Digitalization in tourism

07.03.2017, Hotel Adlon, Berlin: Interview marathon with responsibles of the tourism industry. Every 15 minutes I exchange with a new conversation partner about „digitalization in tourism“.

FIRST RESUME: Ok, beeeautiful destinations – but most of them are actually quite reserved towards this topic. Digitalization means for them f.e., posting a video on a social media channel and they never thought about Digital Nomads as an upcoming target group.

NEW TARGET GROUPS: By the way – I read an article about, that until 2035 we will have 1 billion digital nomads worldwide (sorry, I don`t remember the source, so please don`t take this number too serious, until it`s proved. The number just stayed in my mind). And the world population than will be something like 8.3 billion.

Isn`t that big enough as a target group, to be worth to think about?

How does it look like – the traveller of the future?

I get the impression, that maybe some responsibles in the tourism industry think to much in classical ways.

For example, I heard often today, that „digital nomads/ travelling entrepreneurs “ is a business topic. And that the job of tourism responsibles is mainly to care about tourists, not about business interests.

New needs

So if the digital nomads are looking for local co-working spaces, start-up/ network events or contacts to the vivid digital/ start up scene, they have to do this research on their own. In my opinion, the tourism responsibles sometimes don`t see the point, that the traveller of the future might be also a hybrid – who combines leisure and work during travel. What means much more, than going after a long business day in a foreign destinantion in the hotel owned sports club. Additionally, a digital nomad will also stay longer time at a destination than the classical tourist.

Good examples

Otherwise: also high praise for a few destinations, who think about innovative tourism concepts for the future, like „Tourismus NRW e.V.“, some Suisse destinations (Lausanne f.e.) and also „St. Petersburg Clearwater“ in Florida.

For example, „Tourismus NRW e.V.“ published a magazin about trends in digitalization. I recommend, to have a look at it! You find it here: https://www.touristiker-nrw.de/trendmagazin-digitalisierung/

Virtual Reality:

And the tourismus destinantion St. Petersburg Clearwater started to producing Virtual reality content three years ago. They wanted to offer a vivid experience, how it is to be on a jet sky, riding through the Gulf of Mexico or Parasailing above the water. It`s a great success: they have been the first destinantion in the United States with this concept and won the New York Times as a partner. Here you can see, how the result looks like: