Top Takeaways

When I began working in this course, I was confused and out of my depth. As a tourism student, I am trying to get away from my business background, not further towards it, so I was frustrated to realize we would be focusing in one of my least favorite business topics: economics.

I couldnt have been more misguided. Though difficult and sometimes frustrating, this course exposed nuances of economics and the intersection of money and tourism that I had never thought of before.

My number on takeaway is the power of excess capacity and peers. I wrote about this conclusion in my Peer's Inc paper, and individual report because I could not believe the vast realm of this idea. The idea that excess capacity can be ANYTHING befuddled me, but the more I read and understood that it can mean a good, a service, a unit, something tangible or non, the more I began to understand the idea that there is excess everywhere. The power of the peer economy is harnessing that excess capacity, logistically organizing it and the people, and applying basic economic priciples to provide a need or solve a problem. The idea that this concept could be used in approaching climate change, hunger and poverty is one that resonated with me deeply, and effectively changed the way I think about consumers, the marketplace, and social responsibility.

Another takeaway, which I am confident I will spend many future hours dwelling upon, is how we as society change and evolve. In our class wrap up discussion, we mused about how consumers would have scoffed if you suggested they host strangers in their homes or cars. It was an outrageous thought and not something thought of as the norm. Despite and the rise of certain threats, and a seeming decrease in safety, consumers are working more closely than ever, strengthening ties amonst communities through these forums. These platforms seems to melt the invisible boundaries that keep strangers at a respectable distance, and provide a level of comfort to users that they are amongst friends, despite never having met before.

Finally, despite having had a similar experience in the MTA program previously, I did not realize how much work went into evaluating a customer experience. Some parts (like the myster shop) were obvious methods of evaluation; but hueristic evaluations and aggregated social media analysis were portions of the evaluation process that were both new and unexpected, but clearly beneficial. This class can best be summarized for me as utterly confusing in the beginning, but as I worked with my team and our project progressed, I understood how each part of the process was important, and how it fit into our final goals.