SGFE Launches Today - Skift Global Forum East. Forum organizer - Skift This is not just an trade show, but a truly wonderful platform for discussing the most pressing issues of tourism. Dubai will bring together key players in the tourism market: destination leaders, hotels, online and offline tourism organizations, academics and scholars. Forum program: Trends in the world economy and tourism for the coming year. Combining life and work while traveling The growth of tourism markets and the adaptation of suppliers to them. Stimulating demand through innovation, collaboration and regional growth. New marketing strategies to enhance brands and performance. Meetings and events as growth points for directions. Growth of profits with the help of sustainable development policy. Startups in the regions stimulate innovation and growth. Why is it important to digitize and expand the tourism industry. The Middle East will become a vital hub for global tourism in the coming years. Available...

  The sustainable development goals have been proclaimed and widely discussed, but there is still very little practice and experience on how tourism can lead to the achievement of sustainable development goals. To date, we have found 2 practices that, in our opinion, can really help in achieving SDG . More in our portal

  Visiting museums, excursions, events is perhaps the most important part of smart tourism, because it is these actions that lead to a unique tourist experience. We show everyone: How to buy tickets in advance and not stand in line? https://centersmarttourism.world/entertainments/

  The geographic map has long been the most important travel document. These days, there is no need to buy and carry a paper map with you. The map is in any smartphone. These smartphone apps are very smart and show you where you are, traffic jams, what places are nearby. Unfortunately, many people do not know how to use all the features of electronic maps. This is not difficult to learn from the link https://centersmarttourism.world/google-maps/

  There are many sites on the Internet that offer the search and booking of hotels. How do these differ from each other and how not to get confused among the many offers? Read our new article! https://centersmarttourism.world/hotels/

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It is very important for professionals in the travel industry to know the trends of tourism. Our portal has a special section where we collect data on smart tourism worldwide.  https://centersmarttourism.world/news/trends/

We constantly collect and publish smart tourism news from around the world.  https://centersmarttourism.world/news/

The world around us is changing, and the world of tourism too. Therefore, DMO and DMC must be the first in digital innovation. Our smart tourism experts talk about this. https://centersmarttourism.world/rethinking-dmo/

We discuss open data in tourism. Does it need and to whom? https://centersmarttourism.world/open-data-in-tourism/

Our view for future of touirsm. https://centersmarttourism.world/is-long-term-strategy-necessary-in-tourism/

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 a...