Scotland’s tourism industry is gathered here at Hampden Park stadium today to take part in a technology themed Tourism Innovation Day.
Tracking Tourism is both live blogging from and participating in the day and I’m hoping to share some of the insights as they emerge, while minimising typos!
The goal of the day is help tourism businesses discover, learn and apply new technology to boost productivity and improve visitor experience. As host Muriel Gray explain “technology is nothing to be afraid of at all. Today is about making sure you’re not baffled, but inspired. To show how technology can be relevant whether your business is large or small.”
Julie Franchetti of Scottish Enterprise talked this morning about the characteristics that innovative tourisms businesses share:
1) They understand their customers. They listen, they analyse, they then adapt based on what they learn from those customers.
2) They work collaboratively with other business in order to implement that innovation
3) By implenting on innovation, they actively do something about adapting and improving, thereby delivering on the promise of the key tourism assets.
She raised the critical point that the relationship between visitors and businesses has changed for ever. Successful businesses are using technology to run their business more profitably, win new customers, deliver improved experience and communicate with customers on an ongoing basis.
Julie was followed by Chief Scientist from Sabre Holdings, Dr Ben Vinod. Sabre are the people behind Travelocity, igougo, Lastminute.com and the Sabre Travel Network. Ben’s presentation warrents a post of its own – which will follow – but with Sabre processing 2 billion travel transactions a day and touching 80% of 2006 travellers, he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to travel technology.
Interestingly, Ben reckons 2008 is the year that consumer generated content has become mainstream, that consumers have reached a point when they are demanding businesses support their desire to see what other trustworthy users think.
As a participant in the feedback session I must earn my keep now and post again shortly!
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 28th, 2008 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Conference learnings, Research tools, Tourism market research, Travel 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.