Tourism 4.0 Partnership is building a bridge between high technology and tourism. The first step is educating all stakeholders in tourism about the possibilities that technology brings to the sector. We strongly support knowledge sharing. For this reason, Urška Starc-Peceny was working as a lecturer with students of the Management of Smart Cities Master Program at DOBA link on the development of strategies for different cities around Slovenia. Many interesting ideas have been developed to embrace Tourism 4.0 opportunities and challenges. Moreover, Simon Mokorel held a session about smart development as part of DOBA Winter online summit.
At the same time, the research team is exploring various way to collaborate with technology experts worldwide. Among other cooperation, the vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Professor Zhang Yaping, visited Arctur headquarters recently. Together with his strong delegation future joint projects were discussed during their visit to Slovenia, including the use of HPDA for research and development projects in tourism.
Our efforts did not go unnoticed by the global eTourism community. We are honoured to be invited to speak at the ENTER 2019, organised by the International Federation for IT and Travel & Tourism (IFITT), the leading independent global community for technologies in travel and tourism. The annual conference took place in Nicosia, Cyprus, this year. There technology experts, local authorities and international companies like Expedia and IBM came together with academics from around the world to discuss and exchange ideas on industry problems, latest trends and the future of tourism.
At the panel moderated by Dimitrios Buhalis, the world renowned expert of technology in tourism, Urška Starc-Peceny and Tomi Ilijaš, the co-initiators of Tourism 4.0, were speaking mainly about the importance of collaboration that is key to the paradigm shift in the sector. The aim of Tourism 4.0 is to bring the tourism industry to the digital era once and for all while encouraging travellers to explore destinations off the beaten path in order to boost local economies as it stands in the press release published by Cyber Strat. On the other hand, Dejan Križaj, the Innovation module lead of the Tourism 4.0 research project, focused his talk on innovations that contribute to the sustainable development of destinations and hospitality businesses.
Our work is appreciated because we walk the talk. This was clear at the Major's Meeting organised by the Association of Municipalities and Towns of Slovenia. Simon Mokorel, the co-initiator of Tourism 4.0, spoke there about the opportunities that technology brings to the tourism and how can municipalities use it for its own development and co-create tourism of the future while presenting the aims of our research and development project. Eva Štravs Podlogar, state secretary of the Ministry of Economic Development and Technology, also emphasized the importance of local communities in the development of sustainable tourism, which shows that Slovenia is ready to build the tourism ecosystem of the future bottom up now.
One more call for our study
To build the tourism ecosystem of the future bottom up, we first need to understand the tourism ecosystem in Slovenia. Therefore, we invite all stakeholders from the tourism sector to participate in the study and share your own experience and vision of tourism in the future. International partners and supporters have in turn the possibility to share their ideas of Tourism 4.0 here.
