Earlier, we showed that, probably, the main source of information for a tourist is the Internet, since before a trip there are almost no other ways to get information about the place of a future stay. Therefore, many tourist organizations, hotels, museums have web sites and consider that this is enough, only a few of them use analytical programs. In our opinion, this is rather careless, since the owners and managers of the organization have no idea how their site works, how interesting it is for users, what sections of it attract the user more. Moreover, with analytics you can track social networks and the effectiveness of advertising. What is also important, web analytics allows you to determine the approximate age and, perhaps most importantly, the geographical position of users, making it easy to understand what kind of traffic visits the site and how true your assumptions and hypotheses about the interests of your potential customers are. Therefore, if travel organi

Recently, the problem of a barrier-free environment has been much discussed, and this is very topical - absolutely everyone should have equal access to public life, culture, transport and public spaces. However, in these discussions, for some reason people forget about the multitude of tourists who, due to the language barrier, cannot fully use the infrastructure of cities, receive information and join the local culture. In our opinion, this is a very serious problem, which tourist authorities have to solve, especially since the whole world of travel is transformed from travel tourism to experience tourism. Even more so if local authorities want tourists to share their thoughts about the area after a trip with friends, relatives and social networks, first of all you need to help tourists to overcome the language barrier. And here technology comes to the rescue. In addition to the usually implied Google translator installed in almost all smartphones, various technologies

One of the frequently asked questions - does a tourist company need a website? Indeed, you can have pages on Facebook or Instagram, be pointed on electronic maps, and it seems like website is not needed. Similarly, if we consider hotels, you can place information on Booking.com or Tripadvisor and also do not have your website. It is appropriate for some businesses but tourism has its own features. 1. The average bill in the tourism sector is quite high, so potential customers are more responsible in choosing a product and absence of website of a hotel or travel agency might cause concern. 2. According to studies, before making a purchase a tourist visits an average of 37 sites. What happens if among these sites no one is yours – it Is obviously. 3. As already mentioned – the main selling tool in tourism is trust. Having a good professional website will only strengthen it, since only a stable and well-organized company that cares for its reputation can create and maintain a

Recently, there are a lot of talks on the future of tourism, some expensive space technologies are supposed, although, in our opinion, the future is already here and technically everything is ready for it. The fact is that, traveling is working with information, its processing, sorting and perception. Technically, today you can submit any information online. For example, to find a hotel or an airline ticket without leaving your home, all you need is a credit card. In order not to get lost in an unfamiliar city – you need just a smartphone with an installed map application. To overcome the language barrier - there is also enough an interpreter application in a smartphone, the Internet and some use skill. Moreover, these technologies can significantly save resources, such as paper, as well as travelers’ time and money. Therefore, we would like to address to all museums, DMOs and tourism organizations – to make the future come sooner and tourists can fully use your servi

Due to the growth of world tourism, many museums and visit centers are faced with the lack of guides problem . Guides who speak their native language or English, albeit with an accent, usually enough, but lack of guides speaking other languages is a problem. Moreover, a guide should not only know historical information and speak language well, but for a more complete and interesting presentation of tourist sights, he should be a bit of an artist, a bit of a reciter and, of course, a storyteller. Nowadays, the demand for such workers in many industries is quite high, so it is not surprising that there are not enough good multilingual guides, and this problem will only increase with the growth of tourist flows. The solution is the use of automatic audio guides, for example, izi.TRAVEL, when professional guides, writers, local historians, storytellers and translators take part in creating content, and then tourists download these stories to their smartphones an unlimited number of t

Nowadays, it is impossible for businesses not to be on the Internet, especially for tourism. Moreover, for example, when buying a car, client can visit a car dealership and touch this car with his hands, but in the case of a hotel, airline or tour - client makes a decision to buy or refuse it thousands of kilometers away. Especially in tourism, because, according to various studies, a tourist can visit 30-35 different websites before the trip. Stakeholders face a natural question: how to make sure that their website is visited. Of course, website should not cause any complaints about the quality of content, be unique, load quickly and contain no technical errors. However, there are still opportunities for cooperation with third-party services. One of them is Google My Business. If someone searches for a hotel or travel agency in a certain place, he gets this kind of business. Another possibility is Tripadvisor, where people go just before the trip. Now Tripadvisor is

In our opinion, the main sales factor in tourism is trust, and it doesn’t matter what is the tourist’s choice: a country, hotel, airline or museum. Indeed, the most important resource of a traveler is time, and nobody wants to waste it. That is why tourist does not want to waste time on uninteresting, boring and unreliable activity. Moreover, a potential tourist is looking for service providers who will not disappoint him or spoil such a long-awaited vacation. However, how to gain the trust of a tourist, when he is not able to make physical contact with the product and located thousands of kilometers away from the service provider. This is high-quality content on website, social networks and basically on the Internet plus reviews of people who have been there. The second is even more important. Considering content, it is as important as people love not just statements that your business is the best, but proof of this statement. That is why travel agencies and museums should

Tourist reviews in social networks and on various travel sites are very important for travel companies, hotels and museums, because in the world of wide Internet interaction, before booking hotel or tour, tourists always watch reviews and make a decision based on the opinions of random people, who actually visited this place. Many tour companies, hotels and travel services come up with various tricks for tourists to write good reviews in social networks, booking systems and travel sites. Some offer free services, some just ask, some offer bonuses, better accommodation, etc. In our opinion, this is not promising, because it does not help to improve the service at all, does not lead to an improvement in the perception of this object by tourists, and therefore does not lead to improvement of reviews in the long term, but only diverts resources to useless work. Review is a materialized perception of a company by tourist or his appraisal of an existing image. Obviously, the

It is strange that world community still don’t notice high paper consumption in tourism. Each tourist consumes minimum 1kg of paper during a travel. It includes maps, guidebooks, dictionaries, flight tickets and hotel bookings.  if we consider that the total number of tourists in the world is more than 1 billion per year, hence tourism industry spends about 1 million tons of paper per year. Moreover, this million travels together  with tourists by planes and trains which results in excessive fuel consumption. If we add printing expenses, it is some more billion dollars per year.    In our opinion, technologies of smart tourism could solve the problem: 1. Using electronic audio guides and guidebooks instead of paper ones 2. Using electronic maps on the phone instead of paper ones 3. Using translation apps instead of paper dictionaries These solutions don’t need any financial investments, they need only promotion of the technologies of smart tourism among travelers. D

Or should become it. It seems to be clear that modern tourism is not about just going from A to B, it is about exploring and getting new experience, in other words – receiving new cultural code. The origin of this code is museums as the only place keeping authentic cultural and historical heritage. The problem is that museums are not represented on the Internet as well as modern world requires, considering the fact that museum visitor is often a foreign tourist. Why is it so? In most cases it is due to financial factors causing lack of specialists and low salaries. Perhaps, tourist authorities and DMO worldwide could help museums to attract more finance and to fill the gap in knowledge and qualified specialists. Why DMO? Because museums could be an attractor for tourists, especially smart tourists who prefer to explore the destination rather than lying on the beach. May be you could offer the solution of museums’ bad representation on the Internet?

Why it is necessary? The answer is simple. The term “mobile traffic” speaks for itself. This traffic comes from a device which uses a person, possibly, locating near your business. If you provide tourist or entertainment services and you want to attract tourists – mobile website is necessary. There is no tourist walking around a city and searching museum or restaurant in a laptop. Besides, mobile Internet completely differs from desktop in that you don’t have to wait while your computer turns on. This traffic causes making fast and impetuous decisions. If a tourist sees on his map that there is something interesting nearby and visits your mobile website – there is a high chance of visiting your office. Speaking of cold and hot traffic – this is exactly a hot customer.    Apart from attracting tourists nearby, attract them on the stage of preparing to travel. A lot of people prefer to search tours and tickets using mobile device while going somewhere, staying in line or havin

In recent years, Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies are widely used in tourism together with introducing innovations in all social scene. In our opinion, we need to understand where it is necessary and where it would prevent developing of real smart tourism as VR and AR do not turn a city or museum into smart in a snap. Moreover, VR and AR deflect tourist’s attention from receiving real cultural patterns of destination or museum. He can use VR or AR any time at home, but during a travel he wants to see true authentic objects. In addition, these technologies have notable disadvantages.  • Need for huge Internet traffic. Often, tourists use Internet very carefully as costs may be high.  • Need for special equipment. In a high stream of tourists, VR and AR glasses have to be aseptisized, and probably, changed quite often.  • High costs. It is diversion of museum and destination resources to unimportant things instead of doing necessary things e.g. solvi

A lot of tourist companies try to use chat bots offering and booking a tour or requset response. Partly, chat bots help to relieve sales departments. However, the main selling tool of tourism is trust and professionalism as a tour is quite expensive product which is bought once or twice a year and not every tourist would trust a bot to buy a tour. Besides chat bots are not perfect and not able to emotionally describe a destination. That’s why using a chat bot as a first contact with customers could be risky. Moreover, a while ago Skyscanner and OneTwoTrip started to use chat bots but then refused them which is food for thought. A customer buying a tour is ready to get new emotions and impresions. He also wants to get emotions from a tour seller when bots are not able to provide it. It is too early to make conclusions, chat bots develop really fast but we would recommend heads of tourist companies to think carefully before introducing them into your business. 

Standard sales tunnel for different products is a well studied AIDA. A — Attention I — Interest D — Desire A — Action Though in tourism this tunnel can be improved to increase conversion by transforming into AIDAS where S for Satisfaction. Why tourism? Because nowadays people share their impressions from a travel with others, positive or negative. Thanks to development of the Internet impressions can be shared with thousands and millions. Choosing a destination, accommodation and transport a prospective traveler rely on reviews on Tripadvisor or Google Maps. But this is only on the one hand. On the other hand people take seriously buying a travel than, for example, new sports shoes as they have vacation once or twice a year, it costs a lot of money, it is complicated to return it etc. In our opinion, this is exactly why destinations, museums, hotels and tourist companies should completely transform their sales tunnel into AIDAS.

Smart tourist can easily find and book air tickets and hotels without leaving home, then go traveling using mobile applications, and not polluting environment with paper waste like maps and guidebooks. Thanks to digital technologies, logistic aspect of traveling fades into insignificance.  The fact is that tourism itself has changed. Now tourism becomes a tool for cultural interchange, learning history, and from the sphere of entertainment it goes to discovery. Basically, considering the term “smart” there is no surprise in such transforming. Modern tourist becomes more curious and thirsty for discoveries since logistic tasks are easily solved by technologies. In our opinion smart tourism is much wider – it defines not only service sale but identify a personality of a tourist and completely new policies of providing tour service.  It is time to understand that tourist cares more about fast and cheap Internet than luxury apartments, and he wants hotels, restaurants an

Modern world faces a case when the number of technology and startups significantly exceeds the demands of tourists. Sometimes it’s as if a lot of new technologies are made not for tourists but for sponsorship and profit.  It would be fine if these technologies did not take resources of museums and destinations which could be spent on more relevant requests of travelers. What do we think a tourist needs first? Based on our experience we made the list of things museums and destinations should provide first: 1. Internet access Cheap and fast mobile Internet Free Wi Fi 2. Storytelling of sights in different languages i.e. free platform izi.TRAVEL Downloadable museum audioguides in different languages Sightseeing automatic GPS audio tours 3. Accessible information on routes and timetable of public transport Public transport applications Buying online tickets 4. Buying online tickets to events and museums 5. Availability and informal answers on Tripadvisor

Our vision of smart tourism, also known as e-tourism or intelligent tourism, differs from the common. Commonly smart tourism is defined as hi-tech stuff like: • Marketing tools to increase hotel and air ticket sales • Innovations to promote objects and destinations, i.e. VR, AR • More accurate statistics to complete marketing challenges of destinations, hotels and other stakeholders. All of this involve difficult schemes, huge number of statistics and trendy terms which make it seem hard or even impossible to understand for a casual traveler. Meanwhile, for the last decade smart tourism is being discussed only in academic environment but still not clear. However, in our opinion the definition of smart tourism has to be reconsidered, not to increase industry sales or complicate technologies but to provide new services for any traveler. It is true that nowadays any tourist can book a hotel, air ticket or tour without leaving home and during the travel he doesn’t need a