Turning for tourism to survive

A small 40 member tribal group the Dessana tribe in the rainforests of Brazil was  living out of fishing and hunting in the middle of the Tupe reserve. Three decades ago nine members of the tribe have decided to move up 600 miles further up to be close the city Manaus with 2 million inhabitants and try to live from another, easier resource: Tourism.

They choose to commercialize they culture in order to survive. The "business" is successful but experts are concerned that the groups that went into tourism are at a risk of being exploited. The groups also instead of producing and procuring their own food by farming and hunting/fishing go to Manaus to buy their goods.

They make money buy presenting traditional dances, playing traditional music and selling homemade jewelry. The visitors are invited for a show and then they are also involved in the presentation by trying some of the dance moves. They can ask questions about the Dessana tribe's culture.

The visit to the village is usually a part of a package that includes a boat trip from Manaus. The village had hosted some games during the World Cup in 2014 so it had became more popular and known by international visitors.

The tour usually take tourists to see the meeting of waters where the black Rio Negro meets the brown Rio Solimoes. Additionally tourists can swim with amazon river dolphins, making the tour more authentic and exotic.

The tour costs 55$ on an average, but the problem is that there is no fixed agreement on how the revenue should be shared and how much the villagers should get. The 196 tourism agencies that guide tours to the village are not always paying any share to the tribals, instead they are forced to only lived from selling jewelry for 1-7 $.

Pedro Neto the director of Amazon Eco Adventures gives a share to the villages, but he says that regulations about payments need to be introduced. The National Indian Foundation, a brazilian government agency, also aims to protect the tribes and is negotiating about weather these regulations should be introduced.

An other organization the Amazonas Sustainable Foundation also runs entrepreneurial programmes in order to help these groups achieve a better and sustainable profit.

The biggest challenge of such tourism is to reserve the original culture and nature while achieving bigger turnover. 

Source: http://news.dk/nyhed/1589037/brazil-s-tribal-groups-adopt-tourism

Nutella - The success

Italy's richest man Michele Ferrero the father of the Ferrero family died some weeks ago at the age of 89 on the 14th of February 2015.

His privately-owned firm produces the famous Nutella, Ferrero Rocher, Kinder chocolate and Tic-Tac candies. The Italian president called him a "born entrepreneur".

Last year Nutella had it's 50st anniversary. About 365 kgs of Nutella are consumed every year worldwide. The whole business success started in Northern Italy when the young confectioner Pietro Ferrero had the vision to create a tasty and affordable treat after World War Two.

First the chocolate-hazelnut cream Gianduja was born in Turin.

Only the wealthier people could afford the product. The next version, the supercrema the first spreadable version of Nutella was introduced a few years later. This cream was already affordable for a wider customer circle.

Ferrero's father Pietro had developed the forerunner to the recipe of Nutella. Pietro's son Michele turned the paste into the Nutella making some changes in the recipe. The first jar of Nutella was produced in 1964 and since then it is made in 11 factories and is sold in more than 160 countries all over the world.

 Nutella gives the one fifth of the Ferrero groups turnover. Ferrero is the biggest world consumer of hazelnut buying the 25% of hazelnut produced every  year.  The group employs more than 22.000 workers and its sales per year is more than 8 billion Euro. The Ferrero family is on the 30th place in the world's wealthiest people's list according to the Forbes magazine.

The two most important characteristics of Nutella back in the old times, was that it was new, different from other existing sweets and it was a very good quality, luxurious product at an affordable price.

Firstly it was considered as a sustaining product of Chocolate, since it was cheaper.

A jar of a 750 g Nutella contains 95 hazelnuts, but still however it is 57% sugar and 37% fat which makes it questionable if Nutella is really a good idea as a breakfast essential.

However the famous treat is loved worldwide and with no doubt Nutella as a business story is one of the most successful, and still growing businesses of all time. 

source:http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jun/03/nutella-50th-anniversary-italy-ferrero

MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS

Barcelona will show the first telephone network company created by drones.

Is specially design to be used to find and rescue people who need help.

Its Star Solutions company who will present during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona the first telephone network company in the world created by drones.

This drones can be used to transport their own networks, and also to control on high, the speed and specific areas by remote control. It has the sufficient intelligence to communicate everything the drone see meanwhile they are looking for something important, and it can also save the information.

For example, if a group of mountaineers can not leave the mountain and they don’t have coverage, this drone with particular network will detect them, and it will allow the research team to find them. So, they will just need a mobile phone with some battery to communicate themselves with the drone while it’s flying above them.

It cost is around 15.000 dollars, and the company says that is a fantastic tool for public safety kit.

During the Mobile World Congress, the hotels of Barcelona will double its prices, and, nowadays, 4 days before the Congress, the occupation is 84%.

For the next week, the price per night in a hotel of Barcelona goes from 296 to 317€. 

The busiest days will be Monday 2 and Tuesday 3, when just the 5% of the hotels show availability.

Last year the Mobile World Congress filled the hotels in Barcelona with 100.000 nights.

Will you pay this amount of money for one night?
Would you like to visit this Congress?

We're waiting for your opinion...

IKEA gives overnight stays for testing their mattresses

On the occasion of the celebration of Valentine, IKEA launched a successful promotional campaign to make consumers aware of its range of mattresses.

This campaign called Hotel Amour IKEA where they created a web: www.elhotelamour.es so in that web, the users could access to the promotion where they invited 69 couples to spend Valentine's night in a hotel in Madrid (Vincci Soma) so they could try the brand mattresses.

To sign up, couples had to participate in a competition uploading pictures and messages in the web, and then the most originals won a hotel night.

Thanks to this campaign, IKEA achieved widespread publicity about it; they increase the loyalty of its customers, won new customers, and through the promotion that made such couples for IKEA, the company sold more mattresses thanks of the promotion of the experiences of the couples.

From our opinion, we believe that it is a great strategy to make promotion of the company and then a great way to advertise from the experience of their customers and which thus, their messages will be fully credible because it is not an ad who says they are customers who tried it.

What is your opinion about this campaign?

The increase of the Tourism in the Basque Country

In this time we are going to talk about the Euskadi Tourism. Many of you maybe have visited this awesome place ever in your life. And maybe you have visited this country for one reason: Its easy promotion.

The Basque country is a community that uses a differentiation strategy. They created a website where you can find all what you need to prepare the travel of your life. It is a really useful website where you can find information about gastronomy, some interesting places to visit and even a leaflet kit! Amazing! In this website they try to help the user to make the travel organization easier. You can choose to make the reservation by its own page. One of the most novel aspects introduced is that they have created a magazine with the latest news of Euskadi, though which you can achieve the information that you want. 

This strategy is easy to apply in any country but they have been pioneers in this sense. They have been able to see what are the needs of the people , and they are offering it in it page. They are facilitating the travel for millions of tourists showing a great image of the country. In the last years the Basque country has increased a 5,8% in the Spanish PIB. 

In our opinion the Basque Country is applying an innovative and practical strategy for everybody who wants to live the experience in the North of Spain. With this strategy, other communities can decrease in number of tourists because of the promotion. The facilities that the Basque Country is currently offering to their tourists are a good method to attract this kind of tourism of people who never had thought to visit this place. 

Anyway, the increases of the tourism are good news for the Tourism industry. We have to continue working on it.

Link: http://www.eldiario.es/norte/euskadi/turistico-Euskadi-millones-aportacion-PIB_0_338066298.html

Link:  http://turismo.euskadi.eus/aa30-18805/es/

  

The new image of Disneyland: Frozen

In the last years we have seen some different promotions offered by Disneyland Park such as the free entrance to the park to children under 7 years old, including the breakfast.

But since the last month we can see the new offer from Disneyland’s Park.  The latest strategy consists on offering both free entrances to the park and free flight tickets for children less than 7 years old. The strategy that the park has used is to catch the children’s attention with a photo of the Elsa, the main character of the Frozen’s movie in all of the posters. They have used the children, the biggest force in terms of industry to convince the adults to buy the product. When children see this poster, they want to go to Disneyland and to live the experience with Elsa, and all the movies’ characters. For their parents, it is difficult to say no. For this reason they have introduced a new promotion in which the children don’t have to pay for the travel.

In this case Disney has played with children’s illusion and the way to achieve the children’s dreams is just in the arms of their parents. For them, it is a good option to enjoy with their kids of some funny and familiar holidays. It is just the experience where everybody is going to enjoy.   

In our opinion, the Disneyland Park has used a good strategy to catch the most powerful segment of the market and also the ones that can give a good image to the park. A park with happy people and full of families is what the Disneyland Park is looking for. 

 

Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp

There is a very important limitation in Facebook's business model: the assumption that everyone can be friends with everyone else.
While in real life we have 4-5 true friends that accompany us during a long time, on Facebook we have houndreds of friends remaining our "friends" on the website even though we haven't seen them talked to them, or even thought about them in the past 10 years. Utility friendships are the ones that are available when there is an utility but as soon as the utility is no longer there they fade away. In the past years millions of people had turned to "more intimate" communication methods in order to "save" their friendships. These applications are Whatsapp, Snapchat, Messaging, Secret. More and more people are turning to LinkedIn or twitter when it comes to communication with other members of society.

Facebook had recently acquisited WhatsApp for $19 million in order to be able to stay in the lead in online communication. In short term this action has a positive effect on the company with the increase of it's market share but the question is: Will Facebook be able to pay these high premiums alongside the years for every upstairs that challenges its market dominance? 

This strategy is not sustainable as the owners of the other companies will demand higher and higher premiums for their risk taking. 

Source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp