: 14). World Wide Fund for Nature or knows as WWF also expands to ensure that the majority of substantial benefits should remind within the community and greater local advantage. In respect of social and institutional structures, WWF accepted that it must also embrace the community individual initiatives (WWF International, 2001).
In parallel, the initial purpose behind CBT is not only for the significance of cultural preservation, economic prosperity, poverty alleviation and income generation, but it is also about knowledge sharing and the transformation of learning process for people’s self-development (Cornell, 1997:250). To summarise, according to the Mountain Institute (2000: 4-5) states that any related CBT development must contain the following assumptions: 1. CBT must contribute to the improvement and /or the increase in a nature conservation and cultural heritage. 2. CBT must advocate local economic development through generating tourism revenues and major portion of benefits to community participants resulting in an increasing number of community contributors. 3. CBT must value the different type of participation, ideally progressing toward self-mobilization, but not always necessary. 4. CBT has to emphasis on providing a socially and environmentally responsible product to the visitors.
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CBT Experiences
Thai Tourism Industry
The drive of community based tourism originated from the demands of self-fulfilling to social needs: meeting new people and self-realization through creative activities, knowledge and self-exploration (Krippendorf, 1987, p. 105).
Likewise, CBT in Thailand was also heavily promoted by the TAT’s Amazing Thailand Campaign during 1998-1999. Its objective was to preserve tourism areas to attract quality tourists to visit the country and to stay longer (Khanal and Babar, 2007: 5).
CBT travellers are offered the chance to live like a local and to get in touch with local communities in order to immerse themselves with the local hospitality as an act of supporting locals’ livelihoods (H.L. Sin, C. Minca, 2014). It defines as “truly travel” as compared to mass tourist. They would perceive higher social and cultural involved in travelling rather than touring around (Crang, 2006; Minca and Oakes, 2006, 2011; Oakes, 2006). To gain a better local experience, homestay could offer the following factors to visitors who champion to live with local family as a way to learn more about the community. As such, the visitors also raise awareness through the diversity of culture as well as exchanging valuable experience in respect to mutual contribution. (Satarat N., 2010)
Even though there was an expectations that CBT would be an alternative tool for community development, as recommended by various international organizations, the past experience indicate that most of the benefits go into outsiders’ pockets. Meanwhile, locals have been involved in tourism only for selling hand crafted products with a small quantity and receive a small amount of profits (Satarat, N., 2010).
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1.1.3 New Era of Tourism Industry & Technology
What are the Travelling & Technology Trend The study from Lee T. (2013) reveals that there is a significant growth on travel spending for the Generation Y. People who were born from the early eighties to mid-nineties are known as the millennial generation. They are tech-savvy and digital natives, which lead to the significant change of travelling industry. There are key areas that should be consider in the changing trend of generation Y:
They are the “Now Generation”. Gen Y has grown up with the dramatic change of technology and media. Undoubtedly, there is an expectation on always-on instant communication and real time responses (Paharis R., 2014). Millennial are accustomed to sharing their life’ activities and opinions with friends through social media. Therefore, they expect the same from their interested industry as well.
“if accurate substance is readily available and easily accessible, Millennials will easily obtain the answers they are seeking. ”(Lee T., 2013). It is important to keep the most up-to-date, real-time and accurate information and uncomplicated website structure as they make a quick decision. Gen Y finds online booking is convenient and comfortable to deal with. Likewise, the material will be viewing on several devices, the website should provide the same equality of content along with easy navigation interface (Lee T., 2013).
“Millennials turn to their peers for “expert” opinion”(Lee T., 2013). Review sites such as Tripadvisor has been commonly used. It is a powerful tool to get real opinions and feedbacks from other users along with voting and ranking for the level of review. With multiple social media platform, travellers prefer to ask local experts through their phone rather than a concierge necessitating time-consuming conversation. However, there is a certain level of authenticity and trust on peer’s review.
The fear of missing out has massive impact on Millennials. Also, They feel like they need to share their location, activities and opinions with others (Lee T., 2013). Through this perception, it has created social creature and behaviour of online interaction across several social media platforms. On the other hand, Millennials are sociable offline as they are a generation that enjoys travelling with others. With the 20% higher than older generation, the figure shows that 58% of Millennials prefer to travel with friends (Lee T., 2013). 17
“Millennials demand to be integrated in the culture with an authentic local experience” (Lee T., 2013). From the study, 78% of Millennials are starving for new knowledge while travelling, while 70% indicated that they expect vimmersive experiences with locals and surrounding. This concept reflected to accommodation services such as Air BNB, couch surfing and home exchanges. In order to encourage with gen Y travellers, it is essential to proved an equally authentic experience.
“They not only want to view new sites and enjoy local experiences, but hope to contribute to the community and the world”(Lee T., 2013). The Millennials perceived the idea of supporting social responsibility. The number shows that 77% of them believe that it is crucial to contribute the social issues and views in all aspect of other lives. Referring to volunteer travel, WWOOF (World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms), travellers exchange their help on organic farms with food and accommodation from local hosts. Indirectly, if Millennials cannot physically volunteer, they still what to show their supports by staying in eco-friendly accommodation where they believe that it would benefit local community and sustainable projects. Tourism with Social Impact and Customer Engagement Globally, the tourism industry among young travellers is increasing rapidly. It also includes purpose for pursuing higher education as well as volunteering session. (Staywyse, 2012). One of the fastest-growing emergences is volunteer tourism. It focuses on two dimensions: travellers volunteer their holiday to enhance the environment or a local community project and self-development through the intrinsic rewards of contributing to such projects. (Novelli M., 2005)
“ Instead of asking how can communities benefit more from tourism? CBT ask the question: how can tourism contribute to the process of community development?” (Melker ‘nstrand, 2006). 18
CBT tourism should be promoted to public awareness and educated the difference from mass tourism as a tool for resource conservation and cultural preservation (Melker ‘nstrand, 2006). Therefore, it is crucial to encourage more people to advocate this niche tourism market by engaging customers through several tactics. In order to create social impact and customer engagement, there are two areas that should be considered:
Figure 1.1.1 Narrative Elitism Humanity Hero Higher Meaning
Beginners Luck Free Lunch Destiny Child CoCreator
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Appointment Dynamics Fixed Intervals Dangling Prize Pacing Options Pacing Patient Feedback Count Down Throttles Moats
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c Ac Virtual Goods Build from Scratch Collection Set Avatar Earned Lunch Learning Curve Protection Recruitment Monitoring
OCTALYSIS Sc
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Milestone Unlock Evergreen Mechanics General’s Carrot Real-Time Control Chain Combos Instant Feedback Boosters Blank Fills Voluntary Autonomy Choice Perception
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Points Badges (Achievement Symbols) Fixed Action Rewards Leaderboard Progress Bar Quest Lists Win Prize High Five Crowning Levelup Symphony Aura Effect Steup-by-Step Tutorial Boss Fights
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Sunk-Cost Tragedy Progress Loss FOMO Evanescence Opportunity
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Status Quo Sloth Scarlet Letter Visual Grave Weep Tune
Friending Social Treasure/Gifting SeeSaw Bump Group Quest Touting Bragging Water Cooler Thank-You Economy Mentorship Social Prod
Glowing Choice MiniQuests Visual Storytelling Easter Eggs Random Rewards Obvious Wonder Rolling Rewards Mischief Sudden Rewards Oracle Effect
Customer Engagement
Gamification and Octalysis Theory
According to Royalty 3.0 and customer engagement (Paharis R., 2014), engagement in this context is consist of having three principles: having a deep emotional connection with the brand, participating actively and frequently, and building a long-term relationship.
Gamification is using game mechanics and techniques to engage and motivate people through their core drives (Yu-Kai C., 2013). It is simply described as a fun element of engaging people, which could be applied to real-world or productive activities. For example, the progress bar on Linkedin and the best content listing on Leadderboard in Tumblr are all the game mechanics to motivate human and create more engagement within the community. According to the framework of gamification by Yu-Kai (2013), he illustrated the 8 Core Drives that make game mechanic work. It is called Octalysis based on octagon shape which each side is representing different principles. (See Appendix 1.1) 19
1.2 Area of Research
A variety of research methodologies have been employed to understand the entire working process of Local Alike, customers’ perception and drawback of user journey in order to reduce the current issues and implement the service experience. The research studies can be divided into four areas as followed:
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1.2.1 Awareness on Local Alike and Community Based Tourism This research is to focus on how people understand by Community-based tourism and what the benefits to the community and travellers themselves are. This includes the understanding of Local Alike role of involvement with the communities, working process and values, community criteria, along with the current issues. It also looks on place-making principles and factors that make current communities successful. In order to boost awareness on CBT, the finding seeks to identify users’ expectation and perception toward travelling locally as well as investigate on how to differentiate travelling package in relation to communities’ benefits. Lastly, this finding aims to pull out the proper language tone and way of design to communicate with users through user journey and decision-making.
1.2.2 Barrier of current target group and potential customers The study is conducted to find the difficulty of accessing to the service in term of communication channel across various online platforms and perception toward Local Alike service. This includes investigation on what are being obstacles the push potential customers away from the service. In parallel with organisational self-assessment, the study will lead back to internal issues as well as the impacts that affect to external problems. It also looks into the different customers journey from a variety of customers in relation to their behaviours and experiences.
1.2.4 Social Impact & Customer Engagement The purpose of this research would look deeply into social engagement and how people participate in social impact issues. It aims to take case studies to illustrate their achieving components and how the service could differentiate itself from other travelling agent. Kickstater and Fairphone are chosen to investigate way of encouraging people to do social good starting by their own interests and how they can continue doing so.
1.2.3 Travelling & Technology Trends The investigation looks into how technology has changed travelling behaviour in relation to enhance the up-to-date service and make the most out of technology and social media. It also identifies distinctive characteristics of Generation Y or Millennials in particular and how they could be potentially engaged with the service. The study seeks into how technology influences hospitality service and what areas that travellers expect to see before making decision to gain trust and reliability through online platform.
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1.3 Project Aim and Objectives
The following objectives have been summarised from my travelling passion combined with personal concerns on the tourism industry in Thailand in terms of environmental and economical issues. As I believe that the impact of social responsibility on community based tourism could be one of the vehicles to sustain tourism industry in a long term as well as ease the poverty.
Aim
Objectives
The project is to raise awareness on community based tourism (CBT) and how we can enlarge this project to reach the potential target audiences. Collaborating with “Local Alike”, a type of young start-up positioning between communities and visitors, the goal is aiming to increase more travellers to visit the communities.
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To observe the strength and weakness of Local Alike and current circumstances.
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To explore the possibility and barriers of people toward local travelling in order to widen the target audiences.
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To investigate customers’ behaviour in relation to technology and tourism.
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To study on social impact and customer engagement as a tool to encourage travellers to participate in CBT.
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2.0 Research Methodologies
2.1 Primary Research 2.2 Secondary Research
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2.1 Primary Research
2.1.1 Observational Research
2.1.3 Semi-Structured Interviews
The purpose of this research is to observe global travellers’ behaviour including photos and experiences sharing among travellers. In addition, the focus expanded to consider the level of dynamic upon each hostel and the interaction between hosts and visitors. Information materials and notice boards in hostels were also investigated as an offline touch-point. The investigation outcomes were recorded by notes, photographs, and videos. Most of the locations were taken in public areas in hostels such as receptions, canteens and bars in European hostels.
The Semi-structured interviews were carried out for 4 purposes as following.
2.1.2 Expert Interviews The interview was carried out by Ms.Suratchana Pakavaleetorn, Noon, a co-flower at Local alike, who is one of the founders. Along with her experience in sustainable tourism at Mae Fah Luang Foundation, one of the leading organization that promotes the sustainable alternative livelihood development, the interview questions were conducted to cover general – deep insights of CBT in Thailand. Nonetheless, the main focus was on Local alike working process, current works and problems as well as locals engagement. To gain a better understanding, the insightful information was collected from Ms.Patomporn Pongnin, Bo, a sustainable tourism initiator at Local alike. The questions covered the community development and local funding. Both of the interviews were arranged through Skype emails and other social media platforms.
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1. To explore the possibility of service connection between hostel, traveller and Local alike. Also, to differentiate the types of hostel as well as the levels of engagement with the owners, staffs and travellers. 2. To determine the foreigners’ awareness, including hostel owners, staffs and travellers toward community based tourism, especially in Thailand. 3. To observe current customers’ perception and feedbacks toward Local alike service in terms of domestic and international users. 4. To investigate the barriers of potential customers through Local Alike fan-page and Travelling Community, Go!graph, for instance. Interviews were conducted at various places, mainly public spaces in hostels and canteens in Europe, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Apart from face-to-face interviews, Skype, email and, other social medias are also necessary for the interviews.
2.1.4 Online Survey
2.1.6 Workshop - User Journey Map
One online survey was created in Google drive.com. It emphasised on scooping area to compile qualitative information from 27 responses with a diverse aged group who shared the common interest on travelling. The questions focus on their personal lifestyles, finding out the different types of touch-point both digitally and physically. Together with the notions of community based tourism and degrees of interest are also questioned. Although, the use of online surveys gives more time for participants to reconsider and be opened to their answers, some of the answers of open-ended questions were not always precise and elaborate. 2.1.5 Co-defining & Co-designing Tools
The workshop was set at friend’s house after having dinner. A group of friends, aged between 22- 30 years old, were gathered to draw their travelling journeys and behaviours in order to discover multiple touch-points from pre, during and post experiences.
There are three co-defining tools, created to gather different types of information as shown.
2.1.7 Rough Prototype Thai students, aged 22 to 28 years old, studying in London, were challenged by travelling-packaged prototypes. The objectives were to discover how they categorise various types of travelling package referring to community’s benefits. In parallel, the participants were asked to compare same types of travelling packages with the different approaches and designs to raise awareness on CBT.
1. Postcard Tool was created to gain general travelling experience of travellers at hostels and how they enjoy sharing their experience to others in relation to observe the possibility of service connection. The tool was tested with variety of nationality in Europe. 2. Pop up Tool was aimed to observe the interaction between people and object among hostels owners, staffs and travellers. It also shows how foreigners interested in travelling locally in Thailand. 3. Pictogram cards were carried out to gather indepth knowledge on Thai travellers’ expectation and perception toward community-based tourism in Thailand. 25
2.2 Secondary Research
A list of literatures and case studies from secondary research are significantly important to educate methods and theories. It allows to explore and identify problems as well as to ensure that collected data are explained and analysed properly. The areas of secondary research are mainly about community based tourism, travelling and technology, social impact and customers’ engagement. For a comprehensive list of references please refer to bibliography section at the end of this report.
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3.0 Research Finding & Analysis
3.1 Awareness on Local Alike & Community Based Tourism 3.2 Barrier of Current Target Group & Potential Cutomers 3.3 Travelling & Technology Trend 3.4 Social Impact and Engagement 3.5 Research Conclusion
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3.1 Awareness on Local Alike & Community-based tourism
Figure 3.1.1 3.1.1 What is Local Alike?
Values
“Local Alike is a community based tourism platform connecting travellers around the world with meaningful and sustainable experiences”
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The communities would have oportunities to manage their own tourism, as they would like to have.
They are a social enterprise (See Appendix 3.1), which provides travellers an authentic experience in community based tourism. With their generosity, they believe that travel can help preserving local culture and generate income to the communities. Moreover, visitors also gain valuable experience from exposing themselves to different cultures in the villages. The connection from variety of people from different culture and places could lead to a truly sustainable society as their ultimate goal and meaningful experience for travellers and locals “alike”.
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The communities could increase the awareness of local cultures, traditions, and environment among themselves, and also create mutual understanding across different cultures.
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The booking platform is to benefit local communities that would have a potential to provide jobs and revenues to the locals.
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The travellers could learn about the community and local ways of life as this will increase people’s awareness of sustainability after ending their journey.
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Figure 3.1.2
Working Process And Methods For Community Development Local Alike is aiming to focus on the local community development. They collaborate closely with the community as well as learn and understand the needs of its people. Before engaging locals into their process, they ensure that the incentive comes from people themselves, then, come up with the ideas for developing community together. Besides, they help promoting communities’ unique culture and making sure that it is responsibly protected from misleading concept of tourism. As a liaison between the locals and travellers, they give the priority to satisfy both parties with their service and platform. Local Alike decides to work with rural communities in Thailand where there is limited access to the Internet. It gives travellers an incomparable experience to enjoy the different way of life without modern facilities. With that belief,it is how visitors can truly immerse themselves to the authentic experience through adventures and cultural exchanges. Local Alike also ensures that tourism does not degrade traditions and culture in local communities (See Appendix 3.2)
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Level of CBT Readiness
Level 1 : High level of readiness CBT Mae Kam Pong
Presently, there are a total of 15 communities that Local Alike is working with. Each of the community takes different time-period approaches. According to the OTD (2008), The level of readiness can be categorised into three groups as following.
Communities in this level are described as a role-model community. Local Alike also take them as case studies to learn and consult on sustaining the community and management. It takes 3-4 weeks for the preparation to put the community package online.
Level 2 : Medium level of readiness Hloryo Village , Mae Salong Homestay, Koyruttatwa CBT: Jabusee, Baan Hua Tung, Baan Huai Raeng, Baan Ku Ka Sing, Promlok, Koh Yao Noi
Level 3 : Low level of readiness Baan Suan Pa, Si Pan Rai Tea Plantation Kudeejeen Community, Sathorn, Baan Bart
The CBT management has been established within the communities but the lacking of communication channel to reach the target audiences could be supported by liaison and service platform. It takes 3-4 weeks for the preparation to put the community package online.
The communities are new to the CBT management. Local Alike needs to take a challenge step to understand, negotiate, initiate, and engage with locals from the beginning. This approach could take approximately 3-6 months and frequently visit afterward.
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50 50 50 50 100
Suan Pa Village
Si Pan Rai Tea Plantation Village
Hloyo Village
Mae Salong Home Stay Village
Mae Kam Pong
North South
East
50 Baan Huai Raeng
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Koh Yao Noi,
Promlok
Capacity of communities on website per month: Figure 3.1.3 There are eight communities that have been promoted on Local Alike website. Each of the communities has different capacity and season due to the community’s agreement and religious activity.
Case Studies on Place Making, Mae Kam Pong Community: Figure 3.1.1
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3.1.2 Perception toward local experience travelling among Thai travellers Pictogram cards were carried out to gather in-depth knowledge on Thai travellers’ expectation and perception toward community-based tourism in Thailand. From the total of 60 cards, users were asked individually to choose 10 cards that refer to their expectation and travelling experiences. There are 30 cards have been selected from 5 participants aged between 24-28 years old. As a result, the cards can be divided into four following areas: 1. People & Emotion The users are expecting to enrich their experience by interacting with local people as well as attractions. In addition, travelling is a part of leisure activities, so they look forward to have fun and rustic atmosphere. Moreover, they are also anticipate to appreciate the vibe of nature. Participants aim to immersive themselves with the nature and surrounded environment. Some of them supported that they prefer either seeing sunrise or sunset in all trips they visited to fascinate its beauty and take some impressive photos. Others also agreed that going to local market to learn people’s way of life is one of a must activities too.
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“ I enjoy talking to local people in the market. I don’t buy anything there but just go and get some native sense of their routines” Praphavint, Thailand 2. Activities Not only travelling is defined as leisure activities but it is also function as a rebooting stress and therapy. Any activities providing mental and physical stress reduction are interest travellers. People go out of town or local area to escape the pace of busy life. It is clearly indicated that exploring and learning process within the community should less likely be educated and seminar trip. Likewise, learning process is expected to be local tips and tricked which come directly from habitants themselves. In similarity, the main goal is to immerse themselves within the surrounding.
“I was sick during the trip and I asked local guide for a leaf of herb to cure my sickness when we were hiking in the woods. He promptly picked up some leaves around us and I shallow it. Not too long, my symptom was getting better. That’s thrilled ” Champ, Thailand
Figure 3.1.4 3.Place, Environment and Nature Participants aim to immersive themselves with the nature and surrounded environment.Ones added that he likes to see either sunrise or sunset in every trip he has been to and take some photos. Others also pointed out that they enjoy going to local market. It is actually where real life is.
“ I enjoy talking to local people in the market. I don’t buy anything there but just to go and get some sense of their lives” Praphavint, Thailand
4. Utilities There are wide ranges of equipments expected to bring and meet. People who have not had any local travelling experience are hoping to take less adventured trip. Furthermore, the accommodation is expected to be less venerable. Symbol of way finding also explained that self-exploring is one of the crucial parts for local travelling. Nonetheless, for more extreme travellers believe that multi-purpose knife along with proper shoes and compass are expected to bring along the journey. Also, camera is undeniable to bring with, however, its types just depend on their personal professions and style of collecting photo memories. Meanwhile, one of the ECO-tourism travellers pointed out that his concern on environmental and natural recourses induces him not to promote indigenous communities to everyone. He only encourages people who really take this kind of experience seriously to go.
“Just like what I do with my music collection on itune, I don’t let everyone hear it. I only give permission to my close friends or someone who I really trust. Otherwise, the community will lost its charming due to the large amount of tourists like Pai was done” Rittikorn, Thailand 33
Expert’s opinions The interview was carried out with Ms.Suratchana Pakavaleetorn, Noon, a co-flower at Local alike, which is one of the founders (See Appendix 3.4). The interview questions were conducted to cover general – deep insights of CBT in Thailand. Nonetheless, the main focus was on Local alike working process, current works and problems and future plan. When they first stared in 2013, there were a very small number of people who participate in CBT activities. Especially, when they went for conference and meeting, there were same faces that have been involving in CBT management. Recently, she met a few young people who interested in CBT.
“…They might have known only about travelling locally and exchanging culture but they have missed a bigger picture, which is community development. It is leading to country development as a whole perspective”
CBT is needed to be supported only as a part of tourism but it is also a vehicle to drive our country forward. While this concept is fairly new to Thai people and some of them were not genuinely educated. It has also become one of the market tools for some travelling agencies and people are misinterpreting it.
“ Some agency bring tourists to the community and don’t respect local people..”
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In terms of the difficulty in the process, the projects they contributed with “level 1” communities were the most challenging to convince people on CBT management. Each of the projects took more than 3 months. There was one community that they were first unsuccessful talking to the community leader, he was bold and saw LA as an inexperience service. However, they kept on trying and met the younger community representative. He saw the possibility and potential of the concept. Later, the community leader saw some positive changes and supported them at the end.
The most recent issues was a day tour called “A day as a fisher man” has encountered a participated problem. The day tour usually had 15-20 participants. However, this one had less than 10 people. They were trying to increase the number of people by asking customers. The result indicated that people would like to know the prior date in order to manage their schedules at least 1 month prior. This led them to think deeply on how to reconstruct our service in the future.
“ When people in the community itself see others value their culture, they would values their culture too and pass on to next generation”
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3.2 Barrier of Current Target Group & Potential Customers
The Semi-structured interviews were carried to investigatethe barriers of potential customers through Local alike fanpages and online travelling community (eg. Go!graph). The age ranged from 18 to 34 years old. The purpose of study is to observe current customers’ perception and feedbacks toward Local alike service in terms of domestic and international users.
Local Alike is a very niche travelling market in Thailand. However, they have a decent number of their Facebook fanpages, approximately 12,500 people on August 2014. In addition, more than half of them are Asians and 50 percents are Thais. Surprisingly, a few people truly understand about their service concept. (See Appendix 3.13)
Understanding of CBT Concept & Experiences
The result of the research shows that there are several issues hidden behind this barrier as following. (See Appendix 3.6,3.7)
The study of what obstructing travellers from participating with Local Alike is outlined from the semi-structured interviews and online questionnaire. The sample of participants consists of a range of people between aged 18 to 34 years old who have diverse backgrounds but share the same interests on travelling based on Local Alike and Go!graph data. (See Appendix 3.13)
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Some of their fanpages are friends of staffs who working with Local Alike. A number of foreigners who have been on a trip with Local Alike have heard about it from insiders or family and relatives.
“I knew about local alike by my cousin’s boyfriend who works for NGO in France”. Lou, France “I knew about Local Alike by my teacher he worked with Janjarang Pat so he gave me her contact for an internship. I joined them because before studying marketing, I studied tourism so I have a travelling culture” Youssef, France “I know Local Alike from Pai, He’s my friend. I mentioned to him that I want to visit some local place in Chiangmai so he recommended Mae Kom Pong village with local a like so I joined.” Sok, Cambodian 36
In turn, Thai people who have heard about Local Alike from very closed connection, they do not exactly know what the service and tours are about.
“I know Aum, who studied on the same major as me. She sometimes posts LA travelling package on our Faculty of Social Administration Facebook group. To be honest, I become LA fanpage because of her but I don’t really know much about it”. Sirachon, Thailand
•
Furthermore, some Thais perceived Local Alike as an educational travelling agent. It reminds them of field trip with school or company. Instead of travelling for leisure, they feel that it is even more stressful. One of the interviewees added that she has been to another sustainable campaign trip with A Day, a creative magazine company in Thailand, and felt terribly left out. A Day magazine fans, on the trip, seemed to know each other before and they were connected so well.
“I felt like an outsider and I don’t what to have that feeling again.” Sirachon, Thailand •
Some people even thought that Local Alike are targeting only for foreigners due to the fact that their website provides only a English version.
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Figure 3.2.1 Date and Timing Local Alike recently lunched a monthly explore this year, 2014. They are aiming to target more customers by providing a day trip scheme according to the theme. The finding of research are shown as following. According to Expert’s opinions (See Appendix 3.4), there are number of people who would like to participate on a day trip but they are not available on that certain day. They also added that if they have known earlier, they could arrange their schedules to join.
Another fact shows that seasons have a massive impact on travelling in Thailand. The data from Local Alike between 2013-2014 sale shows that, the least amount of package sale is during the summer, March and April in Thailand. Adding that it is also a Thai New Year festival during the hottest month of the year, which people would normally stay in with family and friends to celebrate the festival and inherit the culture of visiting their relatives in their hometowns. (See Appendix 3.5)
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Figure 3.2.2
However, to sustain the travelling business all year round, the research indicates that people in different regions have different travelling seasons. According to figure 3.2.1 from Local Alike statics, travellers from North America tend to take their holiday during June and July, which could be assumed that it is due to their public holidays. While in December, they prefer visiting family and relatives domestically for Christmas break and New Year’s Eve. On the other hands, the majority of Europeans travelling to Thailand in October to December and February to April, assuming that there are winter leave and spring break during the vocational period.
In December, there is a largest number of Asian people travelling to Thailand. It is believed to be the best time for overseas travelling owing to the festive activities. In addition, during March & April and September, Thailand also has a massive number of visitors due to their school breaks. For Thais, the highest number of people travelling with Local Alike is in January, which is a cooperate-customised trip. After New Year and a long holiday, people tend to be active and passionated in order to bring something new to life at the new beginning of the year. In contrast, Thai people prefer to travel aboard during November to December or stay in the city for the festive activities.
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Communication Channels & User Experiences As mentioned above, most of people who knew Local Alike have heard about it from family, relatives and friends. The study could be searated into three categories; people who have been on a travel with LA, people who have heard about LA but have not been yet, and people who barely heard about LA before. The illustrations below depicted the different journeys of Local Alike’s customer.
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People who have been on a travel with Local Alike
People who have been on a travel with Local Alike, mostly are foreigners, did an internship with Local Alike and were recommended by their closed relationship, have not had any problems contacting with LA. Additionally, there is no evidence of lacking of customer experience from the interview.
“They were very fast at answering my emails. Also, I think that the website and Facebook page are pretty clear, explains well what LA does, how to reach them. Lou Lobbens , France ” I did not book, I was there because I worked with them as an intern . I knew about them by my teacher first of all then I visited their website to know more about them, then their Facebook page and to finish, Youtube to see some videos” Youssef, France 40
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People who have heard about LA but have not been
The recent booking statistic of Local Alike” between 2013-2014 also shows that the online package through website had a small number of engagement. Also, the communication channels such as social media has been posted information consistently but the interviews indicated that it has not been very engaging. Especially for Thai people, they found it was quite difficult to get into the information. Even though, posts and pictures were regularly updating on their Facebook page, they felt that it was too confusing. (See Appendix 3.7)
Some of the customers also added that she was once wanted to know more about LA and would like to join their trip. Later on, she realised that it was a day trip at Chang Mai, which took 12 hours by bus from Bangkok; she would rather stay longer in Chang Mai or simply not to go.
“ I heard about this because of Noon, the co-founder, but I don’t actually know what is it about” Pitchya, Thailand “There are too many package tour coming up quite frequently but I have nowhere to start. I just blur it” Sirachon, Thailand From the study, people prefer to see photo of the location instead of graphically presented design. They would like to know what exactly the activities would be like and how challenged it would be.
“The design is lovely and well crafted, but it doesn’t reflect what is actually there for me to see” Natcha, Thailand
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Moreover, the packages on website is ambivalent. The interview form Korean traveller expanded that she wants to see all the package with in one whole page, the horizontal-sized package is confused her. It would be much easier for her to make a choice if she could see most of them together in order to compare the location, price and other activities. Also, there are limited packages to choose.
Figure 3.2.3 Previous Design
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People who barely heard about LA
The interview from people who shared the common interest on travelling community showed that most of them have not heard about it. However, they would like to join if they knew. The main issues was discovered that most of the participants had not mentioned about community development where this type of travelling could sustain the community in long-term. In addition, some thought that Local Alike is another normal travelling agent, which she preferred to travel without any help from agents.(See Appendix 3.8)
“I like to travel by myself both domestically and internationally. I hardly join the tour” Chonticha, Thailand “I just knew it from this interview, if I have an appropriate time I definitely would like to join. This is a type of travelling that I always interested in ”Zaigunee, Thailand
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3.3 Travelling & Technology Trend
The research was carried out by semi-structure, workshop and questionnaire with people aged between 22- 30 years old. The area of activities and questions are about their travelling journeys and behaviours in order to discover multiples touch-points from pre, during and post experiences. (See Appendix 3.9)
The study shows that technology becomes a crucial component of travelling, particularly for people in generation Y and under. They tend to have similar way of preparing and searching for information. Participants also added that social media have been a major influential factor inspiring them for travelling.
In contrast, Local Alike has a small number of photos, reviews and experience sharing across social medias, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and website. They do not have that many photos and reviews posted online from travellers who have joined the LA packages before whereas the potential customers wish to get more information from them.
“I often see places to go via my friends’ Facebook and I would like to go if I have time” Sirachon, Thailand
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Adding that travellers have different reliable sources for travelling advice and location ranking. For example, Pantip, it is the largest community for Thais in many categories including travel, Naver is Korean well-known community, and Red Scarf is famous among Chinese in UK. Even though, Tripadvisor is believed to be a global source of travelling where it is less likely to be relied on for Asian users due to the different culture of appreciation.
“I don’t trust Tripadvisor. I only trust Asian reviews because we tend to have similar travelling style especially food” Steven Chao, Taiwan Participants also concluded that peer-to-peer view is the most potential and influential source of information.
“ I normally ask my friends for advice because we have a similar way of travelling so I trusted his taste” Pitchaya, Thailand
However, there is a wide range between users who like sharing their photos including location and personal expression publicly while a number of people who do not like to spread the information concern on the overwhelming visitors especially at the hidden places.
“I keep photos on my computer so it is no need to keep my travelling memories online. I‘d rather keep it personally because I don’t want people to go to the same places as me” Champ, Thailand “I like to put location on my Instagram photo, it shows everywhere I’ve been to on the map” Praphavint, Thailand Apart from digital platform, the finding shows that some Thai people still prefer reading travelling books and visiting café on their leisure time.
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3.4 Social Impact & Engagement
Customers’ insight The rough prototype and semi-structured interview were carried out to compare same types of travelling packages with the different approaches and designs to raise awareness on CBT. Participants and volunteers, aged 22 to 28 years old, were observed during the activity and asked to state their opinions.
Travelling exchanging with social good is not new to volunteers scheme. To support that there are various kinds of travelling programmed to encourage young people to participate in “Voluntourism”. It can be defined as actions that rely on voluntary activity with the dominant entice to experience the world such as arts, culture, history and geography (Sampson, J., 2014).
The finding shows that there is a concern over the meaning of volunteer combined with tourism. (See Appendix 3.10)
“I think it is not new to me, and at present, there are lots of volunteer organization to run these kind of scheme. I have to say it can be an incentive to engage more people. However, in the long term, it might change the original meaning of volunteer. In that case, I prefer to volunteer first, then you can get the benefit like travelling”. Xue, Chinese volunteer On the other hand, most of the participants agreed that social good could be one of the factors to differentiate types of travelling offer. Nevertheless, the aim of travelling is considered to be the top priority.
“I don’t mind helping people if I could. But when I want to travel, I have to think of what I wanted to do as a priority” Paleeratana, Thailand “If there are two similar packages, I would probably choose the one that could benefit others, why wouldn’t I?” Praphavint, Thailand
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Figure 3.4.1 Working Process
Expert’s Perspective To gain a better understanding, the insightful information was collected from Ms.Patomporn Pongnin, Bo, a sustainable tourism initiator at Local Alike. The questions covered the community development and local funding. (See Appendix 3.11)
Local Alike together with community are creating CBT fund individually for each community. Every times the booking has been made through Local Alike, 5 percent profits from Local Alike and 5-10 percent profits from the community package tour go to CBT fund. They are currently working on the pilot CBT fund s with level 2 & 3 communities, which are Hloryo Village and Baan Suan Pa. The funds will be used regarding communities’ needs. Currently, there are four areas have been underpinning by the pilot CBT fund as following: 1. Managing waste disposal in the community 2.Building children’s playground within the community 3. Creating a community-learning centre. 4.Improving local infrastructure (eg. roadwork)
The areas covered above are the small projects, which need small amount of money ranged form 5,000 to 20,000 baht. However, for the bigger picture, they are aiming to provide scholarship for intelligence student, enhance trekking trail as well as support guide-training programme. Although there are funds to support the community, the development is proceeding gradually. One of the main reason is that they are less likely to be indebted even the fund is 0 percent interest loan. 47
Case Studies Crowdfunding & Engagement: Kickstater and Fairphone The study from Kickstater (see Appendix 3.12) shows that there are four main elements driving this crowdfunding ecology mentioned in Octalysis by Yu-Kai (2013) that could be applied to the new service ideation. (See Appendix 1.1) 1.Epic Meaning & Calling Backers or supports feel that they are doing something greater then themselves by funding one’s idea that would either help the entire community or provide what they believe is needed. 2. Development & Accomplishment Supporters who pledge towards a project become invested in seeing the project reach the goal. They are likely to reach to others for making the project realistically happen. The creator also sets the timeline for their project to incentivise funders. In turn, the supports would receive reward depends on the amount of pledge if the project could succeed. 3.Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback The project proceeds after the fund reached the goal. Creator is responsible for updating his progress while continuing manufacturing process. In this way, the creator can also ask for feedback from the backers as well as sharing their opinions toward the ongoing process.
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Figure 3.4.2 Kickstater
4.Scarcity & Impatience This progress bar and date countdown are also a crucial vehicle to drive the project to reach the goal more productively in limited timeframe.
“Choosing a shorter duration better positions a project for success” (Kickstater, 2014). Expanding from above, Fairphone (See Appendix 3.12) was used as a case study specifically on engaging consumers to raise awareness on social good and fairness treading, contributing to production process and acknowledging social value in more details. In correspondence with Paharia R. (2013) definition, engagement theory could be utilised into this case study and adapted to the current service.
Figure 3.4.3 Fairphone 1.A deep emotional connection with the brand Fairphone emphasised on the fairness that people who contribute to the project are sharing the same value and building a deep emotional connection with the brand. Moreover, a transparent operation through cost breaking down is also a core value along this goal-achieving path to create fairness and values.
“We’re leading by example to expand the market for ethical products and giving a voice to consumers that care about social values.” (Fairphone, 2013) 2.High levels of active participation Having a roadmap diagram on their website publicly help participants know exactly what the company are doing and where their money goes. It would unite company, consumers, and manufactures together and feel like they are all parts of the team. In addition, forum is also another important tool to engage with customer to help each other with the products question as well sharing their opinions toward the entire industry.
“We open up supply chains to understand how things are made and build stronger connections between people and their products.” (Fairphone, 2013) 3.A long-term relationship Apart from building the Fairphone community between customer to brand and customer to customer, the core identity of Fairphone is also extending the life cycle of their product and service. Consumers encourage purchasing spare parts and even fixing their own phones through their online tutorials. Consequently, their Take Back Program could build a long-term relationship with customers to ensure that their old phone is reused or recycled properly.
“We believe that our responsibility doesn’t end with sales”. (Fairphone, 2013)
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3.5 Research Conclusion
Target User
Raise awareness on CBT by Local Alike
The project will target travellers who have been involving with travelling community. These travellers would be separated into three categories, experienced traveller on ECO/sustainable tourism, travellers who have heard about it but never been to any, and travellers who are new to this area, in relation to their travelling behaviours and technology usages. Nevertheless, they share their interests on travelling and interacting with the online community while they can also be low-tech when travelling. They should be between 18 to 34 years old, which is the majority age of the travellers in both travelling community (Go!graph) and Local Alike, based on online survey and fanpage insights in 2014. They would be travellers who want to blend themselves with the nature as well as appreciate local knowledge, culture, and activities.
Most of the travellers are partially understand about community based tourism and Local Alike service concept. Although they may already have preconceptions of local travelling by low-condition facility, authentic food and generosity host, the impact of CBT is beyond their notions. To fully advocate, community development is still needed to be promoted and deepened collective awareness. Nevertheless, there is a concern on a wide range of travellers from extreme adventurers, to stress rebooting traveller. For some, they can be very practical due to their prior experience on travelling, while some consider that it would be too much effort and less likely to be a leisure travelling. To overcome this barrier, there should be levels of activities based on amount of effort and prior preparation. By doing so, it champions that new users would less likely to feel abandon. Additionally, most of the current users know about LA from their closed connections. Even though it is a niche tourism market, users can start building their own connections through their personal interest on travelling by simply adding collection of photos and adding friends to their circles.
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Reaching to Potential Target User and Decreasing Barriers
Improving Communication Channels and Accessible Travelling Experience
Time is always a major problem for people. In order to overcome this issue, it is crucial to emphasis on self-managing time and customisation. Since customers have different time of availability, they should be able to access the service conveniently at anytime on both website and application. This approach is not only practical for Thai customers but also refers to foreigner travellers in various regions whose travelling seasons are different.
The lack of photo sharing tactic of LA makes it incapable of expanding its service. In order to take the opportunity of technology and social media, there should be more incentive tools to invite travellers to be engaged with the service. For example, post experience hashtaging and photo sharing across online platforms could generate more contents to be seen publicly.
Actual activities and photography should be clearly presented. It is also essential to consider icons and symbols to represent the information. The fact that people like to read through information roughly makes information graphic more accessible and easier to communicate through simple visual.
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Emphasis on Social Value and Crowdfunding The case study from Kickstarter and Fairphone (See Appendix 3.12) indicated the impacts of user engagement through product and service. There are four key elements from the research that could be applied to Local Alike service, product and communication channels:
frequentlyin order to stimulate their roles of participation.The intensive can be seen from the progress bar of roadmap and indicate the current stage of the project. Not only user can advocate the project, but also become involved in spreading out in order to see the project achieving the goal.
1. Shared Social Value Users need to feel that they are doing something greater than themselves and being parts of the team revealing the poverty in rural area by travelling. Also, users can build deep emotional connection with the service and product through their social value concerns.
3.Exchanging Benefits In order to build a long-term relationship, local hosts and travellers should value a sense of exchanging benefits and fair-trading between service and cultural experience. It could also lead to high level of active participation among community, travellers, and company.
2. Short-term Developing Goal Users could help the community succeed their short-term goal, eg.roadwork improvement, and see the result
4.Empowering the Power of Feedback According to the travelling trend (Top 10 Trends Of The Next Generation Of Travel: The Millennials) Gen Y extremely obsessed with online review, satisfying ranking and peer-to-peer opinion. The lack of post experiences from former travellers decrease the confidence of new travellers. In order to do so, the feedback email should be sent out. Instead of formal survey, the email will encourage travellers to share their photos and experience through social media in relation to social good.
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4.0 Design Process
4.1 Concept Generation 4.2 Design Development 4.3 Branding 4.4 Prototype 4.5 User Testing and Feedback 4.6 Iterative Improvement
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4.1 Concept Generation
Approach As previously established in the Research Conclusion, raising awareness on community-based tourisms is a main factor while social responsibility, crowdfunding, and technology behaviour become supported elements to achieve the goal. It is important to engage travellers of all experienced levels to participate in this local experience while users have variety of using online platforms.
Following this direction, there are 2 concepts proposed different service ideas: the first approach was illustrated in Figure 4.1.1, which represents a framework of overall service in perspective; the final ideation was depicted on the second concept in Figure 4.1.2
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Figure 4.1.1 Concept 1
Concept 1 The idea stared with the identified problems on lacking post experience sharing and customers’ concern on reading reviews. Along with the main issues of CBT awareness, the project idea was to create a crossplatform service. Social impact and CBT awareness can emerge from a simple act as giving and taking. Users can realise the power of giving by sending travelling package as a gift to their closed friends and family as it would become more affective when the person actually engage to that gift. Besides, if the gift receiver goes for a trip with Local Alike and immerses himself to the culture, environments, and native people. After his trip, there is a mission for him to revisit the service and provide his experience and photos as a review. If he chooses not to do a review, the service would turn into donation option. This also looks into the barrier of time constrain and social good. While some might want to advocate local communities but there is a time limitation. Users can purchase travelling gift and send it to someone on a special occasion such as graduation or birthday.
Although the concept of starting by doing simple act and doing experience review as a commitment might have some potential in large perspective, however, there is a limitation that most of Thai users are unfamiliar with doing online payment due to the concern over personal confidential and credit card issues. Also, such action would be rarely happening and might cause to a fragmented service. Key areas • Engaging users to generate more reviews and content across online platform. •
Reducing the barriers of time constraint by focusing on contributing social impact exchanging with travelling experience.
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Sending a package gifts to closed friends and family as a simple act of giving. Then, it could become social phenomenon by passing on social responsibility forward to the communities.
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Figure 4.1.2 Concept 2 Concept 2 In this approach outlined in Figure 4.1.2, the service cover areas on raising CBT awareness, time constraint, sharing photo, and posting experience reviews. By focusing on community development, it is a major change to the service in terms of identifies itself from other travelling agencies. Local Alike takes social responsibility as a priority, which is in need to be announced.
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The idea was to engage users who already interested in travelling and local experience. Most of travellers would have their priority on travelling while social responsibility would be a second layer. Nonetheless, users would learn more about CBT concept within website service as a main touch-point. Information and travel description are provided in crowndfunding and trading experience way of communication under community benefits. Travellers would see provided activities from each community exchanging with local developing funding. Each community has their own CBT fund and project progress available to access on the service. There is also a customisation that users can suggest their preferred date and trip by adding information on the service as it would benefit customers to be notified when details are matched with their interests. Collected data would
also be benefit for organisation to launch others highlighted activities to meet the demands. To reduce total price for group booking, traveller cloud invite more friends to join, as the information would send across social media and technology devices. While photo sharing and reviews would be asked by email from customer feedbacks. Key area • Emphasis on highlighting trading benefits between travelling experience and communities development under CBT concept •
Focus on community development progress and funding
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Reducing the barriers of time constraint by personal customisation
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Engaging cross-platform sharing contents with wide range of users 57
4.2 Design Development
Design Methods
Personas
A variety of design methods were collected in the next section to illustrate the project process of concept two, online platform emphasis on social value and crowdfunding. The idea of this service design was developed into solid tangible proposal with the online platform as a touch-point. The methods documented in this chapter were utilised into prototype with different sketched and rough testing which shown in the following chapter.
Three types of personas were created to capture the group of people that the service concept was targeting. As previously finding in Chapter 3, there are wide ranges of potential targets: experienced traveller, semiexperienced traveller and non-experienced traveller. Although, chosen social group would play a different role in the service as a whole, they are essential components to complete the entire service experience. They would also share similar characteristic as following.
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Between 18-35 years of age
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Born with non-digital environment but grown up and familiar with digital tools
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Travel is not mainly leisure but to explore other parts of the world
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Spend their vacation on travelling domestically more than 5 times a year
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Eager on learning new things with empathy heart and appreciate different cultures
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Believe in the sense of travelling locally to get to know people and their lifestyle
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Friendly, flexible and have a social responsibility mind
Non-experienced Traveller
Tide, 24 yrs
Som, 19 yrs
Farh, 21 yrs
Modest, Sensible, Creative
Chatty, Bright, Charming
Amicable, Passionate, Organised
Documentary film Student
Tourism and hospitality Student
Graphic Design Student
Skateboarding
Sketching and drawing
Watching moives & series
Watching Youtube is my thing
Instagram influencer
Keeping her movie collections online
I am not a morning person
I love Korean superstars
Read travelling reviews online
I listen to music when I am travelling
I like shopping with my girlfriends
Obsess on organising computer files
Semi-experienced Traveller
Fern, 26 yrs
Petch, 24 yrs
Ooy, 27 yrs
Neat, Friendly, Sympathetic
Optimist, Bubbly, Self-seeker
Reliable, Thoughtful, Courage
Ministry of Social Welfare
Freelancer
NGO Co-Founder
Experimental Cooking
Part-time singer
Handcrafts
Visiting cafe and restaurant
Enjoy doing lots of activities
Grow organic farm
Vegetarian
Prefer to eat organic food
I eat everthing
My dad has a farm up North
I love green travelling!
I am doing a volunteer as well
Experienced Traveller
Tan, 29 yrs
Rak, 31 yrs
Jurai, 34 yrs
Practical, Faithful, Witty
Energetic, Adventurous, Dynamic
Clam, Wise, Patient
Engineer
Product Designer
Architecture lectures
Photographer
Musician
Writer
Collecting stones from everywhere
Watching football and drinking
Cycling in country side
Allergic to shrmp but love cooking
Don’t eat pork (religious)
Enjoy local and spicy foods
I enjoy having slow-life...
I like hiking and camping with friends
I love peace and quite sometimes
Figure 4.2.1 Personas
By creating these personas, it helped imagine certain type of characteristic and behaviour to create storyboard and scenario in correspond to their needs. Through out concept development, all of the components were used to support approaches of solving identified problems.
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Data Analysis : Figure 4.2.2
Data collected from Local Alike annual sales revealed useful insight on highs and lows of travelling seasons as well as nationality travelling trends.
Problems Identify : Figure 4.2.3
Various issues noticed from observation are outlined and categorised into external and internal problems which provide a clear vision for project scoping.
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Affinity Diagram of Ideas : Figure 4.2.4
Website Function Identify : Figure 4.2.5
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Website Development The chosen idea was developed into web designs, which were made in rough paper. The website structure was drawn out as a whole picture where as the details were listed below in each page. The purpose of this website was to enhance the awareness of communities-based tourism and social impact on crowdfunidng in order to engage more travellers. It was improved by illustrating funding bar in exchange with activities provided for travellers in a sense of travel treading between travellers and hosts. The website also expected to be social hub where people could explore the trips as well as see community development by the roadmap progress bar.
Website Architecture-Draft: Figure 4.2.6
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Website Architecture : Figure 4.2.7
Home/ To do -Village Trip -Day Trip -Activities -Customised
Roadmap -Communities Progress
We/Local Alike -Service Concept -How do we sustain -Team -Press -Partnership
#Localalike -Photo Hashtag -Friends’ Connection
They/Village -How they create trips
Store
Us/Travller&Locals -Tips & Tricks
Register/Sign-in
-Standrad Gift -Seasonal Gift
Website Prototype : Figure 4.2.8
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4.3 Branding
New Version
Brand improvement The branding of the service was rebranded from the original version. The new design was to improve the brand recognition for initial name as “LA� from Local Alike and to change the typography for a better reading. The brand strategy proposed a sense of joyful, rustic, and friendly as to illustrate warm welcoming from the local hosts.
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Old Version
4.4 Prototype
Rough Prototype : Figure 4.2.8 The initial idea of this prototype was to observe the feedback and potential of travelling package. There are two main designs of packages which contains exact information: original version is the one that imitated the existed package of Local Alike whereas another one is introducing new idea with activities bar and funding progress. The essential functions focusing on funding and roadmap bars were studies from case studies (Kickstater and Fairphone) and selected on post-it. As the research was carried out, the conclusion suggests that participants preferred to use new design approach as it spent less time to understand as well as it could benefit local communities. They were made roughly to acquire quick users feedback, which helped to refine the design.
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66
67
4.5 User Testing &Feedback
Users’ Feedback A walkthrough of service was using physical touch-point (Localalike website) with uninitiated users to observe user interactions and performance as well as their service assumption through customer journey. Additionally, the prototype was sent out to existed Local Alike users and former users who had done the co-design tool session. After personal exploration, interviewees were then asked for feedback and understanding. Four in-dept user-testing sessions were held to collect preliminary results. In the meantime, other users gave feedback by email and Facebook. (Please refer to Appendix 4.1 for the details on the User Testing and Feedback Video Generally, the service received positive comments. Participants expressed interests on its aesthetic and contents. Added that, the design, colours, layout, and symbols really attract young generation. Especially, the use of icons and symbols that represents its meaning and makes the contents more accessible, simply to digest and suitable for people who do not like reading lots of information. Moreover, most of them have an instant understanding about service concept in general. To be specific, they perceived social impact impression through Roadmap and Funding. For people who have less experience in design might take more time to understand the service. Meanwhile, design-related users find it is convenience and practical to engage with this local experience. Each user has different approach on exploring the website. However, They shared the common journey that the activities and funding stages caught their attention from price and rating. Some users agreed 68
that they spent more time considering about activities and experience that they would gain rather than thinking about price. Although they admitted that funding and social impact purpose might not be the priority to access this website, it encourages them to get involved in social impact activities and might even come back for donation if they do not have time to join the activities.
Nevertheless, there are some areas to be concerned on the language used. To illustrate the point, there is confusion between Activities and Roadmap functions, which seems to be repeated to the users. The difference is that Activities is representing things that travellers are going to do while roadmap indicates community -developing progress. In other word, Roadmap is how locals spend the benefit from CBT tourism to develop their communities. Another area is that “we are here” and star goal are slightly ambivalent due to common understanding that star usually points where we are on the map. There are comments that the first impression and service concept would be extremely affective and meaningful if there is a strong statement or bold concept line of the website main page. For instance, “ This travelling is beyond regular, it is extraordinary life-changing for us. To make it even better, there is suggestion that the each icon of progress stage on Roadmap should link to the photo gallery showing their working process. In addition, crowdfunding is quite a rare concept for Thai users. It should be improved in some areas such as adding “current money” on the funding bar to differentiate between goals and current funding.
Local Alike Satisfaction Overall, there are positive feedbacks on the service in terms of function and communicated CBT concept. The new layout is user friendly as it saves time for scrolling down and goes straight to the travelling package options. The beauty of information graphic and simple icons reflects the aesthetic of communication as they give very basic information needed. Moreover, the roadmap option that has been introduced received a very positive feedback, as they could emphasis on funding collaboration from all parties. Although Idea of hashtaging is similar to what they wanted to do, the prototype can illustrate simplicity of web structure that allows users to access website and photos more easily. However, there are a few issues that need to develop and decide. For instance, categorise of trips are not precise and misunderstood. They needed to be changed, as there are also more products that should to be highlighted.
Apparently, there are some potential functions that Local Alike would like to adopt and apply to their existing website as they seem to bring a better recognition of CBT. Additionally, CBT funding is the combination of collaboration between villagers’ profits, Local Alike’s profits and some extra donation. They also suggested that the CBT funding tab could be implemented to indicate the sources of money and where it comes from in order to show transparency of the project development. They also added that there is a need to differentiate themselves as being a real-time booking platform not a general travel agency. (See Appendix 4.2) 69
4.6 Iterative Improvement
Where all your money goes?
Who benefits from this?
Local Alike has committed to minimise negative environment and cultural impacts from tourism. We try our best to provide positive experiences for both sides, the locals and travellers. These are basic suggestions
Local Alike has committed to minimise negative environment and cultural impacts from tourism. We try our best to provide positive experiences for both sides, the locals and travellers. These are basic suggestions
67% 125
98,500
We are a social enterprise which provides you an authentic experience in community-based tourism. With this idea, we believe that our travel can help to preserve local culture and generate income to the communities. What’s more? Our tourists also gain valuable experience from exposing themselves to different cultures in the village. The connection of people from different places will at last lead to a truly sustainable society as we always say that meaningful experience for travelers and locals “alike”.
180,000
Travellers Current
Goal
Responsible & Safety Travel
Physical Demands
Hill Tribe Alike
Local Alike has committed to minimise negative environment and cultural impacts from tourism. We try our best to provide positive experiences for both sides, the locals and travellers. These are basic suggestions
Local Alike has committed to minimise negative environment and cultural impacts from tourism. We try our best to provide positive experiences for both sides, the locals and travellers. These are basic suggestions
Local Alike has committed to minimise negative environment and cultural impacts from tourism. We try our best to provide positive experiences for both sides, the locals and travellers. These are basic suggestions
The King The royal family is deeply respected and loved. Don’t speak ill of them
Pleas kindly respect the community’s traditions and follow their simple guideline to make your stay enjoyable.
Level 1 Pleas kindly respect the community’s traditions and follow their simple guideline to make your stay enjoyable.
Level 1 Pleas kindly respect the community’s traditions and follow their simple guideline to make your stay enjoyable.
Just as you would not like to have stranger come up to you and take a picture of you without asking, neither do the locals, Please ask before taking pictures.
Level 2 Just as you would not like to have stranger come up to you and take a picture of you without asking, neither do the locals, Please ask before aking pictures.
Level 2 Just as you would not like to have stranger come up to you and take a picture of you without asking, neither do the locals, Please ask before aking pictures.
If you trekking or doing adventrous activities, please follow the rail or local instructions for your own safety and collect nothing but memory
Level 3 If you trekking or doing adventrous activities, please follow the local instructions for your own safety and collect nothing but memory
Level 3 If you trekking or doing adventrous activities, please follow the local instructions for your own safety and collect nothing but memory
No gambling or illegal items please.
Level 4 No gambling or illegal items please.
Level 4 No gambling or illegal items please.
Always remove your shoes or footwear before entering a temple, someone’s home and even some shops The Feet Do’t point your feet at a Buddha image or a monk Wai (Put your hands together at your chest) Sa was dee = Hello more polite with Rub (men) ; Ka (Women)
Funded
Local Alike is a community-based tourism platform connecting travelers around the world with meaningful and sustainable experiences.
Smile Thailand is known as land of smiles, and the smile forms an important part of their culture and greeting
Thailand Only
Emergency Contacts No gambling or illegal items please. Local Alike Crews Somas 083-0765593 Noon 097-1254667 Pat 086-5674839 Police Station Hotline 191 Health Centre Health Promoting Hosipital of Tambon Laolio +66 53-918541 Hospital Mae Fahluang University Hospital +66-5391-7684 Shanghai Hospital +66-5371-13000
Thailand Only Smile Thailand is known as land of smiles, and the smile forms an important part of their culture and greeting Wai (Put your hands together at your chest) Sa was dee = Hello more polite with Rub (men) ; Ka (Women) The Feet Do’t point your feet at a Buddha image or a monk Always remove your shoes or footwear before entering a temple, someone’s home and even some shops
If you trekking or doing adventrous activities, please follow the rail or local instructions for your own safety and collect nothing but memory Just as you would not like to have stranger come up to you and take a picture of you without asking, neither do the locals, Please ask before taking pictures. Pleas kindly respect the community’s traditions and follow their simple guideline to make your stay enjoyable. Local Alike has committed to minimise negative environment and cultural impacts from tourism. We try our best to provide positive experiences for both sides, the locals and travellers. These are basic suggestions
Language
The King The royal family is deeply respected and loved. Don’t speak ill of them
Useful Phrase Naam Chok Dee Sanaam Bin Ron Nao Hong Naam Naam Keng Nit Noi Yai Mak Pai Ex. Ron Mak It’s very hot
Useful Phrase Water Good Luck Airport Hot Cold Toilet Ice Small - Not Much - A Little Bit Large Very Go
Pai Hong Naam I’m going to toilet
Sawatdee (Krub/kah) Sabai Dee Ru (Krub/kah) Sabai Dee (Krub/kah) Khob Khun (Kup/kaa) Chai Mai Chai Dai Mai Dai Mai Pen Rai
Hello How Are You? Fine Thank You Yes No (You/ I) Can Can Not Never Mind (Handy All Purpose Phrase To Express The Thai Go-with-the-flow Attitude)
Pood Thai Mai Dai Kow Jai Mai Mai Kow Jai
I Can Not Speak Thai Do You Understand? I Do Not Understand
Handbook : Figure 4.6.1 The proposing handbook is created from the feedback on physical experiece service that there should be another triggers targeting non-digital users as another way to know the existing of the service. The handbook is given by the locals at each community. It is provided useful infomation such as common CBT and Local Alike service concept, Responsible & Safety Travel, Tribes Infomation, Funding and Transparency, Thai Phrase, Emergency Contacts, Thailand Only. Moreover, at the front and back of the handbook are detachable postcards, which can be sent out to family and friends as a memories and expanding channel.
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5.0 Design Outcome
5.1 Touch-points 5.2 User Journey 5.3 Service Map 5.4 Service Blueprint 5.5 Business Model Canvas 5.6 Stakeholder Map
71
5.1 Touch-points
Figure 5.1.1 Website Service Website is designed to be a main touch-point to serve the technology trend. The online platform allows users to explore many different types of local activities under the concept of community-based tourism. In the meantime, service also acknowledges users on social impact in exchanging with travelling experience. Users are encouraged to participate in several ways such as booking online, sharing crowdfunding trips, hashtaging pictures, or connecting with others as another online platform. www.mintuiwon.wix.com/localalike
Application Tool It is designed to be minor touch-point as user can customised their personal information and interest for the forthcoming trip. It also notifies users to revisit the application when there is something matched their interests. Figure 5.1.2 72
Figure 5.1.3 73
5.2 User Journey
74
www.vimeo.com/112119836
75
5.3 Service Map
Pre Service
Person who has heard but never been
Digital Experience
Smartphone
#localalike
my friends
NotiďŹ cation Photos Experienced Traveller
22-24
App
Nov
My available date
#localalike
Social Media
Travelling Packages
Tag Friends
Sign-in / Log-in
OR Gallery Page
Person who barely know nothing
2 Days
Computer Vdo Service Concept
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Travelling Packages
Check in/out date
To
Physical Experience
Post Service
Transportation Narural Resources
Add more friends
App
Take Photos
Handbook & Postcard Indigenous Community
Feedback E-mail
Photos
Social Media
Person(s)
#localalike Authentic Food
Tag Friends Website
otal amount Crafted Products my friends
#localalike
Figure 5.3.1
77
5.4 Service Blueprint
Pre-Service Join
See photos from social media by friends and friends’ tagging
Enter website or Application
Explore locations & name of places through photos details
Explore activities & more photos
Users
User Actions
Aware
Make reservation & invite friends to join
Digital Touchpoint
Front Stage
Physical Touchpoint
Onstage Actions Local Alike & Local Hosts
Create travelling package & VDO service concept Promoting through travelling community online
Back Stage
Visible line
Internal Process Local Alike & Local Hosts
Design and develop website & application Create more packages with other communities
Make reservation for travellers Prepare accomodation & itinerary
Plan and develop community projects
External Process (Ecosystem)
Support Processes
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Reservation system
Service First Use
Post-Service Continue
Leave Share experience & photos reviews
Visit local community
Receive feedback email
Recieve local handbook & postcard
Send postcard to friends
Record experience
Word of mouth
Local greeting
Send feedback email
Constainly update social media & travelling packages
Provide hospitality & activities
Introduce customised function & application
Share photos & customers’ reviews
Manage activities & local guide
Managing photo reviews
Preparing food
Contact with locals for feedback
Recieve feedback & continue improving service & communication channels
Give handbook & postcard
Positive additure toward travelling locally Enthusiastically support the service & local community Want to comeback & customise details for next coming trip
Travelling seasons Weather Hashtaging, locaotion & photo system
Generate contents & develop entire system
Figure 5.4.1 79
5.5 Business Model Canvas
Key Partners Thailand Community based Tourism Institute (CBT-I) Change Ventures (investor) Change Fusion
Key Activities Reduce barriers for getiing involving in CBT and social responsibility by simply travel and raise awarness Dierentciate itself from other travel agents
AIS for technology and innovation supports
Key Resources Graphic designer creating UX design and identity
Value Propositions Value proposition raising awarness on CBT Increase more visitors Decreas potiential customer’s barries Create positive attitude towrd social responsibility Making travelling meannightful and authentic experiences
Programer developing application Participation from villegers and travellers
Cost Structure Fixed costs for maintaning the social enterprise (Salaries, rents, utilies) Marketing and advertising costs Transportation and trip organising with the communities budgets CBT Funds (5-10% from proďŹ ts)
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Customer Relationships
Having Loca Alik community (Tric forum online) Connecting with who shared sam travelling online
Members enjoy customised trav
Channels
Social media (facebook, insta pinterest) Word of mouth Invite friends by and website
Revenue Stream
Domestice a Varitety of tr Become CBT Collaborating
Value Propositions Value proposition raising awarness on CBT Increase more visitors Decreas potiential customer’s barries Create positive attitude towrd social responsibility Making travelling meannightful and authentic experiences
nts, utilies)
dgets
Customer Relationships
Customer Segments
Having Loca Alike community (Tricks & tips forum online) Connecting with friends who shared same type of travelling online
Between 18-35 years old
Members enjoy customised travelling date
Travel is not mainly leisure but to explore other parts of the world
Channels Social media (facebook, instagram, pinterest) Word of mouth Invite friends by email and website
Born with non-digital environment but grown up and familiar with digital tools
Spend their vacation on travelling domestically more than 5 times a year Eager on learning new things with empathy heart and appreciate dierent cultures Friendly, exible and have a social responsibility mind
Revenue Streams Domestice and international travellers Varitety of trips per months and cooperate customised trip Become CBT consultancy, lecturer and guest speaker Collaborating with partnerships
Figure 5.5.1
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5.6 Stakeholder Map
Foreigners Visitors
New
Semi-Experienced ri Experienced Corporate Tour
Travellers
Thai travellers
Tourism Authority of Thailand Community Guides
Community leader
Investors & Partners
Local supports
Community Neighbors Local shops & sellers
Figure 5.6.1
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6.0 Project Conclusion
6.1 Evaluation 6.2 Conclusions and Recommendations 6.3 Limitation 6.4 Further Development
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6.1 Evaluation
The outcome of this project is a service implementation with wider functions and structure provided. The strength of this service responses the key area on raising awareness on CBT rather than just being another travelling platform. It also challenges the new users to engage with the entire service experience as being a part of social responsibility along with an enhancement service into the digital edge.
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The ultimate goal of the project is to increase more travellers to experience local communities in remote area as well as play a crucial role to support the developing project, which would be beyond purely travelling. This project is to challenge people who are already interested in local experience to learn more about CBT, it does not aim to attract mass tourists to push their steps forward into this niche market area. Therefore, the project outputs do succeed in differentiate itself from other travelling agencies by asking people to not only think about what they would gain from this experience but also encourage them think about how they can support the communities by their interests.
The weakness of this outcome is to provide a fully functional website with the booking platform and how the new users learn more about Local Alike itself. As some informal feedbacks suggested, there should rather be a video concept to illustrate an initial service of Local Alike. However, due to the time constrain and location, it was unable to produce a motion visual as it should be well demonstrated a website service. There was also a feedback on “during service with community� that there should be another triggers targeting non-digital users as another way to know the existing of the service. In order to develop this area, it is important to get in touch with each community as they provide different distinctive characteristics and products. At the same time, CBT regulation based on community’s satisfaction, it would be better to find the insight from them and work toward conclusion together as the information is not available online.
Future refinement of the website could help user find their ways to explore around the service and original goal. It could also become a community and real time platform where there are interaction among travellers to travellers, traveller to company, and way to include non-digital locals to become a part of the service. The prototype website is used as visual tool to communicate the service concept only. However, to further test and refine the complete service experience, it is important to develop a fully digital platform as the website is the main communication channel of the service.
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6.2 Conclusions & Recommendations
The beginning of the project started by defining to true meaning of local experience together with personal experiences and observations. It led to an alternative form of voyage which focusing on Community’s benefits or known as community- based tourism. It is being carry out by Local Alike who providing the initial service concept. As exploring the service, there were discovered issues.
The service proposed a new form of providing travelling packages with underpinning of social responsibility and trading benefits through travelling experience. By doing so, information and details about travelling package are graphically presented as a faster way to communicate with customers. This resulting in how users could distinguish the difference between Local Alike and other agencies. Such awareness was already proved within the user-feedback collected for the project.
On early stage, problems were identified on the area of how to engage more customers. By conducting interviews on existing customers and potential users, the finding indicated the importance of raining awareness, which needed to be addressed as a way to reduce barriers for customers. Additionally, the way of promoting travel packages is too descriptive and even seems like educational trip for some. To addressing both areas, the area of research was expanded to study on how technology and tourism are related as the study indicated the potential users are tech-savvy. One of the essential aspects among generation Y travelling is the idea of supporting social responsibility. With this dominant characteristic, they championed to contribute to the community and the world as a whole. By prompting travellers to use their characteristic strengths, the service development led to online platform implementation, which included social media and entire user experience.
To conclude, the final approach of this project started domestically with a small specific target group with an attempt to be a pilot research. With the belief at the very beginning, it could create a change and a bigger impact for the communities as a whole. However, this initial service concept could be practically applied and adopted to a bigger challenge for CBT international market as well as other social-respond challenges.
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6.3 Limitation
This project was a part of the study, which had time constraint and location limitation. It was conducting solely in UK while the focus of this project based in Thailand. By doing this project, there was a lack of the fundamental research since there were difficulties to have a real local experience during the dissertation period. Although, the collaboration with Local Alike was beneficial in terms of insights gathering, it was difficult on contribution due to the time zone and their workloads resulting in repetitive working process since they also currently worked on developing their website. It would be great if the team could take part in this project and participate in developing process, particularly in problems identifying, brainstorming and, excruciation as it would also benefit their organisation as well. In addition, the feedback from organisation indicated that they see the potential of some functions created in this project and they keen on adopting it on the current service as some have already appeared on their website.
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6.4 Further Development
This project could become an absolute real-time service if the following areas would have developed: •
Pre-departure handbook could be sent out by email or letter to the travellers after they make a payment, which consists of what to prepare and what are the appropriate things to do in terms of culture differences regarding to CBT concepts.
•
Guestbook could be provided for visitors who prefer to share a real-time experience by hand writing.
•
Users can engage on building local tricks and trips that they have learnt from their travel experiences on this online platform while interacting with locals through normal phone via SMS or text massages.
•
Users can invite friends to join in their connection or their trips. By doing so, both users would receive points to redeem for next trip or even donate directly to the communities. The donation can bring on a social impact similar to ice bucket challenge, for example.
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•
Locals would have more channels to promote their handcrafted products on online stores and it could be made-to-order products for special occasions.
•
For a bigger approach, the project could reposition from being an outside consultancy to embedded competency as to build on a toolkit for Local Alike contributing to communities regarding the engagement with local travelling packages in order to support developing projects.
7.0 Supporting Materials
Bibliography & Appendices
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Bibliography
Amazing-thailand.com, (n.d.). Amazing Thailand Travel and Tourism Guide. [online] Available at: http://www.amazing-thailand.com/ [Accessed 5 Oct. 2014]. Anstrand, M. (2006). Environment and development in the South 20p. Sodertorns Hogskola University. Armstrong, Avery Denise; Hou Janet Ying; Malvar, Alicia S.; Mclean, Taylor Marie and Pestiaux, Julien. 2003. Community-Based Ecotourism. Retrieved December 18, 2008 from http://www2.dnr.cornell.edu/saw44/NTRES431 / Products/Fall%202003/Module1/CBEessay.pdf Brass, J.L. (1996). Community tourism assessment handbook. Corvallis, OR: Western Rural Development Center. Brohman, J, (1996) New Directions in Tourism for the Third World, Annals of Tourism Research, 23(1):48-70:60 Cbt-i.org, (n.d.). . [online] Available at: http://www.cbt-i.org [Accessed 4 Sep. 2014]. Chou, Y. (2014). Gamification-examples: what is gamification. [online] yukaichou. Available at: Yu-kai Chou, http:// www.yukaichou.com/gamification-examples/what-is-gamification/#.VFAmwousW6w [Accessed 28 Sep. 2014]. Connell, D. (1997) Participatory development: An approach sensitive to class and gender. Development in Practice 7 (3), 248–259. Crang, M., 2006. Circulation and emplacement: the hollowed-out performance of tourism. In: Minca, C., Oakes, T. (Eds.), Travels in Paradox. Remapping Tourism. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., Oxford, pp. 47–64. Fairphone, (n.d.). [online] Available at: http://Fairphone.com [Accessed 8 Oct. 2014]. Fairtrade.org.uk, (2014). The difference that Fairtrade makes. [online] Available at: http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/en/ what-is-fairtrade/the-impact-of-our-work/the-difference-that-fairtrade-makes [Accessed 5 Oct. 2014]. Gasco J.́na,b∗ aUniversitat Oberta de Catalunya – UOC, Barcelona, Spain; bAccio ́ per un Turisme Responsible (2011), The limitations of community-based tourism as an instrument of development cooperation: the value of the Social Vocation of the Territory concept 90
Guidelines for community-based ecotourism development. (2001). WWF International. Halstead, Lynn. 2003. Making Community-Based Tourism Work: An Assessment of Factors Contributing to Successful Community-Owned Tourism Development in Caprivi, Namibia. DEA Research Discussion Paper. Tamsin Savage., eds. 60 (July): 1-35. Windhoek: Ministry of Environment and Tourism, Namibia. H.L. Sin, C. Minca / Geoforum 51 (2014) 96–106 , Touring responsibility: The trouble with ‘going local’ in community-based tourism in Thailand Khanal, Bhoj and Babar, Jan Tahir. 2007. Community Based Ecotourism for Sustainable Tourism Development in the Mekong Region. Policy Brief. 1: 1-8. Kickstater.com, (n.d.). [online] Available at: http://www.kickstater.com [Accessed 8 Oct. 2014]. Krippendorf, J., 1987. The Holiday Makers. Butterworth Heinemann, Oxford. Leksakundilok, A. (2004). Community Participation in Ecotourism Development in Thailand. Doctoral Thesis, University of Sydney. localalike, (2012). | Local Alike. [online] Available at: http://www.localalike.com [Accessed 5 Aug. 2014]. Loyalty 3.0: How to Revolutionize Customer and Employee Engagement with Big Data and Gamification (1st ed.)2014 2 Rajat Paharia Loyalty 3.0: How to Revolutionize Customer and Employee Engagement with Big Data and Gamification (1st ed.) New York, NY McGraw-Hill Education 2013 283 pp. -13:978-0-07-181-337-2 $27.00. (2014). Journal of Consumer Marketing, 31(1), pp.86-87. Mae-kampong.com, (n.d.). mae-kampong.com. [online] Available at: http://www.mae-kampong.com/ [Accessed 1 Oct. 2014]. Minca, C., Oakes, T., 2006. Introduction: travelling paradoxes. In: Minca, C., Oakes, T. (Eds.), Travels in Paradox. Remapping Tourism. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc., Oxford, pp. 1–21.
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Minca, C., Oakes, T., 2011. Real Tourism: Practice, Care, and Politics in Contemporary Travel Culture, Contemporary Geographies of Leisure, Tourism and Mobility. Routledge, London. Mountain Institute. 2000. Community-Based Tourism for Conservation and Development: A Resource Kit. Washington: The Mountain Institute. Novelli, M. (2005). Niche Tourism Contemporary issues, trends and cases. PhD. University of Brighton. Sampson, J. (2014). What is VolunTourism?. [online] Responsibletravelreport.com. Available at: http://www.responsibletravelreport.com/component/content/article/11-green-travelers/2633-voluntourism [Accessed 11 Nov. 2014]. Office of Tourism Development (OTD). 2008. Community-Based Tourism Network Database. Responsible Ecological Social Tours (REST). 2003. Community-Based Tourism Handbook. Bangkok:CHARM. Satarat, N. (2010). Sustainable Management of Community-Based Tourism in Thailand. pp.8-22. Staywyse, 2012.Youth travel – The next BIG THING at ITB Berlin 2012. The Association of Youth Travel Accommodation. Available at http://staywyse.org/2012/03/09/youth-travel-the- next-big-thing-at-itb-berlin-2012/ Thailandultimatemoment.com, (2014). Thailand Ultimate Moment – Voluntourism in Thailand | Volunteer Vacation to Thailand. [online] Available at: http://www.thailandultimatemoment.com/ [Accessed 5 Sep. 2014]. the Guardian, (2012). How to raise money for charity the tech-savvy way. [online] Available at: http://www. theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2012/jul/26/raise-money-tech-savvy-apps [Accessed 5 Oct. 2014]. Y. Lee, T. (2013). TOP 10 TRENDS OF THE NEXT GENERATION OF TRAVEL: THE MILLENNIALS. YouTube, (n.d.). Gamification to improve our world: Yu-kai Chou at TEDxLausanne. [online] Available at: https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5Qjuegtiyc [Accessed 28 Sep. 2014].
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Appendices
Appendix1.1 The 8 Core Drives of Gamification 1) Epic Meaning & Calling Epic Meaning & Calling is the Core Drive where a user feels that he is doing something greater than himself or he was “chosen” to do something. A symptom of this is a user that devotes a lot of his time to maintaining a forum or helping to create things for the entire community.
2) Development & Accomplishment Development & Accomplishment is the internal drive of making progress, developing skills, and eventually overcoming challenges. The challenge is very important, as a badge or trophy without a challenge is meaningless. It could come as a short-term goal to make the users have the sense of accomplishment. This is also the core drive that is the easiest to design for and it is where most of the PBLs: points, badges, leaderboards mostly focus on.
5) Social Influence & Relatedness This drive incorporates all the social elements that drive people, including: mentorship, acceptance, social responses, companionship, as well as competition and envy. It basically means that what you do based on what other says. For instance, when people see someone or influencer owns something new or exclusive, they are most likely driven to reach it. Also, it includes the sense of relationship that reminds people of something in particular such as places, events, and people.
6) Scarcity & Impatience This is the drive of wanting something because you can’t have it now. The uses of countdown and progress bar also motivate people to create the team power to achieve something together. Moreover, the fact that people can’t get something right now motivates them to think about it all day long.
3) Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback is when users are engaged a creative process where they have to repeatedly resolve and try different combinations. People not only need ways to express their creativity, but they need to be able to see the results of their creativity, receive feedback, and respond in turn.
7) Unpredictability & Curiosity This core drive is a feeling of wanting to know what will happen next. When people do not know what is going to happen, their curiosity are more likely to driven their braind and thought to think about it. Moreover, this drive is also the primary principle behind gambling addiction.
4) Ownership & Possession This is the drive where users are motivated because they feel like they own something. When a player feels ownership, he innately wants to make what he owns better and own even more. Also, if a person spends a lot of time to customize his profile, he automatically feels more ownership towards it too. Finally, this is also the core drive that makes collecting stamps or puzzle pieces fun.
8) Loss & Avoidance This core drive is based upon the fear of something negative will happen. Also, It could lead to an instant act because people would have the fear of missing the opportunity forever.
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Appendices
Appendix 3.1
Appendix 3.2
How does Local Alike earn money and self-sustain as a social enterprise?
How can Local Alike ensure that tourism does not degrade traditions and culture in local communities?
Local Alike earns income by charging an additional 1520% from the total price of their services and product sales. By collaborating with the communities, their packaged tours and selected products are creative and well prepared.
Local Alike is well aware of this concern and works hard to ensure that it won’t happen. They work with relatively strong communities where their leaders are willing to welcome and share their way of life with travellers. At the same time, these leaders and villagers prepare to protect their local identity and environment by limiting the number of tourists and taking other precautions. Seeing this immunity, they are sure that their service tourism will not harm the communities at all. Local Alike always coordinates with these communities on the development issues.
Price and Cost To ensure that the service is not taking advantage of the communities, Local Alike asks each community to clarify their expenses for providing each visit and assure that the budget is well self-sustained. Then, the package is added the service cost from Local Alike. This could be depicted that the community would receive 100 percent from their hosting.
They create “community guidelines” which will be given to the travellers before their departure. This material will help our tourists to adapt easily to the local way of life and to understand local people’s cultures.
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One of our main concepts is to set up the “carrying capacity” for each community to make sure that authentic way of life is protected. They work with CBT-I (Community Based Tourism Institute of Thailand) to enhance capacity of Thai communities in order to manage sustainable tourism.
Appendix 3.3 Co-define Rational: Pictogram cards were carried out to gather indepth knowledge on Thai travellers’ expectation and perception toward community-based tourism in Thailand and to identify the issues and concerns for travelling locally. Method: Participants were asked to pick 10 cards, which they believe that those were most relevant to their meaning of travelling locally. Before giving more explanation and insights on selected cards, participants categorised them into groups where them seemed fit in. Interviewees: 5 interviewees were invited to participate in the co-define stage where each participant took approximately one hour individually including semi interview afterward. They generally chose cards from their past experience when travelling out of Bangkok. Along with objects and places where they have been as an example to make decision. The study indicated that there are four mains areas that explain their expectation: People & Emotional, Activities, Place & Nature and Utilities. Selected cards also depicted that there are wide rang of expectation and activities due to the past experience of travellers. General details of the interviewees were as follows:
Champ, Rittikorn Mahakhachabhorn Nationality: Thai Male Age: 28 Occupation: Media Production Nut, Natcha Saereesithipitak Nationality: Thai Female Age: 25 Occupation: Branding & Graphic Peach, Praphavint Saprungruang Nationality: Thai Female Age: 26 Occupation: Branding & Graphic Jar, Cholladee Jampathom Nationality: Thai Female Age: 24 Occupation: Branding & Graphic Namwaun, Paleeratana Damrongkitkarn Nationality: Thai Female Age: 25 Occupation: Fashion Management
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Appendices Summaries: Champ In general, due to champ past experience on ECO tourism and study area in Archaeology, he has fairly good knowledge on local travelling. His selected cards were categorised into four areas: • Community His chosen cards showed that local travelling is more than a travelling. His eager of learning new local knowledge form locals is spontaneous and enthusiastic. He finds it fascinating to get involve with neighbours’ activities and have conversation with them. He explained more on his experience that he was once went on a trekking with local guide and he described benefits of every herb that they walk passed by in the wood. He admitted that he was wanted to challenge the local by asking for herbs that could cure his sickness. The local guide picked some herbs straightaway and gave it to him. Sooner after, his sickness was decreasing and felt much better. That was the first time he felt amazed by local knowledge. • Travelling Equipment He is expecting an adventure type of travelling in correspondent with his chosen cards, which were compass and hiking shoes. Also, his selected memory recorder was a high quality cameara, DSLR, which refers to his profession. • Nature He is prepared to be amazed by travelling locally through nature, local vibe and crafted products. Bicycle is one of the vehicles that he likes to use as it gives real sense of naturea.
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• Activities His goal of travelling is to see know locals are living and what do they do for living. He believe that by visiting local markets and talk to them, he could learn their lifestyle, culture behaviour and distinctive characteristic about the community. In every trip he goes, his mission is to see sunrise or sunset to get the senses of nature in that area. His main concern over community-based tourism is that it might become disadvantage rather than advantage to the communities as he mentioned about the famous attracting in Thailand, “Pai”, which is a community in the north of Thailand. It was degraded by overwhelmed visitors and others economic prosperously in the peak time. He would rather not tell everyone to go the new communities he found in relation to this concern. He would keep it as a secrect place and tell only people whom he can trust.
Nut Overall, nut has less experience on travelling locally. She spends her vacation on driving personal car with a group of friends in mid-famous attractions. She is not prepared to travel in remote area where there is a low-condition facility. Her main purpose is to be surrounded by nature and get some sense of local lifestyle such as farming. Additionally, she enjoys participate in local activities, particularly art and craft related area. Although she is not an adventurous type of traveller, her chosen cards, map and way finding, depicted that she is expecting self-exploring activities. Nevertheless, her curiosity in higher level of travelling encouraged her to equipped with multi-purpose knife and camping tent as shown on the cards.
Peach Generally, peach is a semi-adventure traveller. She defined local travelling as an escape from city vibe, which was explained in her cards as followings. • Equipment Technology tools were not chosen. Instead, manual camera and map were highlighted. Her aim is to be relaxed and reboot her stress by nature healing. • Leisure Activities It is more likely to be slow life environment where her leisure is talking to locals and enjoying a low level of masculine activities with fun such milking cow. Her trip is not expected to be inconvenient as her selected cards were personal car and bicycle. However, she does not mind getting dirt as it might relief her from stress. • People She is fascinating to get in touch with local and build some relationship with the hosts or even visit their market. The trip could also fulfil her vacation by having some unexpected experience or serendipity approach. Local knowledge is not expected as she described her travel as a self-enjoying, yet, it is a plus.
Namwaun Namwaun is a typical stereotype of city girls. She enjoys travelling with a small group of close friends while technology devices and social media is essential to her. • Equipment Her choose of technology equipment is Instagram and online map. She mentioned that phone camera is much lighter and easier to carry along on a trip. Even though she considered experience as her goal of travelling, pictures taken and sharing via social media is a plus which she obsesses with. She also believe that by travelling, it would lead her to meet new people where she can make friends with. • Personal Item Her choice of shoes is neither sport shoes nor casual shoes. She picked the practical shoes because they need to look nice on the pictures as well. • Activities However, as a city girl, she enjoys doing lots of new experience activities such as milking cow and fishing. She considered it is a lifetime experience. She wish to explore the area by walking but motorcycle is also important to travel around the area as locals generally use it.
Jar Basically, Jar is the least sociable person compared to all participants. She would rather be independence on travelling with one or two companions. She prefers less crowed area where she could immerse herself with nature and cattle. Her purpose of travelling is to be relax and peaceful while she is also looking forward to be surprised by nature or people. Although she enjoy peace and quite environment, her loves of animals encourage her to get involved in local farming activities. Travelling equipments were not selected, as she does not like to have plan for travel. In the meantime, she prefers having local guide or friends to suggest her where to go next as shown on the card. 97
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Appendix 3.4 Expert Interview 1 : Ms.Suratchana Pakavaleetorn, Noon, a co-founder at Local Alike Date: 6th September, 2014 Rationale: The purpose of the interview was conducted to cover general – deep insights of CBT in Thailand. Nonetheless, the main focus was on Local alike working process, current works and problems and locals engagement. Interview Summaries: What are the difficulties in your working process? N : When we first stared, nobody believes in what we are doing and it was sometime frustrated for us. There was one of the projects we started earlier, we approached community leader and talked to him about our project but it was unsuccessful at first. It might be because we look so young and inexperience as well. However, later on we met with the young guy who sees the potential in our idea. We gradually work on the project together step by step until community leader stared to see some positive outcomes. Eventually, he is now fully support it.
What is Local Alike the most current issue? N : The recent one we have just launched is “A day as a fisher man”. The number of participants was the lowest then before. And we are tring to figure it out what is the problem here. We did asked out customers and they said that they would love to join but due to the timescale, If Local Alike have told them early for like a month, they would be able to make it.
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How many departments or area that Local Alike is doing? N : There are four departments: Tourism Development, Cooperate & Monthly activities, Design & Website Development and Community Development.
Do people know about CBT? N : Every time when there was conference or meeting, we always meet up with small group of people and most of them are the same people. Recently this year, I started to see some new faces, mostly are young people who keen to get involved and that is a good thing. However, in general CBT is still a rare concept for Thai people, not many people know and really understand about CBT. They might have known only about travelling locally and exchanging culture but they have missed a bigger picture, which is community development. It is leading to country development as a whole perspective. Even some travelling agencies are misinterpreting the concept, as it becomes a marketing tool for them. Some agency brings tourists to the community and don’t respect local people which is ashamed.
How many type of activities you are currently providing? N : Currently, Local Alike provides four types of travelling packages. Between 2013-2014, the majority of sales is customised tour which basically organized for cooperate activities (eg, Cooperate Social Respond). 1. Homestay (online sales) 2. Monthly Explore (Day tour, online sales) 3. Customised Tour 4. Others (includes pilot trip, partner sales and educational trip)
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Appendix 3.5
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Appendix 3.6 Semi-Structured Interview: Travellers who have been with Local Alike Rational: To gain insightful experience from customers who have been with Local Alike trip to find any difficulty they might come across and how were their user journey like in the service. L : Lou Lobbens (French Female) Y : Youssef Manah (French Male) S : Sok Phou (Cambodian)
1.How did you know about Local Alike? L : I knew about local alike by my cousin’s boyfriend who works for NGO in france! Y : I knew about Local Alike by my teacher he worked with Janjarang Pat so he gave me her contact for an internship I joined them because before studying marketing, I studied tourism so I have a travelling culture
3.Is there any difficulty of getting information or getting in touch with them? L : They were very fast at answering my emails ! Also I think that the website and facebook page are pretty clear, explains well what LA does, how to reach them. Y : No really easy, sometimes they can be very busy but I understand, usually they are really easy to join S : There is no difficulties to get information
4.Would you like to keep posted on the community you have visited? L : I think I would not keep posted on the community I visiter as it was to discover. However, I think that for professionals, it could be a good way to meet each other and to be in contact for business ! However, I will surely recommend people I know to go visit this community if I enjoyed it for example. Y : Yes why not
S : I know local alike from Pai, He’s my friend 5.How would you like to share your experience? 2.What influenced you to join them? L : I was influenced to join them first bu their activity (sustainability, ecology, fair tourism, typical discoveries for tourists...) and also the kind of company (young start up, dynamic, a lot of autonomy) Y : I really support community based tourism, I love local alike packages and Thailand is my favourite country, I woul love to go back for the 3rd time
L : I shared my experience on a tumblr and also on instagram and snapchat. Y : I would like to share my experience by talking with people about Local Alike, Thailand and the fact that we need to support them, that we should try sustainable tourism
S : I mentioned to him that I want to visit some local place in Chiangmai so he recommended Mae Kompong village with local a like, so I joined 101
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Appendix 3.7 Semi-Structured Interview: Travellers who have heard about Local Alike Rationale: To identify the barriers for people who know about Local Alike but not yet participated. P : Pitchya (Thai Female) S : Sirachon (Thai Female) Pa : Padiwaradda (Thai Female)
1. How do you know about Local Alike? P : I heard about this because of Noon, the co-founder, but I don’t actually know what is it about. S : I know Aum, who studied on the same major as me. She sometimes posts LA travelling package on our Faculty of Social Administration Facebook group. To be honest, I become LA fanpage because of her but I don’t really know much about it. Pa : I know about them through Facebook.
2. What are your barriers for not joining them? P : There was once I wanted to join them and see how it is like but later on I realised that it take place in Chang Mai, which is way too far for me to make such effort. It was a day trip and I am not going to go all the day from Bangkok to Chang Mai and back again for only that. I would prefer a longer trip to make it worth it.
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I though Local Alike are targeting only for foreigners. I saw pictures of foreigners and they also promote their trip in English. It is not only me who think like this, my colleague who I work with also have the same perception. I believe that there are a lot more local communities that managed by CBT but they just need to be reach by marketing. S : There are too many package tour coming up quite frequently but I have nowhere to start. I just blur it. To me Local Alike seems like some sort of educational travelling agent. It also reminds me of field trip with school when I was young. It does not look fun too me, I imagine that it would be more like a lecture trip. I was once joined A Day trip and felt terribly left out because people who were going with me are like A Day magazine fans. It looked like they know each other before and they are connected so well. I felt like an outsider and Local Alike remind me of that which I don’t what to have that feeling again Pa : I have had chance to join them do to the time constraint.
Appendix 3.8 Semi-Structured Interview: Travellers who barely heard about LA Rational: To identify whether people could be the potential customers perceived what kind of massage from the quick look at service and what Local Alike service are providing as well as the notion of CBT. The participants were selected from online travelling community, Go!graph, to answer by email and Facebook. Z : Zaigunee Masuwan (Thai Male) R : Rapeeporn Yanawarutwong (Thai Female) A : Armkung Sribumrung (Thai Male) C : Chonticha Aumanratchaton (Thai Female)
1.Have you ever heard about Local Alike before? If not, please visit Z : I do not know but just knew it now. R : I do not know anything about Local Alike but I do know about this kind of travelling before. I have stayed in home-stay and did some activities with the community in Kalasin Province, Thailand. A : I have not heard about it before, I just knew it know. C : To be honest, I do not know anything about them.
2. How do you understand their service concept and type of travelling? Z : It sort of like ECO tourism combining with social and cultural concern for the sake of local learning experience. R : It is a sort of travelling that we could learn their living lifestyle by participating with local activities and staying with them as a guest to learn about their culture. A : For what I understand from their website and travelling package, I suppose that they are like ECO tourism particularity for travellers who seek to combine their travel experience with ECO concern and stay locals while getting involve in their activities. There should be a way to generate money to the community. C : I visited their page and I think it is good for supporting local travelling in Thailand. I rarely see anything like this and I have never engaged with. I like to travel by myself both domestically and internationally. I hardly join the tour. The type of travelling in this page seems suitable for young people who interested in local and culture travel. There are number of this kind of travel emerging. Some of them seem like showcase rather than real communities. I would like to see their way of life like Shirakawago Village in Japan. There should be more of that in Thailand.
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3. Do you wish to join them? Z : if I have an appropriate time I definitely would like to join. This is a type of travelling that I always interested. R : Their trips look interesting to me because I enjoy observing the difference of culture and communities. Each of their trips seem like a real engage with locals which should be fun and happy A : I would definitely join their trip because it is a kind of travelling that I prefer to pay for but the only problem is timescale. There is also another barriers for them that I would like to add is “price�. It seems a bit to expensive for some group of people while others might consider that they would prefer to pay their price to some where which is nicer. C : I am not yet convienced. 4. Would you like to receive their news and updates? Z : Of course, I just become their fanpage. R : I would like to follow them on Facebook and I have already like their page by now. I have seen some of their trips have been sharing through my friends A : I am going with them for sure. C : I would like to see what are they having and is there anything that fits me.
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Appendix 3.9 Workshop & Semi-structure: Travelling & Technology Trend Rational: The research was carried out by workshop and semi-structure with people aged between 22- 30 years old. The area of activities and questions are about their travelling journeys and behaviours in order to discover multiples touch-points from pre, during and post experiences. S : Sirachon (Thai Female), P : Pitchya (Thai Female), R : Rittikorn (Thai Male) Pr : Praphavint (Thai Female) St : Steven (Taiwanese Male)
How does technology get involved in your travelling? S : I often see places to go via my friends’ Facebook and I would like to go if I have time. P : I normally ask my friends for advice because we have a similar way of travelling so I trusted his taste. R : I keep photos on my computer so it is no need to keep my travelling memories online. I‘d rather keep it personally because I don’t want people to go to the same places as me Pr : I like to put location on my Instagram photo, it shows everywhere I’ve been to on the map St : I don’t trust Tripadvisor. I only trust Asian reviews because we tend to have similar travelling style especially food.
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Appendices Appendix 3.10 Semi-structure: Social Impact & Engagement Rationale: To ask volunteers who like to participate in social activities and involving in community services, whether they could be another potential target group as CBT is also another type of helping others. T : Thantida (Thai Female Volunteer) X : Xue (Chinese Female Volunteer)
T : Mostly, People! Everything depends on people… feeling, activities, etc. I think X : Achievement feeling and friendly people.
4. Is there anything you would like to do for your community or in your country? (In term of social responsibility) T : Waste management system!
1. What was your purpose of becoming a volunteer? Why?
X : yes, I am a community volunteer in Southwark Council now.
T : Seeking some fun activities…that’s all.
5. If you had a magic power to help people in rural areas in Thailand? What would it be? And why?
X : Volunteer in China: I have been doing volunteer things since I was young, - Do something for public good makes me get the sense of fulfillment. - Getting new experiences from volunteering are like traveling, even it is safer and cheaper than it, because the people who volunteer with you have similar shared values. ¬Volunteer in London: - Flexible time - Get adapt to new environment quickly - Know more people with different cultural background - Improve spoken Language
T : Education… it’s the root of every human development. X : I hope I could give the famers a nice chance to see the outside world. Due to the limited conditions, it is really hard for them to go out even, go out from their local space. At most cases, they lived their own world, they do not know the outside world, and they also have nicer personality than some of people live in city. Magic power gives the chance for them to see the outside world, and help citizen get to know their life as well. Both of them might contribute to their local community in the long term.
2. What did you like to receive in turn? T : I had never expected anything at that time. Just for fun. I love doing activities!
6. If travelling cloud be one of the volunteering actives? How would you like to see and help? T : Environmental friendly, please.
X : Actually, I don’t think it too much at first, but I prefer to get new skills and experiences, it is hard to say whether it is not good for you or not now, it might be influenced you gradually. 3. What made you interested in? (E.g. people, place, activities, time, feeling, etc.) 106
X : I think it is not new to me, and at present, there are lots of volunteer organization to run these kind of scheme. I have to say it can be an incentive to engage more people. However, in the long term, it might change the original meaning of volunteer. In that case, I prefer to volunteer first, then you can get the benefit like traveling.
Appendix 3.11
Appendix 3.12
Expert Interview 2: Ms.Patomporn Pongnin, Bo, a sustainable tourism initiator at Local Alike Date: 21st October 2014
Case study: Crowdfunding & Engagement
Rationale: To gain a better understanding, the insightful information on community development and local funding.
What are the steps does Local Alike take to help developing the community B: 1. We listen to the community’s problems and what are needed. 2. Together with the community, we plan and contribute community development by using “Plan with not plan for� approach to make sure that there the problem-solving project is carefully crafted for particular community. This also includes enhancing traveling programs. 3. We create communication prompt to be published on website. 4. We contribute local guide training if the community needed. 5. Then, we do the pilot trip for service testing. 6. We improve our service by the feedbacks from the pilot trip. 7. Finally, we promote our trips online and be ready for marketing. What are the current issues that communities wish to be improved by community fund? B : managing waste, building playground for the community, establishing learning centre within the community, improving roadwork.
Kickstater is an arts funding site that apply the power of gamification optimised the fundraising energy to another level. It is a crowd-sourcing idea that relies on all-ornothing situation. The creator sets a fundraising goal and timeline. It is also provided by rewards for different pledge amounts to incentivise backers. People who pledge towards a project become invested in seeing the project reach the goal. They are likely to reach to others to help the project succeed.
Fairphone is a social enterprise working closely to create a fairer economy and change how things are produced. They are ambitions to extend the longevity and lifespan of smartphone by offering spare parts and allow owners to repair their phones. Working collaboratively with suppliers and manufacture that value employee wellbeing and fair wages. Production process and cost breakdowns are transparently available for viewing. They ensure that the products and materials used in the process are truly supporting local economics. Their aim is to encourage consumers to gain a better understanding of their products and start discussing about fairness widely.
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Appendix 3.13 Online Survey: Potential Target group Rationale: To identify whether online travelling community, Go!graph, has the potential targets that could be perfect match with Local Alike service. The data from 27 responses were collected.
Go!graph Summaries
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Local Alike Summaries
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Appendix 3.14 Co-defining & Co-designing Tools: Pop up and Postcard Rationale: Pop up Tool was aimed to observe the interaction between people and object among hostels owners, staffs and travellers. It also shows how foreigners interested in travelling locally in Thailand. While postcard Tool was created to gain general travelling experience of travellers at hostels and how they enjoy sharing their experience to others in relation to observe the possibility of service connection. The tool was tested with variety of nationality in Europe. These two tools were used at the very beginning of the project in term of observing international market. However, the project was later scoped down to domestic users as the pilot research.
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Appendix 4.1 User Testing Feedback Summaries Rationale: To ask users who have heard about Local Alike on what do they think about this prototype and new users to listen to their comments. S : Sukritta (Female) P : Pimchada (Female) J : Jindaporn (Female) Su : Supasumon (Female) 1. What was your experience after exploring the website? S : Early on, I wanted to see the price, whether it’s reasonable. However, while I was exploring the website, I totally forgot about price because there were plenty of things to see, especially activities that I could engage with. On the Roadmap, I thought that this icons could link to other pages but it couldn’t. Therefore, I would suggest that it should be linked to see some more photo of their project improvement such as what are they currently doing on which stage. Su : There is a bit confusing on Roadmap between Star goal and We are here. It reminds me of map which start is representing where we are. Also, I would like to recommend that there should be some description or strong statement in the main page so that it would reach to winder audiences not only for design-related background person like myself.
2. What makes Local Alike stand out of other travelling website? S : To compare with other travelling website, this website could also attack design related background person like myself. If I have to choose among 10 travelling websites, I would choose this due to it charity and social responsibility aim. P : I don’t like reading so thees symbols are really attack my attention to read more on the activities which tells me that I would help locals generate more incomes by joining their activities. I also like the activities bar that provided on the trip so i don’t have to do extra research on other websites. And I believe that it would be a trigger to pull other customers to visit this website too.
3. How does website new design make a different to you? S : These pictures present local way of lives but the peach colours and graphic tell me that the target group is expanded to younger generation travellers. Su : If website was nicely represented, I would like to spend more time exploring it. Then, I would see Roadmap and pretty much realise that this authentic travelling is beyond regular travelling.
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Appendix 4.2 4. How do you think the use of social media would lead you come across this service?
User Testing: Organisation’s Feedback
Su : If I had come across Local like website, it would be from friends’ Facebook which I would like to see what do they offer for travelling locally. At first, I might thought that it would be like other travelling website selling packages then I decided to explore more and learn more about their concept.
Trip Page I like how you layout three of them in a roll to help saving time for scrolling down and some little info graphic to give basic info at the first glance. I would like to adopt them to our site if possible.
J : If I could share my photos and experiences by using hashtag, it would be nice to do and see what others are doing if they do some different from my trip and it would inspire me to do it as well.
5. How do you make a decision? S : To compare the price, if I would help them even it’s more expensive but still reasonable price, I would choose to go with Local Alike. For me, it is a circle of social impact. It would eventually help our country anyway but in a indirect way. P : Personally, It depends on who I am going with. If I go as a couples i would prefer nicer facility. While going with friends, I would focus more on activities as long as the toilet and bedroom are clean.
However, 3 categories are not exactly the product we offer or actually wanted to be called.We have day trip, village trip (more immersive trip and homestay is just one of the product we offer, there are activities, food,guide,transportation etc.) and customised which I like how you create that form by the way. We also run special trip to boost standard day/village trips to boost sales on special event. So, itwould be great to have that hightlight if possible.
Roadmap Tab Looking great, show transparency very well. I also want to adopt this part to our site if u allow, we will credit you :) By the way, I would like to add a bit the concept of this CBT fund and actually it’s the combination of villagers’ profits, Local Alike profits, and some donation, so If the tab can show which part money are from would be great too.
# Localalike Tab Exactly what we want to do but not getting there yet but the different is we will put it in each trip page but how you put it all in one is good as it can lead people to other communities, they didn’t expect of clicking in the page to see. I like the part that you add connection with maps too.
Lastly, we are also struggling ourselves of how to show the web visitors from the first page that we are real time booking platform not just travel agency. 112
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