Tourism 4.0 initiative was the topic of the keynote speech of the Tourism panel at the 13th Bled Strategic Forum, which is the leading international conference in Central and South-Eastern Europe. It brings together over 1.200 participants, including heads of state and government, ministers, diplomats, business people, scholars and experts, youth, and media from around the world.
The Forum focuses on engaging the participants in discussions about current issues and seeking out of the box solutions for the compelling regional and global challenges. This is exactly what the Tourism 4.0 aims at by focusing on people in the midst of technological transformation. Participants agreed that tourism is a sector that has been and will be most transformed by technological development and in the era of digitalisation needs to adapt again. This was the core message of the keynote hold by Urška Starc-Peceny and Tomi Ilijaš, who spoke also about many concrete solutions such as tourism impact model, collaboration impact token, personal crypto passport, etc. You can see the full keynote here (start at 1:15).
Some of mentioned solutions and challenges of the tourism of the future were also referenced the round table that followed and hosted Eva Štravs-Podlogar, State Secretary at the Ministry of Economic Development and Technology of the Republic of Slovenia, Nienke van Schaverbeke, Head of European Collections at European Foundation, Georg Steiner, Tourism Director at Tourism Board Linz, Helena Bulaja Madunić, Art Director & Creative Producer at Teslopolis @ My Magical Thoughts, Verena Vidrih Perko, Museum Curator at Regional Museum Kranj and University Teacher at the University of Ljubljana, Zenel Batagelj, Partner at Valicon, Slovenia.
The Forum is well known for its Young BSF event organized for young leaders under the age of 35. The Tourism 4.0 Partnership was presented there by Simon Mokorel, who was one of the panelist discussing ‘How can smart communities drive sustainability?’ Together with Massimiano Tellini, Global Head of Circular Economy at Intesa Sanpaolo, Ladeja Godina Košir, Founder and Director of Circular Change and Martin Mössler, Managing Director of Science Park Graz the possible impact of smart communities, including smart tourism, was debated in the view of technology and circular economy.
