Arnie Weissmann
In 2017, when John Padgett was chief experience and innovation officer for Carnival Corp., he introduced me to Joe Pine at a party celebrating the reveal of the Ocean Medallion wearable.
Pine is co-founder of Strategic Horizons, a business consultancy, and has authored or co-authored best-selling business books. As Padgett explained at Phocuswright last November, reading Pine's "The Experience Economy" (Harvard Business School Press, 1999) was, for him, a transformational experience: It changed him "from a finance guy to an experience guy."
Padgett, who is now president of Princess Cruises, was so inspired by Pine's arguments about the significance of time in maximizing customer value and satisfaction that it motivated him to develop the Magic Band for Disney (he spent nearly two decades with Disney prior to joining the Carnival team) and the Ocean Medallion for Princess.
In an updated "Preview" chapter in the 2020 edition of that book, Pine advances the arguments linking time to business success. He quotes from "Visceral Reality" (l'Arca Edizioni, 1998), a book by Jon Jerde, the architect of Las Vegas' Bellagio. "What we do is design time," Jerde wrote. "The primary focus is not an object, but time itself."
While travel advisors intuitively understand that they are designers of time, Pine asserts that the concept can be applied more broadly in business. "Services are about time well-saved," he writes. "Experiences are about time well-spent." In his latest edition, he adds that transformative experiences are "time well-invested."
Pine has partnered with Stone Mantel, an experience strategy consultancy, to create the Transformational Collaborative. One business vertical that it focuses on is travel (the Walt Disney Co. is a member). The goal, Pine told me during a Zoom call last week, is to define, lead and measure the transformation economy, which he sees as a successor to the experience economy.
In some ways, the phrase "transformational travel" appears to be the logical heir to "immersive travel," which was the child of "experiential travel" (and grandchild of "authentic travel").
But unlike its buzzword predecessors, Pine notes that, in transformational travel, the "product" is the customer. And for transformation to occur, the supplier of a transformative experience must carefully think through how to create an experience that sticks.
Pine asked if I'd seen any good examples of transformational travel. I thought of two.
The first was brought to my attention in 2012 by Robert Tynan, who develops fitness-focused tours. After signing up to join one of his trips to learn, for example, how the Masai practiced physical fitness, participants and their trainers are provided with exercises to prepare for the trip. Upon the guests' return home, trainers are supplied with post-trip instructions for maintaining all that was learned.
That's not unlike the Optimal Wellbeing Program at the Sensei Lanai, a Four Seasons Resort. Weeks before check-in, bracelets arrive at guests' homes, bracelets that measure heart and respiratory rates, sleep and activity. Following completion of the program, the resorts' trainers continue to monitor guests' progress for a period.
Which, in a roundabout way, brings up an inherent challenge to the growth of transformational travel: What if the "transformation" backslides? Given the likelihood that 90-plus percent of New Years' resolutions made a month ago have already been abandoned, can a trend that requires human beings to effect long-term change survive?
Pine agrees that individual outcomes will be determined by the achievement of goals but also believes the industry's role in the process will maintain validity. "True, the customers have to transform themselves. But you're the guide. And there are lots of guides in the travel industry."
Joining us on the Zoom was Jake Haupert, CEO of the Transformational Travel Council, which offers accreditation programs for advisors, tour operators, hoteliers and destinations that are interested in creating transformational experiences.
His organization is working with Pine to underscore that "transformational travel" shouldn't be dismissed as just another marketing buzzphrase, and he is concerned that "to have it bantered around [loosely], it loses power and loses meaning. What we're trying to bring to the space is, how do you actually do it? Until we get there, we're going to continue to spin our wheels. Empty promises after empty promises. We tell our members, 'Don't use 'transformational travel' unless you're actually doing it.'"
Haupert said he's excited to see how the concept develops. "Its focus is on why and how rather than what and where."
Pine believes travel advisors can have a significant role in the transformational travel ecosystem by thoughtfully constructing journeys that link multiple providers and places to accomplish a client's goals. "No offering I can think of needs to be more customized" than a transformative travel experience, he said. "It begins with diagnosis. 'Who is this person? What do they want to become?' And then you design the set of experiences."
In the end, I suspect that most people who hope to transform -- but don't -- won't blame their "guides" if they fail. And should there be multiple relapses, perhaps transformational travel will spawn a subcategory: Rehab travel.