Today on Tourpreneur we hear from three listeners who attended the TIS Seville. What did they learn? And what are they going to do differently in their businesses as a result of attending?
TIS is a new one for me so here is the official blurb.
Tourism Innovation Summit is aimed to help tourism and travel industry to face all those short and long-term challenges. Seville will host again three days of disruptive masterclasses where success stories of travel are going on stage. Digitalization and innovation will be main discussion and plenty of solutions will be presented to the tourism industry to address these challenges. An event to find the right partners to evolve their digital strategies and implement them. A wide variety of technologies will be showcased in order to help tourism businesses become more competitive and, more importantly, restart the new ways of travel.
There are many buzzwords here so we thought it would be useful to get the lowdown on this event from three tourpreneurs who attended TIS and Arival @TISWe have two first time guests on the show today, please welcome.
Filipa LouléFounder at Portuguese For a Day Tours
Jon French – Regional Sales Manager, Redeam.com
and let’s welcome back Peter Syme, Tourpreneur, adventurer, and digital transformation expert
This week on Tourpreneur, the Tour Operator Podcast:
- What prompted our guests to attend TIS Seville
- How much innovation was actually on offer at TIS
- Why Peter didn’t think there was much mind-blowing innovation at TIS Seville but plenty of companies reinventing tech from the past.
- What our guests were looking to learn at TIS.
- How was the TIS @ Arival event.
- Why the panel was left unimpressed by the Google Things to Do Panel at Arival @TIS
- Peter shares which areas he thinks technology adoption needs to speed up. and why the biggest weakness in the whole industry is the lack of digital awareness and leadership at the operational level. ‘It is understandable but technology adoption just has to speed up.’
- Filipa shares what kind of technology would help her tour business.
- Channel Manager for tour operators. Peter Syme, said that a small operator is unlikely to need a channel manager.‘A restech has the connections that I need and allows me to do the pricing I need to do. So for a small operator, I really don’t see the need for a channel manager. For other sectors of the industry — attractions and high volume — I would be using a channel manager.’
And hear why Redeam’s Jon French disagrees with Peter.
- Hear how much time it takes our tour operators to work with all their resellers and OTA partners
- Why it’s not always about price when it comes to customers booking tours and experiences.
- Did the Google Things to To Do session at Arival@TIS equip Filipe with the knowledge they needed to take advantage of it?
- Why Peter did not attend the Google Things To Do Arival @TIS session and why Shane has not hosted a discussion about it on the Tourpreneur podcast.
- There was no love in the room for Viator Accelerate but listen to why Peter thinks it could be good for operators who know their margins but maybe not so good for smaller operators.
- The importance of learning from other industries and verticals within the travel industry
- What our guests will do differently in their tour businesses as a result of attending TIS Seville.
- Will our guests return to TIS Seville in 2022?
Resources Mentioned
- Read Peter Syme’s 15 takeaways from TIS Seville.
- Google Things to Do – Helping Travelers Discover New Things To Do
- Arival Berlin 2022
- Arival
- Tourism Innovation Summit
- Peter Syme on Linkedin
- Redeam
- Redeam Video – What is a Channel Manager and how does it work for activities, tours and attractions.
(Full disclosure, Tourpreneur Host Shane Whaley is the VP of Sales at Redeam.)