Interviews with experts about smart tourism

2023. Susie Vowinkel, Managing Director, Google Travel, is interviewed by Dr. Javier Gonzalez-Soria

An interview about how Google travel is working to better meet the needs of travelers. In fact, this is the main component of smart tourism. Link.

Adam Wallace on the Foundations and Future of Spherical

Many hotels have only recently realized all the benefits of internet marketing and fully focused on online promotion. But there are real pioneers in this direction, for example, The Roger Smith Hotel in New York, they launched their blog in 2006. All this time the hotel kept abreast of all innovations in the field of Internet marketing, constantly generating original content. Adam Wallace, New Media Marketing Manager, he talked about his work. According to him, the success of the hotel is due to always being open to everything new and not being afraid to make changes. Twitter is currently their most successful tool for engaging and connecting with the audience. Also, they devote a lot of time to the Facebook page. But the basis of their online content and the place people get from Twitter and Facebook is the blog (rogersmithlife.com). According to Adam, they never focused only on promoting and getting a wide audience, first of all, they were engaged in content for enthusiastic people. He also shared the experience of successful campaigns in social media.

In our opinion, the experience of The Roger Smith Hotel can be an example for many other hotels. This is a living example of the fact that in Internet marketing, and especially in the tourism industry, the main thing is not promotion and wide audience, but content, which in turn will attract a keen audience. Interview here.

Robert Govers about branding of territory

An interview about how destinations should do branding in order for tourists to get the maximum impressions and experience from visiting the territories. Link.

Wolfgang Günther. About CO2 tax

Wolfgang Günther thinks there is a way to make travel more sustainable for all of us. Authorities should impose a CO2 tax and make CO2 emissions more expensive. This would make energy-intensive travel more expensive and therefore less attractive.As we think, even if we impose such a tax, we should know how it will be spent. Obviously, it should go to developing sustainable travel technologies, but this question was left unasked.In addition, besides imposing a tax, traveling could be improved by AI and other modern tools in a way that tourists routes and vehicle booking would be planned with minimizing harmful emissions into the atmosphere. 

Perhaps, tourist agencies and DMOs could also join up and recommend the tours with minimal CO2 emission.

However, we admire the author’s attitude and his personal way of traveling. Interview here

Kirsi Hyvaerinen on Accountability and How to Keep Promises in Tourism

Kisrsi came to the travel industry in 80s, and since that many things have changed. For example, sustainability is not the niche idea it used to be. It has become much more mainstream and better promoted. Currently she is supporting change processes in destinations and businesses with focus on sustainable tourism. Kirsi teaches governments, DMOs, associations and individual companies her best practices, trying to put into practice global strategies and action plans. What is inspiring in the interview is that the modern tourism world accepts the need of informing and education, switch to smart technologies which finally leads to sustainable tourism. Interview here.

Barry Lerner - Smart Tourism

As a company with experience of direct work with tourists and currently working on spread of smart tourism in the world, we agree with every word of Berry Lerner.

Especially, we would like to note that firstly smart tourism is for safety and comfort of tourists. We hope that developing of 5G technologies and infrastructure even in the farthest corners of the world soon will make smart tourism a matter of course.

However, unfortunately, not everything is so rosy, because only the development of 5G network technology does not lead to the introduction and development of smart tourism. It requires the following:

The constant work of stakeholders on online content so that information is easily accessible for tourists.

The work of mobile providers so that any tourist can quickly and easily get a local SIM card or use all the advantages of 5G when roaming during a trip, not very expensive.

City authorities and museums must constantly make online guides, audio guides and online maps so that tourists can take full advantage of the new generation networks. Interview here.

All the news is here.