From lack of innovation to losing customers: the product story in voluntary tourism

Abstract

Volunteer for Education Organization (VEO) is a well-known brand in the volunteer tourism industry, established in 2013. Over the past ten years, the organization has drawn thousands of customers joining voluntourism tours. VEO has now officially established the model in the South of Vietnam since June 2023. The company is headquartered in Hanoi, with a branch office in Ho Chi Minh City. Serving more than 12,000 tourists a year on tour. Until now, V.E.O has achieved of at least one billion vnd/year in annual income. Despite success as an enterprise startup, VEO has faced numerous difficulties in a growingly competitive volunteer tourism. Such challenges consist of decrease in new customer sign-ups, low performance of tour-guides and reduced number of quality leads. These red flags had been identified as important signals for closer investigation to understand what was happening affecting long-term growth inside the company. The research adopted multiple sources of information: internal source, literature review, industry report and depth interview with customers, VEO manager and his stuffs, as well as specialists in the same sector. The results supported that creative deficit of tour design is the crux of the matter, in which case an organization incapable of leading to new customers nor retaining them under a competitive environment. Once the overriding issue was identified, the root cause was further investigated by analyzing data and conducting qualitative interviews. The failure to have a operating data platform to record and analyze what customers are doing is the fundamental blocker of product innovation, the research found. After extensive consideration, a research campaign was determined to be the most appropriate strategy for company's current state of affairs. The goal of this project is to streamline and systematize customer details acquisition, in addition to providing valuable insights for tour design refinement. An action plan was devised in order to present a precise implementation schedule for this campaign, supervised by VEO’s management team.