Augmenting tourist experience with mobile wallet and nfc technology

Business Systems Laboratory 2nd International Symposium

SYSTEMS THINKING FOR A SUSTAINABLE ECONOMY. Advancements in Economic and Managerial Theory and Practice

January 23-24, 2014 – Universitas Mercatorum, Rome, Italy

Gandolfo Dominici ,Ph.D. Scientific Director B.S.Lab Assistant Professor of Business Management, University of Palermo, Italy [email protected]

Federica Palumbo Secretary General B.S.Lab

Ph.D. student in Business Management Sapienza University of Rome, Italy

[email protected]

The main new challenge of the ‘smart era’ can be synthesized by the sentence ‘complexity of simplicity’. It means providing complex products or services that can be perceived as simple, useful and time-saving by users. Tourists have to deal with a high level of complexity in their travel decisions, spending a lot of time and energies to take decisions and act. Therefore new technologies, designed for simplification of complexity (simplexity as for Alain Berthoz), can bring tremendous advantage in this industry. By considering the tourist experience as a complex system we depict the traveler as a kybernetes in search of powerful tools to help him to get directions in the 'mare magnum' of complexity, overcoming the fear of action and taking decisions.

Smart phones and mobile devices can have a key role in mediating the touristic experience. The mobile wallet, or multi-wallet, integrates physical wallet, money, payment cards, keys and other cards, enabling users to simultaneously run all these cards using their smart phones thanks to the Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. Tourism is a promising area for the development of this technology. Pesonen & Horster (2012: 11) state that “NFC has been predicted to be one of the next big things in technological progress and it can potentially have a huge effect on both the tourism business and tourism research”. Some applications of NFC technology in tourism industry already exist. Nevertheless, this technology is relatively recent and its potential is still underexploited.

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References

Airport/Station

Bike sharing

Car rental Retail Restaurant Public transport

Museum

Hotel