The Era of Transformative Technologies
2022 marks the 10th anniversary of the DTTT, which is a decade of supporting and guiding destinations through their transformations towards becoming more competitive.
2022 marks the 10th anniversary of the DTTT, which is a decade of supporting and guiding destinations through their transformations towards becoming more competitive.
In this sense, it's important to consider the high degree of transformation that digital technologies have meant for the tourism industry, revolutionising tourism products, experiences, destinations and business models. Furthermore, the emergence of digital platforms has increased the number and variety of tourism products, services and experiences, allowing for more and faster economic transactions, market awareness and feedback. As much as these have created new opportunities for destinations and businesses, they have also created many challenges.
That's where our role at the DTTT comes in as facilitators and experts! We believe in the importance of providing spaces for discussions to take place, allowing everyone (from within and outside the tourism industry) to share their knowledge and perspectives. These exchanges help all of us in furthering our efforts, creating a better and more competitive industry. Doing this has been particularly critical during the last two years, since the pandemic hit, as there was a need to refocus everyone around new goals and priorities, truly considering the role that emerging technologies can play in helping us achieve these. That is why we created X Design Week, an event that took place between the 6th and the 10th of June in Cologne, Germany. This was our first post-pandemic in-person event, but also our most immersive and design-led event ever.
Among the topics covered during the event, digitalisation and emerging technologies were some of the most dominant, looking at the development of hyper-immersive digital brands and destination experiences in Meta, and how digital technologies can help transform visitor experiences in destinations. Apart from exploring these topics during talks, we also deep-dived into them through design thinking workshops, during which we reflected on how certain technologies and processes could be implemented in destinations and their experiences, products and services.
We explored the opportunities that destination apps present, as well as the possibilities that technologies such as VR, AR and XR signify for the discovery of destinations from a different perspective. Furthermore, we looked into the value of NFTs and cryptocurrencies and how these create a participatory approach while offering transparency and authenticity when developing experiences, which can be linked to the development of DAOs (Decentralised Autonomous Organisations).
Thanks to the incredible speakers that participated at XDW, both from DMOs and tech businesses, we were able to better understand some of these concepts and technologies, which are slowly but steadily becoming more predominant in the industry.
The exploration of these technologies was then furthered during design thinking workshops, for which we developed comprehensive templates that allowed all participants to reflect on the topics presented and figure out how they would see these emerging technologies and processes implemented in their own destinations.
The DTTT team played a key role in facilitating these workshops, which the speakers happily got involved in and supported with their extensive knowledge, allowing the attendees to acquire more confidence around the topics covered. Additionally, it's relevant to consider that the workshops moved through the different stages of Design Thinking, from empathising with the users of their challenges to ideating solutions and prototyping them.
With this feature, we wanted to revisit one of the pillars that define the DTTT and the important and relevant work that we have developed for the last decade and, more so, during the last two years, allowing us to further highlight our expertise and the value of our methodologies. Through X Design Week, we were able to look back at digital transformation from a very different perspective than we did ten years ago, looking at the newest technologies and digital processes which are transforming the tourism industry today. This is now a very distant reality from that of a decade ago when we started supporting DMOs with their digital transformations, during which the focus was on creating a website and social media presence in the earliest days of digital.
Some of the key takeaways from X Design Week where the importance of providing spaces for the exchange of knowledge, perspectives and expertise in order to allow the tourism industry to move forward as a whole, always furthering our efforts and competitiveness through collaboration.
We also realised that we walked away with many yet unanswered questions, as these revolutionising technologies are constantly changing the landscape we operate in and will require a high degree of involvement from different members of all organisations to fully understand them and be able to implement them efficiently.
Lastly, we were able to get an overview of the fact that the business models linked to these emerging and transformational technologies are not clear at this point in time but, despite this, they provide solutions that should be taken into consideration and implemented.
In this sense, it's important to consider the high degree of transformation that digital technologies have meant for the tourism industry, revolutionising tourism products, experiences, destinations and business models. Furthermore, the emergence of digital platforms has increased the number and variety of tourism products, services and experiences, allowing for more and faster economic transactions, market awareness and feedback. As much as these have created new opportunities for destinations and businesses, they have also created many challenges.
That's where our role at the DTTT comes in as facilitators and experts! We believe in the importance of providing spaces for discussions to take place, allowing everyone (from within and outside the tourism industry) to share their knowledge and perspectives. These exchanges help all of us in furthering our efforts, creating a better and more competitive industry. Doing this has been particularly critical during the last two years, since the pandemic hit, as there was a need to refocus everyone around new goals and priorities, truly considering the role that emerging technologies can play in helping us achieve these. That is why we created X Design Week, an event that took place between the 6th and the 10th of June in Cologne, Germany. This was our first post-pandemic in-person event, but also our most immersive and design-led event ever.
Among the topics covered during the event, digitalisation and emerging technologies were some of the most dominant, looking at the development of hyper-immersive digital brands and destination experiences in Meta, and how digital technologies can help transform visitor experiences in destinations. Apart from exploring these topics during talks, we also deep-dived into them through design thinking workshops, during which we reflected on how certain technologies and processes could be implemented in destinations and their experiences, products and services.
We explored the opportunities that destination apps present, as well as the possibilities that technologies such as VR, AR and XR signify for the discovery of destinations from a different perspective. Furthermore, we looked into the value of NFTs and cryptocurrencies and how these create a participatory approach while offering transparency and authenticity when developing experiences, which can be linked to the development of DAOs (Decentralised Autonomous Organisations).
Thanks to the incredible speakers that participated at XDW, both from DMOs and tech businesses, we were able to better understand some of these concepts and technologies, which are slowly but steadily becoming more predominant in the industry.
The exploration of these technologies was then furthered during design thinking workshops, for which we developed comprehensive templates that allowed all participants to reflect on the topics presented and figure out how they would see these emerging technologies and processes implemented in their own destinations.
The DTTT team played a key role in facilitating these workshops, which the speakers happily got involved in and supported with their extensive knowledge, allowing the attendees to acquire more confidence around the topics covered. Additionally, it's relevant to consider that the workshops moved through the different stages of Design Thinking, from empathising with the users of their challenges to ideating solutions and prototyping them.
With this feature, we wanted to revisit one of the pillars that define the DTTT and the important and relevant work that we have developed for the last decade and, more so, during the last two years, allowing us to further highlight our expertise and the value of our methodologies. Through X Design Week, we were able to look back at digital transformation from a very different perspective than we did ten years ago, looking at the newest technologies and digital processes which are transforming the tourism industry today. This is now a very distant reality from that of a decade ago when we started supporting DMOs with their digital transformations, during which the focus was on creating a website and social media presence in the earliest days of digital.
Some of the key takeaways from X Design Week where the importance of providing spaces for the exchange of knowledge, perspectives and expertise in order to allow the tourism industry to move forward as a whole, always furthering our efforts and competitiveness through collaboration.
We also realised that we walked away with many yet unanswered questions, as these revolutionising technologies are constantly changing the landscape we operate in and will require a high degree of involvement from different members of all organisations to fully understand them and be able to implement them efficiently.
Lastly, we were able to get an overview of the fact that the business models linked to these emerging and transformational technologies are not clear at this point in time but, despite this, they provide solutions that should be taken into consideration and implemented.
.webp)