Insights from the Communities Dominate Brands blog

I was just catching up on the RSS feed for the Communities Dominate Brands blog, and saw some interesting posts which I think relate well to LBS:

Living in an experience economy

"Experience culture
Today's world is a world of experience of content, of culture and of content rich brands… a world where knowledge is profit and interconnectivity is power – where enabling and personal empowerment are keys to all B2C transactions.

The implications for business are clear. People will want more 'experiences' and to be able to define themselves by those experiences. They will want advice on how to start to build and then maintain expertise in certain activities.

(...)

Solutions enabling memorable experiences
'Value added' comes from the quality of experience provided.

An experience is holistic, total, encompassing, transforming... and emotional.

A 'service' is a transaction, an experience is an 'event' that leaves an indelible memory

Creating meaning through context
Meaning is treated here not as an attribute of information, but as a crucial part of human experience, a component of belonging, sharing, understanding, perceiving, associating, finding relevance, feeling included, seeing value, engagement, attitude, belief, acceptance, receptiveness, expectation and often attraction and desire.

Context is something that already exists in peoples lives. Combining the brand to the context gives the experience new, deeper meaning."

I thought it was important to repost most of the entry here because it perfectly describes what the location-based tourism offering should be about - creating interactive, memorable, value-added experiences for the travellers. Also, LBS is all about context (both spatial & temporal), so it really is up to the firm (say, Lonely Planet) to combine their brand with the travel context over the mobile device to give a deeper, more involving experience...

Also, I found the following article via that blog - 3G content will turn phone users into salespeople. In particular, check out the following quote:

"Currently, it's the operators that are making the money from content services. In future, Informa Media and Telecoms predicts, it will be the content providers holding the reins. The content owners will seek to shed controlling partnerships with the operators by focusing on selling their content through their own portals."

I wonder if this can be applied to LBS as well?