Digital Transformation In The Spotlight

Digital transformation in tourism was in the spotlight in Budapest, Hungary recently as the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) examined how investment in new technology provides the sector with opportunities for innovation as it celebrated World Tourism Day 2018.

The seminar session provided crucial insights into the actors and initiatives leading the digital transformation of the tourism sector and aimed at providing participants with concrete and actionable objectives to take away.

As well, 20 semi-finalists of the 1st UNWTO Tourism Startup Competition gave pitches to investors and tourism leaders of their innovative projects with potential to disrupt the sector. They were selected from over 3,000 applicants from 132 countries. The competition was launched by UNWTO and Spanish tourism leader Globalia to find projects that harness innovation and can change the way we travel.

UNWTO secretary-general Zurab Pololikashvili commented: “UNWTO is proud to have positioned, for the first time, tourism in the global innovation agenda — where it deserves to be because of its economic weight and importance. This is only possible by bringing the private and public sectors together in a meaningful way, and providing opportunities to share ideas, like we have done today.”

Key amongst the conference conclusions was that political support is central to putting tourism at the centre of the global innovation and digital agenda.