Destination best practices in the realm of digitalisation are wide-ranging and depend on a multitude of factors, including the sensitivity of the national environment, accessibility, population density, proximity to other communities, natural resources, level of industrial development, history, heritage, culture and so much more.
Destination best practices in the realm of digitalisation are wide-ranging and depend on a multitude of factors, including the sensitivity of the national environment, accessibility, population density, proximity to other communities, natural resources, level of industrial development, history, heritage, culture and so much more.
Because of this, no two struggles are the same and governance plays different roles at the National, Regional, City and Municipal levels, where different actors and partners have a role to play in supporting growth and competitiveness through digitalisation.
Extensively integrating data across different sectors, driving growth through business intelligence and cross-sector collaboration.
From the collation, visualisation and accessibility of data and intelligence to innovation in making a smart pivot.
The new ‘Singapore Tourism Analytics Network’ provides a data-driven platform aggregating insights to inform strategy, internally and with stakeholders.
Becoming the home of the Norwegian Digital Travel Conference has been key to fostering expertise in the region and accessibility to knowledge for SMEs.
A bigger ambition is to build a regional data hub, gaining greater capacity built upon real-time data and insights.
Collaboration with start-ups such as MAAS Global, events such as Slush and tech companies such as Tencent has been key to broadening the value.
Research collaborations focused on data insights
The two examples here are of a similar nature and demonstrate the value of trialling new and innovative uses of technology to bridge gaps in our understanding of the visitor experience throughout a wide and dispersed geographic area. Each project involved the application of beacons led by leading technology providers, forming a collaborative partnership with the local organisation board and a cross-section of participating businesses of all sizes.
Identifying opportunities to exploit new technologies to explore untapped opportunities thanks to digital.
Bringing together a mix of leading-edge organisations and companies with SMEs to share learnings.
The shared cost of the programmes and government support brings the benefits of big data within reach for all.
INSITE is a project aimed to contribute to tourism growth and value creation through data-driven development and operation in Southern Norway. The project aims to move towards operating models supported by actual data and analysis, rather than qualified guessing, by analysing tourism patterns across the region with the use of beacons.
Djursland is a popular coastal holiday region in Denmark, with a wide range of large and small tourism businesses. In the summer of 2017, New Nordic Engineering and Destination Djursland collaborated on a pilot project to map visitors' movements between the destination's attractions.
The objective of the project was to identify tourist movement patterns to provide a better understanding of visitor flow and to adapt the destination offer and develop new tourism products.
Partnerships to explore tech-enabled experiences
There are countless examples throughout the tourism sector where collaborative projects have led to a change in the way we experience the world around us: an optimisation of the visitor experience where technology is the enabler, not the barrier. In piloting new technologies within the local industry, using it as an exploratory canvas, destinations have the opportunity to work on ‘addressing’ known issues, whilst exploring the potential of new technologies. This allows businesses to grow through shared exploration and remain ‘curious’ about the future.
Identifying opportunities to exploit new technologies to explore untapped opportunities thanks to digital.
Embracing cutting-edge technologies with start-ups, academic research, local businesses and the destination.
Encouraging the whole tourism value-chain to seek, identify and co-create a strong innovation ecosystem.
'Live lines' was a pilot project carried out over a period of three months in the city of Amsterdam, providing visitors with an overview of live queue times at 10 museums in the Amsterdam metropolitan area. The goal of the pilot was to make visitors more aware of the waiting times at attractions in Amsterdam, to help them make better choices, thus relieving crowd pressure at certain spots in the city centre and helping to distribute visitors more evenly.
The project aims to provide insights into the 5GUK Test Network performance and explore how tourism operators in the South West of England can use 5G tech to boost the visitor economy. The project connects tourist destinations across the South West to the new 5G technology via the University of Bristol’s 5GUK Test Network.
Over the last ten years, the cities of Helsinki and Espoo have invested extensively in creating an innovation ecosystem, fostering business collaboration and growth. In particular, the cities are supporting the use of digital technologies for the development of a smart city, intending to create the most effective transport services in the world. In 2019 the two cities piloted 'Gacha', a smart mobility project connecting areas within the two cities, with the use of self-driving buses. The goal is to have a year-round permanent autonomous bus service in 2021, to provide citizens and visitors with more sustainable mobility solutions.
Destination led initiatives to disrupt the digital supply chain
For years destinations have tried to solve the problems of inequality and barriers of digital distribution caused by the dominance of OTAs. Today, destinations are investing in technology infrastructure to be able to help businesses take control from the OTAs, invest in their brands and bookability, develop an experiential product, leverage personalisation and CRM and grow through better business intelligence thanks to big data.
Public sector investments to create digital infrastructure fo grow the tourism value chain.
Working at every level to help businesses become bookable and competitive through technology.
Technology infrastructure seeks to address the fragmentation of the digital visitor cycle.
The ONLYLYON Experience project was launched in 2019 as an integral part of the plan developed by Lyon to evolve towards a smart city model, a plan that earned Lyon the title of European Capital of Smart Tourism 2019.
The project aims to create a better visitor experience by providing customised information to tourists, to encourage them to come back and to generate insights to develop a better offer, this is possible thanks to the development of a CRM for data sharing among key partners in the destination.
Tourism Exchange Great Britain (TXGB) is a business-to-business platform. It’s a one-stop exchange for English tourism suppliers (e.g. accommodation providers, attractions, tour companies) to link with domestic and global distributors (e.g. online travel agencies).
The platform helps suppliers to manage availability, pricing and bookings, and for distributors to tap into a wide range of tourism products. DMOs can also join the platform as distributors and sell destination-based products through their online channels.
Helping the industry to leverage data for decisions and innovation
Governmental organisations are acting as brokers and investors in facilitating access to data, enabling the industry to make foster evidence-based decision making and promote innovation through data. In France, there is a focus on renewing the indicators to better valorise tourism, in British Colombia the focus is on driving forward sustainable destination management underpinned by data and in Portugal there’s a focus on driving sectoral growth through open data, with vertical and horizontal start-up accelerators.
Making the opportunities of big data available for everyone in the industry to exploit through BI.
Establishing a detailed measurement of our sector for sustainable growth driven by measurement.
Investing in an open data society to democratise data and incubating start-ups to solve industry challenges.
Travel BI is a knowledge management platform developed by Turismo de Portugal which integrates information produced by the different information systems within the DMO and other national and international data sources. The platform reflects Portugal's vision of building a knowledge-driven destination, where decision-making is based on the knowledge generated by data. In particular, Travel BI is aimed to help public organisations and businesses within the country make strategic decisions based on tourism data and insights.
In Canada, Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association (TOTA) recently launched their data-driven sustainable strategy for 2022, which aims to protect the economic, environmental and social assets of the destination by leveraging on the knowledge generated by data. At the core of the strategy, TOTA is creating a centralised data hub to enable better decision-making and drive transformation within the destination through stakeholder collaboration.
You can learn more about these destination strategies on this Mural Board.
Access the Mural as an anonymous visitor 🔗
Destination best practices in the realm of digitalisation are wide-ranging and depend on a multitude of factors, including the sensitivity of the national environment, accessibility, population density, proximity to other communities, natural resources, level of industrial development, history, heritage, culture and so much more.
Because of this, no two struggles are the same and governance plays different roles at the National, Regional, City and Municipal levels, where different actors and partners have a role to play in supporting growth and competitiveness through digitalisation.
Extensively integrating data across different sectors, driving growth through business intelligence and cross-sector collaboration.
From the collation, visualisation and accessibility of data and intelligence to innovation in making a smart pivot.
The new ‘Singapore Tourism Analytics Network’ provides a data-driven platform aggregating insights to inform strategy, internally and with stakeholders.
Becoming the home of the Norwegian Digital Travel Conference has been key to fostering expertise in the region and accessibility to knowledge for SMEs.
A bigger ambition is to build a regional data hub, gaining greater capacity built upon real-time data and insights.
Collaboration with start-ups such as MAAS Global, events such as Slush and tech companies such as Tencent has been key to broadening the value.
Research collaborations focused on data insights
The two examples here are of a similar nature and demonstrate the value of trialling new and innovative uses of technology to bridge gaps in our understanding of the visitor experience throughout a wide and dispersed geographic area. Each project involved the application of beacons led by leading technology providers, forming a collaborative partnership with the local organisation board and a cross-section of participating businesses of all sizes.
Identifying opportunities to exploit new technologies to explore untapped opportunities thanks to digital.
Bringing together a mix of leading-edge organisations and companies with SMEs to share learnings.
The shared cost of the programmes and government support brings the benefits of big data within reach for all.
INSITE is a project aimed to contribute to tourism growth and value creation through data-driven development and operation in Southern Norway. The project aims to move towards operating models supported by actual data and analysis, rather than qualified guessing, by analysing tourism patterns across the region with the use of beacons.
Djursland is a popular coastal holiday region in Denmark, with a wide range of large and small tourism businesses. In the summer of 2017, New Nordic Engineering and Destination Djursland collaborated on a pilot project to map visitors' movements between the destination's attractions.
The objective of the project was to identify tourist movement patterns to provide a better understanding of visitor flow and to adapt the destination offer and develop new tourism products.
Partnerships to explore tech-enabled experiences
There are countless examples throughout the tourism sector where collaborative projects have led to a change in the way we experience the world around us: an optimisation of the visitor experience where technology is the enabler, not the barrier. In piloting new technologies within the local industry, using it as an exploratory canvas, destinations have the opportunity to work on ‘addressing’ known issues, whilst exploring the potential of new technologies. This allows businesses to grow through shared exploration and remain ‘curious’ about the future.
Identifying opportunities to exploit new technologies to explore untapped opportunities thanks to digital.
Embracing cutting-edge technologies with start-ups, academic research, local businesses and the destination.
Encouraging the whole tourism value-chain to seek, identify and co-create a strong innovation ecosystem.
'Live lines' was a pilot project carried out over a period of three months in the city of Amsterdam, providing visitors with an overview of live queue times at 10 museums in the Amsterdam metropolitan area. The goal of the pilot was to make visitors more aware of the waiting times at attractions in Amsterdam, to help them make better choices, thus relieving crowd pressure at certain spots in the city centre and helping to distribute visitors more evenly.
The project aims to provide insights into the 5GUK Test Network performance and explore how tourism operators in the South West of England can use 5G tech to boost the visitor economy. The project connects tourist destinations across the South West to the new 5G technology via the University of Bristol’s 5GUK Test Network.
Over the last ten years, the cities of Helsinki and Espoo have invested extensively in creating an innovation ecosystem, fostering business collaboration and growth. In particular, the cities are supporting the use of digital technologies for the development of a smart city, intending to create the most effective transport services in the world. In 2019 the two cities piloted 'Gacha', a smart mobility project connecting areas within the two cities, with the use of self-driving buses. The goal is to have a year-round permanent autonomous bus service in 2021, to provide citizens and visitors with more sustainable mobility solutions.
Destination led initiatives to disrupt the digital supply chain
For years destinations have tried to solve the problems of inequality and barriers of digital distribution caused by the dominance of OTAs. Today, destinations are investing in technology infrastructure to be able to help businesses take control from the OTAs, invest in their brands and bookability, develop an experiential product, leverage personalisation and CRM and grow through better business intelligence thanks to big data.
Public sector investments to create digital infrastructure fo grow the tourism value chain.
Working at every level to help businesses become bookable and competitive through technology.
Technology infrastructure seeks to address the fragmentation of the digital visitor cycle.
The ONLYLYON Experience project was launched in 2019 as an integral part of the plan developed by Lyon to evolve towards a smart city model, a plan that earned Lyon the title of European Capital of Smart Tourism 2019.
The project aims to create a better visitor experience by providing customised information to tourists, to encourage them to come back and to generate insights to develop a better offer, this is possible thanks to the development of a CRM for data sharing among key partners in the destination.
Tourism Exchange Great Britain (TXGB) is a business-to-business platform. It’s a one-stop exchange for English tourism suppliers (e.g. accommodation providers, attractions, tour companies) to link with domestic and global distributors (e.g. online travel agencies).
The platform helps suppliers to manage availability, pricing and bookings, and for distributors to tap into a wide range of tourism products. DMOs can also join the platform as distributors and sell destination-based products through their online channels.
Helping the industry to leverage data for decisions and innovation
Governmental organisations are acting as brokers and investors in facilitating access to data, enabling the industry to make foster evidence-based decision making and promote innovation through data. In France, there is a focus on renewing the indicators to better valorise tourism, in British Colombia the focus is on driving forward sustainable destination management underpinned by data and in Portugal there’s a focus on driving sectoral growth through open data, with vertical and horizontal start-up accelerators.
Making the opportunities of big data available for everyone in the industry to exploit through BI.
Establishing a detailed measurement of our sector for sustainable growth driven by measurement.
Investing in an open data society to democratise data and incubating start-ups to solve industry challenges.
Travel BI is a knowledge management platform developed by Turismo de Portugal which integrates information produced by the different information systems within the DMO and other national and international data sources. The platform reflects Portugal's vision of building a knowledge-driven destination, where decision-making is based on the knowledge generated by data. In particular, Travel BI is aimed to help public organisations and businesses within the country make strategic decisions based on tourism data and insights.
In Canada, Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association (TOTA) recently launched their data-driven sustainable strategy for 2022, which aims to protect the economic, environmental and social assets of the destination by leveraging on the knowledge generated by data. At the core of the strategy, TOTA is creating a centralised data hub to enable better decision-making and drive transformation within the destination through stakeholder collaboration.
You can learn more about these destination strategies on this Mural Board.
Access the Mural as an anonymous visitor 🔗
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