My wife and I love travelling, so we spend a lot of time surfing the Internet for deals etc.. We are often torn between using the faithful local travel agent to do this work or hitting the net ourselves looking for a better deal. What becomes obvious very quickly is how interconnected the industry is, but also how hard it is to see all of these connections. So I was intrigued recently when offered the opportunity to suggest a way of mapping the Italian Tourist Industry. Italy is one of our favourite destinations, so I could imagine that if it works out well the rewards could be significant. But the big question is, who will benefit from the increased visibility that we may be able to bring to this industry? The experience with trying to gain more business transparency in the larger capital markets has been resisted by the advisory sector who make their living out of selectively providing privately gained information. A former CEO of mine use to say "there is margin in the mystery" and therefore this increased transparency may in fact be resisted by some companies profiting from the complexity of the tourism network.
I think we'll try and do it anyway!
