Saturday, May 4, 2013

The Virtual Platform - Backpackers Forum and a 3-stars ibis Hotel












Virtuality as the New Strategic Tool in
Current Business World

 
Traditional brick and mortar business that relies on
the market to distribute products and face-to-face

transaction with physical documents and physical
currency or credit. However, with the advances in
information technology, virtual business became
a new model in the business world.
 
Virtuality brings benefits to many business companies and virtual collaboration is a new strategy which widely used in corporate businesses for its efficiency, innovation and ability to gain or keep competitive advantages in the market.
Some people said virtual collaboration is like two companies working in the cloud. It can completely change the way that your business operates. It can save time, save money, and the most important is it can benefit your business and extend your core competencies by outsource specialized work to other company who has a wealth of experience.











The UNIQUE STRENGTH and WEAKNESS of the Backpackers Forum and a 3-stars ibis Hotel












Backpackers.com.tw

With so many potential and experienced backpackers running around the world, and the increasing demand of backpacker lovers searching for a partner, the need for a backpacker forum has never been greater.

The backpackers.com.tw is a place, real or virtual, where backpackers can meet and ask and have questions answered in the backpacker forum once you have registered as our members. The registration is free of charge but you need to provide some personal information for the web to verify your identity. You can make comparison on the price of different hotels and flights, as well as to share your photo albums with others through browsing our website.

 The most important is through our online backpacker forum, it will allow you to find out where the best places are to travel, sleep and of course where to buy equipment. This online discussion site can also helps you to search a travel partner by posted messages but it need the approval of the site moderator before it becomes visible.

Although the forum is a good watering hole for like-minded people to come together and babble, but its monetizing value is pretty low compared to static content sites. Actually, forum won’t pay for itself, it can only depends on advertisements on the forum, such as Google, Yahoo or sponsor ads, affiliate networks or text links. It is not enough to cover the forum cost, while there is difficulty to turn netizens to customers.

Also, forum is notorious hard to promote. It needs active members to keep contributing to the forum, for example, new posts and new threads need to give. The most important is maintaining the reputation of the web and the netizen find they can gain benefits through the site or else it will die out fast.



The ibis HOTEL


As one of the largest privately owned hotel group, ibis consists 1600 hotels in five continents around the globe which provides hospitality for travelers with coziest comfort. Packaged in three different brands, ibis hotels family is now makeup of ibis hotel, ibis Styles hotels and ibis Budget hotels across all the countries with unique facilities that facilitated travel-related needs for their visiting guests.

 
The ibis standard guarantees its customers:

l  Locations near airports, train stations, business centers and tourist destinations

l  Modern and well-designed an-suite bedrooms

l  24 hours services available

l  Bar services as well as hot and cold snacks available for 24 hours from Monday to Sunday

Adapting itself to the demands of local markets, the ibis standard allows the hotel chain to satisfy the needs of its national and international business (57% of its customers) and leisure customers (43%).

However, due to lack of leisure facilities (such as swimming pool, Spa, fitness center and fine dining areas), ibis lost the high end sector customers who always look for luxuries enjoyment during their stay in ibis hotels. With the increasing numbers of high end customers from emerging market such as China, hotels without the premium service and facilities could be a very detrimental factor in the increasingly competitive market.

Also, ibis is facing challenge with the emerge of boutique hotels which provide distinct stylish renovated bedroom designed by well-known interior designers for their guest who look for special memories during their visit in the hotels. Typically boutique hotels are furnished in a themed, stylish and aspirational manner. Boutique hotels are often individual and focused on offering their services in a comfortable, intimate and welcoming setting, so ibis hotels are very unlikely to be found amongst the homogeneity of large hotels.
 
 









Virtual Collaboration to achieve WIN-WIN
 
Both companies need to change how they look at marketing processes, shifting from an inside-out perspective to an outside-in perspective. In order to design interdependence communities for growth and brings benefits for both companies, virtual collaboration is a way out for profit maximizing. This link is possible not only for consumer products and services but also for business-to-business products and services. However, these two companies must generate and maintain the customers’ trust and provide value-added services for their users, so as to make the collaboration a successful one.
 
HOW does this virtual company operate?
The virtual company, virtualroomsharing.com, just set a bridge between different communities of the netizen of a backpacker forum, backpackers.com.tw and a 3-stars ibis Hotel. The concept is to provide backpackers with an opportunity to find roommates and live in a 3-stars hotel at a low price.


As what Hines (2004:p76) stated "Supply chain strategies require a total systems view of the linkages in the chain that work together efficiently to create customer satisfaction at the end point of delivery to the consumer. As a consequence costs must be lowered throughout the chain by driving out unnecessary costs and focusing attention on adding value. Throughput efficiency must be increased, bottlenecks removed and performance measurement must focus on total systems efficiency and equitable reward distribution to those in the supply chain adding value. The supply chain system must be responsive to customer requirements."

When you take a simple search from web and that means no need to take a serious scientific research, it is really not difficult to find the netizen of some backpacker forums would often try to look for a roommate to share a room in the forum. However, seldom website would base on such netizen’s need and to tailor-made relative matching services for them. Even some websites would try to provide hotel booking services or partner searching for a trip services, such services just delivered in segment.

 

Due to above demand signals of the netizen and our backpacker forum, backpackers.com.tw which was established in 2004 and it draws nearly five hundred forty thousand backpackers registered as members for only about 7 years, backpackers.com.tw and a 3-star hotel group ibis Hotels just come together quickly to exploit this fast changing opportunities and deliver roommate matching and hotel room reservation one stop services according to the market demand.


The Virtual Platform - www.virtualroomsharing.com

Nowadays, it becomes more common to find a roommate of a rental flat or apartment online. Take this community as a reference, if time is an issue and people need a roommate as soon as possible, they may consider using a variety of methods including posting old-fashioned newspaper advertisements, along with using an online roommate matching site.

Visit a free online roommate matching site and post their advertisements. They have to weed through the responses, and make their own decisions on who they want to interview.

Whether they are students, retired single, or single working professional, how they find a roommate is essentially up to them. If they were too busy to do some of the background work (references, etc.), find a matching site that does it for them! Thus, vitualroomsharing.com is established by above two companies to collaborate virtually and this collaboration with Ibis Hotels serves as one of the pilot project for backpackers.com.tw to further expand its services.

For more details, vitualroomsharing.com is a website that link between backpackers.com.tw and ibishotel.ibis.com. When a backpacker who wants to visit a certain place around the world and is looking for a roommate to share a hotel room, he can link to this website from backpackers.com.tw or just through a simple search from the web with “roommate”, “roommate matching” or “room sharing”, etc.

 
vitualroomsharing.com provides a matching opportunity to a large group of backpacker, especially the netizen of backpackers.com.tw. Particularly the website serves many information sharing and functions, that the netizen can get recommend the nearest 3-star hotel ibis which have vacancy and will over discount, and can match potential roommates rapidly when needed.
 
 

 In vitualroomsharing.com, a backpacker if he or she is not the registered member of
 backpackers.com.tw who only need to register as a member first, otherwise he or she can only need to consent to the virtual website to use the registered information in backpackers.com.tw directly or just edit the
updated information if needed. Then, the registered backpacker can input the information of the destination (includes area, city, state/country and region if needed), expected price range and the date will stay in the page for the free room search, and to key in the information about the roommate expected (includes users’ membership information and photo adding and the expected roommate’s age, occupation, hobby, nationality) in the page for the roommate matching ofSearch for Hotel Rooms and Roommates”.
Then vitualroomsharing.com uses the data it gets to recommend the nearest IBIS Hotel with real-time vacancies and the suitable roommates with the same room sharing needs. Actually, the internet has accelerated and redefined the possibilities of such remote service experience of the real-time hotel room vacancies and roommates searching. There will be immediate results. Browse a list of potential roommates within minutes. The registered backpacker can see some information about the matched roommates through the website, and then the backpacker can have some interactions with the recommend roommates.

Then the backpacker and his roommate can confirm their booking by linking back to ibishotel.ibis.com. And the backpacker and his roommate can then send their own deposit to the selected
ibis Hotel through ibishotel.ibis.com directly. With vitualroomsharing.com registered member information, backpackers can get some discount to stay at ibis Hotels, on the other hand, can benefit from making more profits by getting more customers and enhancing occupancy rate. In this way, this virtual company adds value to the two parties, backpackers
and ibis Hotels.
Roommate matching, however, to certain extent that means you may be moving in with a stranger who doesn’t know your habits and stories. But the website would provide netizen with some useful tools and information, so that the process would become as smooth as possible. These include roommate agreement forms, roommates FAQs (frequently asked questions), forum, some crucial tips for selecting and getting along with your roommate and etc, so that you can download for use and read if needed. Actually, backpackers can use the roommate agreement form as a tool to discuss expectation and document their agreements, this especially recommend to do once matched when you have better to contact your roommate before arriving on hotel, as communication is the key.
Moreover, it noted that the roommate matching service system will match backpackers with their potential roommates of the same gender, but if there are no other potential roommates of the same gender, then the roommates will be assigned of the opposite gender. And once the roommate matching result comes out, it will come together with the past track record of the roommate, so that a backpacker can have more information for reference and to make a better choice.
Actually, registration is for netizen’s safety, their details are kept confidential and all user communications and behaviors are monitored. Netizen would avoid a horde of total nitwits, as the website would determine which potential roommates are worth their time with a set of required questions, along with a roommate behavior rating. Also, we would delete anyone that sounds insincere, completely off base, or just completely insane.
 
Moreover, following are the others points that why do ones use  vitualroomsharing.com:
• No phone calls. vitualroomsharing.com allows ones to screen contacts.
• Security; we keep users’ personal information private.
• Detailed member information (including photos and maps).
• Automated matching system. No searching through unwanted listings.
• No wading through annoying advertisements
• Interactive and actually kind of fun!

For the reputation maintenance and feedback for hotels and the backpackers, the website will also have an area where post and welcome the testimonials from current and past users of the roommate matching and the hotel reservation services.
 
As the Web becomes the main marketing infrastructure and as intelligent agents that gain more sustained use on the Web, there will be greater opportunities and pressures for dynamic customization. For the sustainability of the website, there is fee for membership communication service and the website welcomes commercial online advertisements. For the website, basic membership is free. As a basic member ones can add a profile, browse their matches and send messages. In order to read messages received from other members, you must become a Choice Member.  Fees for Choice Membership are in period terms, such as 3 day trial, for 30 days, and for 60 days. But, there are no time limits. Users can deactivate their profile when they find their roommate.
It is a New Customer Interaction Vector!
From a strategy point of view, this collaboration is a Customer Interaction Vector. The Customer Interaction Vector deals with the new challenges and opportunities for company-to-customer interaction. With the use of IT and this virtual platform, customers are allowed to actively participate in dynamic customization, and create mutually reinforcing customer communities.
In order to better understand the strategic implication of this virtual collaboration, the following analysis, divided into three stages, can clearly demonstrate the ideas:
 
Stage 1: The first stage is about remote experience of products and services.  This concept is not new to hotel industry, as a lot of hotels, including the www.virtualroomsharing.com also provide online ordering, direct marketing that customers don’t have to really visit the physical infrastructure (i.e. hotel place) to launch the order. Also, www.virtualroomsharing.com accelerates the possibilities of the remote service experience. For example, with the real time order monitoring system, customer can clearly and instantly learn the room vacancy rate and corresponding rate. With these services, customers now have better customer experience because they can access to these pre-trip information clearly and instantly just by one-click whereas they would need to call and spent lots of effort to get these very fragmented and not-updated information.
 
Stage 2: The second stage is about dynamic customization. www.virtualroomsharing.com can learn customers’ taste (i.e. based on ordering record and more importantly, information from the forum) and deliver dynamic personalized information about products and services. With this virtual collaboration, ibis would be able to access to a large amount of potential customers and learn what their preferences are (i.e. based on their posting and comments in the forum) and send corresponding advertisement. By doing so, the hit-rate of advertisement would be higher.
 
Stage 3: The third stage is about the emergence of electronic customer communities. www.virtualroomsharing.com provides a virtual platform for customers to interact, which would facilitate their making of further purchasing transaction. For example, customer would share their stories and pictures and experiences of their trip. Also, they can comment on other users of how good they are as a roommate. With these information, customers can better make purchase decision. Without the virtual collaboration, ibis would not have such a large customer database as potential customers. On the other hand, although www.backpacker.com.tw has a large amount of netizens, they could hardly be capitalized into profit because the forum cannot induce their purchasing behavior.



WIN-WIN Situation for the Collaboration

The first question to assess if this virtual collaboration is a successful one is “can the services be outsourced”.
To ibis hotel, they need www.backpacker.com.tw as a strategic partner. It is easy to outsources and develop a website or platform for backpackers (i.e. potential customers in this case) but it is difficult to cultivate such a large scale of netizens who are so eager and dedicated to share their travel preferences.
To www.backpacker.com.tw, they need ibis hotel as a strategic partner. To the former, it is impossible for them to build such a large amount of hotels because it incurs huge cost. Also, not many hotel groups have such a wide range of region coverage with reasonable price range like ibis does. For backpackers, they normally can’t afford expensive hotels so large hotel groups are not interested in working with them.
The second question to assess if this virtual collaboration is a successful one is “what are their benefits”.
To ibis hotel, apparently they can Boost room reservation and resolve vacancy problem, also they can cultivate a large amount of customer base. To www.backpacker.com.tw, they gain better popularity and able to provide better customer experience to netizens because they are not simply a chit-chatting platform now, but a customer communities that provide real services.



References:

1.      Henry W. Chesbrough and David J. Teece (1996): Organizing for Innovation: When Is Virtual Virtuous? Harvard BusinessReview

2.      Hines, T. (2004). Supply chain strategies: Customer driven and customer focused. Oxford: Elsevier.

3.      Sadri, G. and Condia, J. (2012). Managing the virtual world. Industrial Management. Jan/Feb 2012, pp.21-25.

4.      Venkatraman, N. and Henderson, JC. (1998). Real strategies for virtual organizing. Sloan Managment Review, Fall 33-48.

5.      Weiss, J. and Hughes, J. (2005). Want Collaboration? Accept—and actively manage—conflict. Harvard Business Review, March, 2005.




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