Resistance to customer-driven business model innovations : an explorative customer experience study on voice assistant services of a Swiss tourism destination

For tourism, voice search is a promising tool with a considerable impact on tourist experience. For example, voice search might not only simplify the booking process of flights and hotels but also change local search for tourist information. Against this backdrop, our pilot study analyzes the current state of voice search in a Swiss tourism destination so that providers can benefit from those new opportunities. We conducted interviews with nine experts in Swiss tourism marketing. They agree that voice search offers a significant opportunity as a new and diverse channel in tourism. Moreover, this technology provides new marketing measures and a more efficient use of resources. However, possible threats to this innovation are data protection regulation and providers’ lack of skills and financial resources. Furthermore, the diversity of Swiss dialects pushes voice search to its limits. Finally, our study confirms that tourism destinations should cooperate to implement voice search within their touristic regions. In conclusion, following our initial findings from the sample destination, voice search remains of minor importance for tourist marketing in Switzerland as evident in the given low use of resources. Following this initial investigation of voice search in a Swiss tourism destination, we recommended conducting further qualitative interviews on tourists’ voice search experience in different tourist destinations