Xperience the CITY: How to Design a Service for Air-Traveling from a Co-Creating Perspective – A Case Study for Athens, Greece & Amsterdam, Netherlands

Involving a wide range of stakeholders, both on private and public sector, the Tourism Supply Chain consists a network of tourism organizations engaged in information, combination and travel arrangement services provision . It is not only about the supply of tourism products and services but also the marketing of those as well as the creation of new markets -or expending already existing ones- towards greater profits. As the main characteristic of the tourism industry lies in the high interdependencies among the various players, in order for value to be added they all need to work together as a value chain when delivering the final tourism service or product to the final customer. In this supply chain, there are so far quite distinct roles (outgoing travel agents – retailers, tour operators – wholesalers, incoming travel agents, Global Distribution Channels etc.). Despite the technological revolution and the constantly developed new innovative distribution strategies, the basic tourism distribution mechanism stays quite the same; the distributers (active role) act and guide tourists towards the cities of destination (passive role). xperience the CITY, is a project aiming to change the way we travel so far, by changing the existing tourism supply chain and taking the City of Destination from a passive to a more active role, directly managing its sources (tourism infrastructure) and addressing the end-users. Instead of a destination push strategy, a destination pull strategy is proposed. Throughout this project, new ways of co-creation between the various stakeholders involved in the traveling process –all the 3 stages (pre-delivery, delivery and post-delivery) – will be investigated, from a passenger centric approach. The final outcome will be a new service and a new strategy towards better ways to experience the city of destination, with multiple benefits for everyone involved. This project builts upon the relevant literature of, among others, supply chain issues, the service-dominant logic, co-creation of value, tourism value chain and seamless traveling. Forming two main research sub-questions – “What value can the passenger add to the co-creation of value process? ” and “What info can the passenger deliver depending on their specific interests and the way they want to experience traveling? ” – the author explores the status quo of the tourism industry as well as the way they interact with each other, and how that could lead in co-creation opportunities. Towards that, as part of the methodology followed, an Explorative Research (qualitative) and Validation Research (quantitative) were organized. Looking for insights on how business is currently done, key stakeholders were interviewed. The analysis of these first insights, providing a more holistic view on the subject researched (traveling practices, traveling industry, co-creation, services etc.), led to the construction of a more quantitative online survey, that came to validate the assumptions made so far, leading to the development of a new innovative strategy and the design of a new air-traveling service. Among the findings so far, in a society and an economy that is constantly changing is the need of better practices. Fast changing trends and needs call for new approaches, both for those supplying and delivering services as well as for those experiencing and consuming them. How could we, either as business stakeholders or passengers, co-create towards a better future, either in terms of profit, sustainability or customized experiences? We believe that there are plenty of future research opportunities in the field in terms of co-creation and customer value creating processes, supplier value-creating processes and encounter processes in the traveling context. It is up to the future researchers to go deeper and further on these subjects looking for improvements and new approaches.