Sculley Notes Paradigm Shifts In Marketplace

ORLANDO— Industry executives gathered here at HITEC last month, eager to get a glimpse of hospitality technology’s latest evolution. While patrolling the floor at the Orange County Convention Center here, attendees sought to find out which players were gone from the exhibitor’s list and which new entrants were likely to survive. Gone from the high-speed Internet arena was CAIS, for example, having forsaken hotels as a viable customer, while telecommunications giant Sprint was considered a new entrant, seeking to show off its service offerings to technology decision-makers attending the show. “How to Utilize Technology to Market Effectively” was the topic of the keynote speech delivered by John Sculley, founding partner of investment firm Sculley Brothers LLC. Sculley, former CEO of Apple Computers and Pepsi, pointed to four power shifts that are taking place in the marketplace today. • Customers In Control: “We have moved from the producers’ being in control to customers’ being in control,” said Sculley. “Today’s customers are demanding, they want things customized the way they want it, and they want it right now,” he said. Producer business models on the Internet, i.e., websites that sell things, like books, new cars and toys, online at a lower price than their off-line competitors, are really “just another distribution channel,” said Sculley. “And I can’t think of one that has made it,” he said. It is instead the on-line customer-controlled models that are successful, he noted, using eBay as an example. That site, is successful, he said, because customers are able to buy things the way they want to buy them. Travel is one of the great success stories of the Internet, said Sculley, noting new entrants like Hotwire and Orbitz have learned much from previously launched sites. • Relationship Marketing: The second power shift that has occurred is that of “marketing from a propaganda perspective to relationship marketing.” “For those of us who grew up in a propaganda marketing world, the end point was the transaction,” said Sculley, noting that the move to relationship marketing requires the act of building trust, and as a result has spurred the growth of customer relationship management services. • Knowledge Productivity: The third shift involves knowledge productivity across all networks, he said. This shift, spurred by wireless technology, will create a paradigm shift greater than anything seen before, said Sculley. “I believe the change in cell phones over the next 20 years will be far more important than what the [evolution of]the PC was, and it won’t look anything like the cell phone today… and it will have a huge impact on the travel industry,” he noted. • Enterprise Transformation: The fourth power shift entails enterprise transformation. “We are going through the reinvention of work,” said Sculley, who pointed out that we will move from “very organized ways [of working]to project-centric work” to a world where no one worries about titles or where they sit. Armed with these “truths,” Sculley proposed the hotel industry look at itself from the perspective of what services it provides that business travelers like. “A good model is airline clubs in airports which have become more and more accommodating” to business travelers, he said. “Why don’t hotels look at day traffic and rent by the hour, or else sell via a membership?” he proposed. “If you can change the ground rules to your advantage, that is the way you can win the game,” he said.