Importance of the digital process in tourism

Taking advantage of the technological impulse to face the sector’s challenges and opportunities seems vital to ensure the survival of the industry, which is looking towards a new model of sustainable tourism based on digital transformation. A great challenge, but also a great opportunity for the hotel sector, as it offers solutions to improve its processes and the experience of its customers.

All in all, digitisation and new technologies (such as virtual reality, robotization, ‘contactless’ technology or virtual assistants) stand out as two powerful allies to accelerate the recovery of the tourism sector in ‘pro’ sustainability and process efficiency, as they contribute to the fight against climate change and are decisive allies in protecting the environment. Because without sustainability, there is no future tourism.

What are the opportunities and challenges of digitalisation?

Digitalisation offers multiple opportunities for SMEs and destinations to access new markets and develop new travel products and services. It is all about making sure that in this competitive world your business is optimised to target and reach the ideal customer for your product. Technology can help you do this.

Examples of digitalisation processes in the tourism sector include:

• Digitalisation of daily operations –Building digitisation into your internal business operations, such as linked calendars, email systems and automatic billing processes.
• Big data –Use of software tools to gather and analyse big data to identify a customer’s interests and tailor products to their specific needs.
• Website optimisation –Having your own website and using technology to assess performance, monitor your business’ health and optimise it for your target market.
• Social media –Managing social media accounts and planning and implementing campaigns based on insights gathered from big data.
• Mobile connectivity– Ensuring all your products and services are available via mobile devices.
• Online sales –Selling trips, tours, holidays and other experiences online, either through your own website or via an OTA, using e-commerce platforms.
• Application of new technologies –Adopting technologies like AI (artificial intelligence) – chat bots are an example here – and VR (virtual reality) – for instance, a virtual travel experience.

The process towards full digitalisation of a tourism business is a gradual one. Traditional tourism businesses have a focus on internal operations and creating value for tourists. As they move towards increased digitalisation through digital marketing and online sales, full digitalisation becomes ‘smart’ tourism with a high level of innovation, instant and real-time e-commerce and strong connections with consumers and suppliers. While this presents many opportunities, it also poses challenges.

Opportunities, Difficulties, Motivations and Obstacles of Digitalisation for SMEs

Building digital knowledge, developing skills and creating new products are some of the biggest challenges. In addition, investing in technology can be costly, particularly in areas where the infrastructure is not yet available. However, there are many digital activities that can be adopted as first steps as the digital environment continues to evolve.

Preparing your workforce

A key challenge for tourism businesses in the early stages of the digital transformation process is ensuring that the workforce is prepared. COVID-19 proved extremely disruptive to the travel industry and saw many employees given paid time off through government funding (furloughed), made redundant or asked to work from home. Working from home has become a key factor in digitalisation and a trend that is set to stay to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the industry.

You should familiarise yourself with the following issues:

1. The basics – Ensure you and your team have a good understanding of the technologies required to operate your business. This includes digital-based office systems, your website, and social media platforms.
2. Digital skills training – Providing the necessary and appropriate digital skills training to your staff is essential. Customers have increasingly high expectations of service providers. Your staff must be skilled with technology and have the right people skills to deal with the demands of tech-savvy guests and European suppliers.
3. Distance working – For staff working from home, make sure you invest in the appropriate technology so they are able to do their job effectively remotely. This includes videoconferencing using tools such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom and enabling filesharing using Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive or Dropbox. These services use the cloud, which is online storage, to securely store and share your data.

Use the right tools to operate your business on a day-to-day basis

Managing your business efficiently on a day-to-day basis is important preparation towards full digitalisation. It will also help European buyers to know that you manage your business well and can deal with issues promptly. There are many free or low-cost digital tools available to help you run your business more effectively.

Task management systems

Using a digital task management system to manage daily or regular tasks will help you and your team to maximise productivity. Task management systems usually feature a wide range of functions including:

1. Creating tasks (and/or projects) that can be assigned to team members and include task descriptions, due dates and objectives.
2. Scheduling of tasks on a daily, weekly, monthly or even annual basis
3. Linking tasks to projects and creating visual charts and diagrams to help illustrate them.
4. Project planning features.
5. Enabling communication within tasks between team members, by email or as part of the program.
6. Creating timesheets to allocate costs across a variety of tasks.
7. Coordinating management by creating agendas and/or converting action points to tasks.

Tip:

• There are several online systems available for tour operators. Check out those offered by nTask, Trelloand Wrike. All three offer a free basic package and include upgrades with additional features for a small monthly fee.

Sustainability checker

Embedding sustainability into your tourism business is fast becoming essential to attracting European buyers. Part of becoming a sustainable tourism business is understanding what sustainable actions you are currently taking and where there is room to improve. Digital tools are available to help you assess how sustainable your business is.

This Free Sustainability Check will help you find out and is based on the criteria of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC).

Another is the online business calculator from Carbonfund.org which will help you work out your business’s carbon emissions in seven steps.

Keep up to date with developments in blockchain technology facilitating future supply chain efficiencies

Blockchain is digital technology that improves efficiency and transparency within the supply chain. It is a type of database that contains vast amounts of information (data) stored in blocks and then chained together. This data can be accessed, filtered and analysed quickly by multiple users.

Blockchain is widely predicted to transform the travel industry. This article, What we can expect from blockchain in the tourism industry, offers insights into the potential of blockchain to bring increased safety and transparency to the sector. For more information about how blockchain technology is being used in the tourism industry, read 5 Companies Using Blockchain to Change Travel, which highlights how the technology is being adapted to improve services for customers.

Tip:

• Keep up to date with developments in blockchain technology. Blockchain, which is currently still emerging technology, originated in the cryptocurrency sector.

Maintain vigilance with robust online security

It is essential to keep your business and customers safe from online threats. Breaches of security due to viruses infecting your systems (ransomware or malware) and/or theft of personal data is quite common these days, and criminals keep inventing new ways to steal your data. You must ensure that any digital organisation you do business with has systems in place to keep your data safe.

Phishing uses communication links (emails, text messages) that encourage users to click links in order to infect your devices or network with a virus or take control of computers to steal data. Spear phishing is more targeted and usually addresses named individuals. You must be on your guard and ensure that your staff are too.

Make sure your internet connection is protected by a firewall to protect you against attacks, and that it is regularly updated. Research products on the market, such as those highlighted in this article, The best firewalls for small businesses in 2021. This is especially important for European tour operators, as they must comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), European legislation governing the use of personal data. They need to be sure that you will protect the personal data they provide to you.

To find out more about GDPR, consult the CBI study on What are the requirements for tourism services in the European market.

You should ensure that you have enabled all appropriate malware protection that is provided by your email system, like spam filters. Gmail and Microsoft 365 offer good protection, but you may have to turn on some of the features.

You should also be careful about using peer-to-peer file sharing software like BitTorrent. These programs work by transferring data between a group of computers without the need for a central server and often bypass security systems.

Explore other security features increasingly used by businesses to keep their online activities safe:

• Zero trust platforms – an increasing number of organisations are adopting Zero Trustas an element or component of their trust network architecture and enterprise security strategy. Zero Trust (a Microsoft product) and Mimecast are examples of solutions available on the market.
• Secure web gateways – Some organisations have opted to access the internet through secure web gateways like Zscaler. A secure web gateway is a solution that filters unwanted software/malware from user-initiated internet traffic and enforces corporate and regulatory policy compliance.
• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) – refers to when a user is prompted during the sign in process to provide additional identification on their phone, such as a fingerprint or code sent to them.

Effective password management

Managing passwords that exist in your digital world is an essential management task. You should implement a password management system to ensure efficiency, clarity and safety. Passwords are often compromised these days and users are regularly warned to change their passwords. You can find out for yourself whether your email address or phone number has been compromised on this website: haveibeenpwned.com.

Instead of changing passwords regularly, use strong passwords with complexity. For example, instead of Tiger123 which is short and easy to remember, use a phrase like Tigersarenumber1greatandsplendid, which is long and complex yet still easy to remember.

In addition, consider signing up to use a password manager for business that can automatically generate and store suitable passwords, such as LastPass or 1Password.com

Establish a digital marketing strategy for your tourism business

Digital marketing is concerned with the marketing of products online through electronic devices. It is the easiest and most cost-effective way to reach large numbers of customers and enables you to target the people most likely to be interested in your product. A digital marketing strategy helps to establish the foundation for all digital marketing activities to ensure that activities achieve set goals and/or can be adapted as required.

A digital marketing strategy is an essential business tool to maximise the efficiency and success of a marketing campaign. Digital marketing involves the management and implementation of several elements, including:

• Website – managing your website, both the front end and analysing usage and statistics, and assessing website health.
• SEO – search engine optimisation to optimise your website so that its pages rank higher in search engines such as Google.
• Email marketing – Keeping in touch with stakeholders and customers via email (e.g. newsletters)
• Social media – managing your social media accounts and campaigns.
• Content generation – generating content from different sources, including user-generated content (UGC).

Tips:

• Read the CBI study on How to be a successful tourism company onlinefor more information about building a website and working with OTAs.
• Invest time in learning the basics of analysing.

Sell tourism products online

In this digital age, more and more consumers are choosing to make purchases online. This includes travel products such as airline tickets, hotel accommodation, holiday packages, multi-day travel experiences, short trips, car hire and so on. The biggest benefit to consumers from making purchases online is convenience. The world is a busy place and having speedy transactions that instantly fulfillfulfil a need has become extremely important to customers across all consumer groups.

Being able to purchase your travel products online is especially important in the B2C market (business to consumer). The main ways of selling travel products online directly to touriststravellers is through your own website and/or through OTAs.

In the B2B market (business to business), your website should be clear, informative and transparent so potential buyers will be reassured of the quality of your offer and want to do business with you.

Tips

• Read the CBI study on How to be a successful tourism company onlinefor more information about building a website and working with OTAs.
• Watch the CBI webinars on How to create effective online contentand Let’s create effective online content (which focuses on online storytelling) to increase your content generation skills.

E-commerce platforms for tourism providers

To embed an e-commerce platform within your website, you should research the e-commerce solutions that exist in the market. Key features you should look for include an intuitive display of packages along with immediate online booking. It is vitally important that an e-commerce platform links seamlessly with your website to avoid any conflicts like double-booking.

Source: Acorn Tourism Consulting

There are several elements involved in tour operator booking systems that you should be aware of:

• Booking management– to enable you to deal with enquiries, make reservations and take online bookings from tourists.
• Itinerary creation – to enable tourists to gather information for their trip, including flight and accommodation if appropriate.
• Point of sale and payment processing – this is the sales element through which you process payment of the booking.
• Customer database and customer relationship manager (CRM) – this element enables you to keep track of your customers and what their needs are so you can target others like them more effectively.
• Reporting – to help you run your business more effectively.
• Customer reviews and feedback system – the facility for tourists to post their reviews, which will help you drive sales and increase the number of customers.

If you don’t have a website already, you can consider using an online website builder like Wix, Squarespace or Weebly, which all have a built-in e-commerce platform. There are many on the market today and you can research online to find others. Articles like this one, Top Travel E-commerce Sites Revealed, are a good place to start.

If you do have a website but no e-commerce functionality, you can sign up to a ‘bolt-on’ e-commerce platform like Trekksoft or Redzy. Alternatively, Stripe facilitates digital payment for online payments and is used by many companies, both large and small. The CBI study on How to implement online payment is also a good source of information.

Tip:

• Explore these websites and make a list of all the possible options before deciding which route is right for your business.

Make your website mobile-friendly

If you have your own website, it is essential that it works well on mobile devices, including smartphonessmart phones and tablets. There are some interesting statistics published by We are Social that demonstrate the importance of mobile devices in the consumer world today.

• There are 5.22 billion unique mobile phone users worldwide, 66.6% of the global population. This figure grew by 117 million in 2020.
• Smartphones account for almost 80% of mobile handsets and there are 6.4 billion subscriptions worldwide.
• The number of smartphones in use is growing at an annual rate of 5.6%, and 1 million new smartphones are activated every day.
• Mobile phones are the most widely used device to access the internet, accounting for 55.7% of all web traffic.
• Most internet users (92.1%) use mobile devices to browse online some of the time, as well as also using laptops and computers.

Digital Usage Around the World

Source: 2021 Global Overview Report, Datareportal, We Are Social

Mobile technology is also evolving fast. While 4G is widely available in Europe, 5G looks set to impact the mobile landscape and faster connections will enable richer content experiences while on the move. It is estimated that 5G will account for 50% of all mobile traffic by 2026. This means that consumers will be more demanding in terms of the quality of content they expect to be able to access on their phones while they are out and about.

1. Does your website display simply, clearly and logically? Which of the images in Figure below does it most resemble? You can clearly see the difference between the two and which offers the most user-friendly view.
2. Is it easy to navigate? Remember that it is harder to navigate a website on a mobile phone than it is on a laptop or computer because of its small size.
3. Is it easy to respond to the call to action, like ‘Book Now’ or ‘Make an Enquiry’? Make sure as few steps (taps or clicks) as possible are needed to complete a transaction.

Figure: Mobile-Friendly vs Mobile Unresponsive

Source: Google

Tips:

• To make your website mobile-friendly, find out whether the current build can be adapted to display a mobile-friendly version of your current site. If it doesn’t, you should consider building a new one using a website builder that provides a template that is mobile responsive – most online website builders do so these days. For more information on building websites, download the CBI study on How to be a successful tourism business onlineand scroll to tip 5, How to build a website.
• This useful article, How to make your website mobile-friendly, gives additional detail to help you understand the steps required.

Develop mobile self-guided tours for smartphones

A growth area in travel app development are mobile self-guided tours (SGTs). These offer an integrated way for tourists to visit an attraction and/or destination that is cheaper and, in these times of COVID-19, a safer, socially distanced alternative to in-person group tours. SGTs are popular with tourists, as they are flexible (no fixed departure times), offer privacy and are lower cost options.

Mobile SGTs use GPS information and involve prepared itineraries downloaded onto mobile devices (usually a smartphone) and users follow a route by foot, bike, car, boat or even public transport, depending upon the tour. Usually, apps are downloaded for free and tours are available to purchase via the app at a much lower cost than a physical tour.

Examples of tour operators that have successfully developed SGTs include Sherpa Tours, which has developed more than 150 SGTs in 80 cities around the world, and includes an Augmented Reality (AR) guide, a ‘Sherpa’ in the app. Most tours are priced at around US$4.99 and some are free.

You can create your own mobile app using app builders, such as My Tours or STQRY, which has several SGT products – both operate on a monthly fee basis.

Alternatively, you can create your own tours on tour creator platforms such as Geotourist, a walking tour app centered around user-generated content, or AnyTour. Tours you create are linked to your website (which should be optimised for mobile use) through a QR code which enables the user to download the app and trail. Typically, you can list your tour for free on these platforms and they take a commission for each tour sale.