A set of extraordinary situations has been the main highlight of this summer in travel. This is the first season after the main disruptions caused by the pandemic and when everybody expected a normal return with full recovery for the whole industry.
Especially airports and flights have been in the headlines over the past weeks. Cancellations, delays and queuing at airports, as we saw at Schiphol, harm the image of the airport, destination and overall enthusiasm to travel. Misplaced and unclaimed bags, like those seen at Heathrow or Gatwick airports, also explain the chaos. The recent Delta flight from Heathrow to its hub in Detroit is a clear sign of how challenging the current situation is - the airline flew a plane packed with one thousand lost bags and zero passengers to get the lost bags out of the airport, even though it couldn't take more passengers.
Recent data from Mabrian, a Spanish travel intelligence platform, shows that more than 5 thousand flights were cancelled in the first half of July in Europe. Of these, about 1500 were cancelled only in Germany.
Also the overall price increase in tourism, due to multiple factors like the price of oil, energy and food, as well as some over-tourism phenomena are issues we cannot ignore and that shape travel recovery in 2022.
The steep increase in fuel prices also directly increases the price of transport. The price hike will likely shift consumers’ preferences to lower-cost travel - domestic and short-haul.
Barcelona was dealing with over-tourism issues before the pandemic, and now things have returned to the same place. Meanwhile, authorities are implementing some new measures, like limiting the size of tour groups and banning the use of megaphones on tours.
Considering this scenario, it matters to know which place and role should DMOs take because their main goal is to positively contribute toward travellers’ satisfaction, which is being threatened at this moment.
Firstly, DMOs should focus on clear communication with visitors. They can do this by providing the needed and right information honestly. It is critical to address the current problems, so DMOs shouldn’t ignore them.
Technology can be a great tool in customer service by automating processes as much as possible. The use of AI chatbots is a good example. Akemi Tsunagawa, Founder and CEO of Bespoke, shared her experience at the X. Festival 2020 on the need to respond in real-time with technology solutions to crisis management needs. One of the main insights was that chatbots are there to respond to common questions and that these can help respond to people's current problems in the context of crisis. DMOs should partner with technology companies that can help them develop these tools.
In the same sense, information can be relevant to show visitors that it is safe to travel to a specific destination. Data can be used to avoid sensationalism, which is perhaps happening right now in some media. For instance, the same data from Mabrian showed significant differences between European countries - whilst more than 6% of flights from Germany were cancelled, only about 1% were cancelled in Spain, Portugal and Greece.
Secondly, we believe that DMOs must continue working towards improving the actual experiences at the destinations. If prices are increasing for visitors, destinations need to find tools to make them perceive that there is still a good price-quality ratio. And experiences are the best part of the destination to achieve that goal.
Either by integrating sustainable practices into the experiences portfolio or focusing on tailored and exclusive experiences, DMOs must encourage businesses to leverage their product. The link with the local community is also a great way to do this.
At the XDW we listened to a talk that demonstrates the relevance of the locals to creating new and attractive experiences. Stefan Liehr and Markus Scholz from Modularfield Records explained that Modularfield creates urban trails and discovery experiences with popular music in urban spaces. They try to give artists a chance to perform and showcase talent in urban spaces outside previously defined performance venues. From their perspective, the talent and stories of the locals could be transmitted to tourism and travel solutions to provide authentic and culturally rich experiences.
We also think that DMOs, at last, have to keep pushing and include technology to better manage the queues and fluxes of visitors to destinations.
The city of Amsterdam was one of the first to explore digital queuing with the “Live lines” pilot project, which was carried out over three months. The goal was to provide visitors with an overview of live queue times at 10 museums in the Amsterdam metropolitan area. The expected results were to make visitors more aware of the waiting times at attractions, to help them make better choices, thus relieving crowd pressure at certain spots in the city centre and helping to distribute visitors more evenly.
LAAX is also a great example of a destination that uses technology for this same goal. This is a very famous Swiss winter destination featuring 224 kilometres of slopes, 4 snow parks, 5 snow-covered downhill runs, the world’s largest half pipe and an indoor freestyle academy catering to all levels of experience. The destination created the Inside LAAX app which has a significant list of functions to make the customer experience as seamless, convenient and enjoyable as possible. Through the app, Q-Alert cams tell visitors exactly which lifts are the busiest so they can avoid the queues.
Next, we highlight another talk from XDW, which demonstrates the importance of using technology to tackle today's challenges. This discussion was based on digital travel butlers, providing personalised travel suggestions, and ultimately looking into influencing travel behaviours. Rajneesh Badal (Travel with Zoey) and Ondrej Mitas (Breda University of Applied Sciences) shared their experience and explained how destinations can benefit from similar chatbots easily. They said that all that is needed is a database of less visited places, a filtering system and an evaluation of which locations are ready to receive visitors. Most well-known places are visible on search engines such as Google. The art is to make recommendations to other attractions.
Design thinking can also be of great use to find solutions to the problems we mentioned. This is the most likely method to produce interesting and innovative solutions - what Tourism in Skåne did with the Project Footprint is a good example. It focused on addressing sustainability challenges at a national park by employing Design Thinking. The DMO ran a seven-day innovation camp with ten volunteers interested in the topic. The project has shown that innovation in addressing challenges engages locals and triggers their interest to contribute because they share a common belief and shoe commitment toward the destination where they live in.
The recent Easyjet announcement of their new service (Twilight Bag Drop) in some airports that lets you drop bags off the night before your flight is a good example of thinking creatively to overcome problems. The free service allows customers on early morning flights to drop their hold bags off the evening before they travel, before 7 pm and 10 pm. This is a piece of evidence that Design Thinking can be part of producing creative and innovative solutions like this one.
To sum up, DMOs should allocate their resources to making visitors trust them and the whole industry. All these disruptions have been ultimately causing distrust and disbelief in the travel and tourism sector. As we have seen from Travel with Zoey, Amsterdam, Bespoke or Tourism in Skåne, technology and design thinking can be important allies for all DMOs looking for solving today's challenges innovatively.
Especially airports and flights have been in the headlines over the past weeks. Cancellations, delays and queuing at airports, as we saw at Schiphol, harm the image of the airport, destination and overall enthusiasm to travel. Misplaced and unclaimed bags, like those seen at Heathrow or Gatwick airports, also explain the chaos. The recent Delta flight from Heathrow to its hub in Detroit is a clear sign of how challenging the current situation is - the airline flew a plane packed with one thousand lost bags and zero passengers to get the lost bags out of the airport, even though it couldn't take more passengers.
Recent data from Mabrian, a Spanish travel intelligence platform, shows that more than 5 thousand flights were cancelled in the first half of July in Europe. Of these, about 1500 were cancelled only in Germany.
Also the overall price increase in tourism, due to multiple factors like the price of oil, energy and food, as well as some over-tourism phenomena are issues we cannot ignore and that shape travel recovery in 2022.
The steep increase in fuel prices also directly increases the price of transport. The price hike will likely shift consumers’ preferences to lower-cost travel - domestic and short-haul.
Barcelona was dealing with over-tourism issues before the pandemic, and now things have returned to the same place. Meanwhile, authorities are implementing some new measures, like limiting the size of tour groups and banning the use of megaphones on tours.
Considering this scenario, it matters to know which place and role should DMOs take because their main goal is to positively contribute toward travellers’ satisfaction, which is being threatened at this moment.
Firstly, DMOs should focus on clear communication with visitors. They can do this by providing the needed and right information honestly. It is critical to address the current problems, so DMOs shouldn’t ignore them.
Technology can be a great tool in customer service by automating processes as much as possible. The use of AI chatbots is a good example. Akemi Tsunagawa, Founder and CEO of Bespoke, shared her experience at the X. Festival 2020 on the need to respond in real-time with technology solutions to crisis management needs. One of the main insights was that chatbots are there to respond to common questions and that these can help respond to people's current problems in the context of crisis. DMOs should partner with technology companies that can help them develop these tools.
In the same sense, information can be relevant to show visitors that it is safe to travel to a specific destination. Data can be used to avoid sensationalism, which is perhaps happening right now in some media. For instance, the same data from Mabrian showed significant differences between European countries - whilst more than 6% of flights from Germany were cancelled, only about 1% were cancelled in Spain, Portugal and Greece.
Secondly, we believe that DMOs must continue working towards improving the actual experiences at the destinations. If prices are increasing for visitors, destinations need to find tools to make them perceive that there is still a good price-quality ratio. And experiences are the best part of the destination to achieve that goal.
Either by integrating sustainable practices into the experiences portfolio or focusing on tailored and exclusive experiences, DMOs must encourage businesses to leverage their product. The link with the local community is also a great way to do this.
At the XDW we listened to a talk that demonstrates the relevance of the locals to creating new and attractive experiences. Stefan Liehr and Markus Scholz from Modularfield Records explained that Modularfield creates urban trails and discovery experiences with popular music in urban spaces. They try to give artists a chance to perform and showcase talent in urban spaces outside previously defined performance venues. From their perspective, the talent and stories of the locals could be transmitted to tourism and travel solutions to provide authentic and culturally rich experiences.
We also think that DMOs, at last, have to keep pushing and include technology to better manage the queues and fluxes of visitors to destinations.
The city of Amsterdam was one of the first to explore digital queuing with the “Live lines” pilot project, which was carried out over three months. The goal was to provide visitors with an overview of live queue times at 10 museums in the Amsterdam metropolitan area. The expected results were to make visitors more aware of the waiting times at attractions, to help them make better choices, thus relieving crowd pressure at certain spots in the city centre and helping to distribute visitors more evenly.
LAAX is also a great example of a destination that uses technology for this same goal. This is a very famous Swiss winter destination featuring 224 kilometres of slopes, 4 snow parks, 5 snow-covered downhill runs, the world’s largest half pipe and an indoor freestyle academy catering to all levels of experience. The destination created the Inside LAAX app which has a significant list of functions to make the customer experience as seamless, convenient and enjoyable as possible. Through the app, Q-Alert cams tell visitors exactly which lifts are the busiest so they can avoid the queues.
Next, we highlight another talk from XDW, which demonstrates the importance of using technology to tackle today's challenges. This discussion was based on digital travel butlers, providing personalised travel suggestions, and ultimately looking into influencing travel behaviours. Rajneesh Badal (Travel with Zoey) and Ondrej Mitas (Breda University of Applied Sciences) shared their experience and explained how destinations can benefit from similar chatbots easily. They said that all that is needed is a database of less visited places, a filtering system and an evaluation of which locations are ready to receive visitors. Most well-known places are visible on search engines such as Google. The art is to make recommendations to other attractions.
Design thinking can also be of great use to find solutions to the problems we mentioned. This is the most likely method to produce interesting and innovative solutions - what Tourism in Skåne did with the Project Footprint is a good example. It focused on addressing sustainability challenges at a national park by employing Design Thinking. The DMO ran a seven-day innovation camp with ten volunteers interested in the topic. The project has shown that innovation in addressing challenges engages locals and triggers their interest to contribute because they share a common belief and shoe commitment toward the destination where they live in.
The recent Easyjet announcement of their new service (Twilight Bag Drop) in some airports that lets you drop bags off the night before your flight is a good example of thinking creatively to overcome problems. The free service allows customers on early morning flights to drop their hold bags off the evening before they travel, before 7 pm and 10 pm. This is a piece of evidence that Design Thinking can be part of producing creative and innovative solutions like this one.
To sum up, DMOs should allocate their resources to making visitors trust them and the whole industry. All these disruptions have been ultimately causing distrust and disbelief in the travel and tourism sector. As we have seen from Travel with Zoey, Amsterdam, Bespoke or Tourism in Skåne, technology and design thinking can be important allies for all DMOs looking for solving today's challenges innovatively.
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