Reimagined Cities: Can Cities Leverage Urban Design & Tech to Attract the Next Generation Traveler?

[Music] dear industry partners media professionals and distinguished panelists my name is chang chipe i'm from the singapore tourism board thank you for your presence and time this afternoon i am delighted to be part of the singapore reimagine global conversations forum series and in particular this addition taking place today at dubai expo 2020 in partnership with intelligence squared limited reshaping the future of global travel at a time when tourism is at a critical crossroads would not be possible through a singular effort this is why the singapore tourism board has created singapore reimagined global conversations a forum series that aims to provide a global platform for business leaders across the tourism industry and beyond to come together exchange ideas and trigger new conversations and collaborations to collectively reshape international travel singapore despite being small in size is big on ideas we are also passionate about possibilities and are keen to share insights and learnings in the areas of experience technology and enhanced safety measures as an innovative nation built on passion and resilience we are committed to leading and charting a new path together with our local and global partners so that we can all emerge stronger from the pandemic the first global conversations forum on reimagining experiences took place in september 2021 shed some light on the heightened needs of travelers in the new covet 19 world based on findings from a report shared by our data partner wgsn there is a rise in travelers known as the mindful explorer those who are conscious of the environment and seek sustainable choices during their travel journey as borders gradually reopen the following questions remain how can cities respond to this shifting travel needs and new consumer needs and can they do so with urban design and technology the dubai addition of our global reimagine simple reimagine global conversations seeks to address these questions our panel of industry experts will touch on the new trends in urban design and technology while discussing exciting trends within the tourism industry it is my pleasure to introduce our moderator for today sara khan who has recently been appointed as editor-in-chief of traveler middle east sarah represents a new generation of modern travelers and will be bringing her contemporary and global perspective to the discussion i'll now pass over the time to sarah khan and the esteemed speakers i wish you all a very fruitful and engaging session thank you and have a great [Applause] afternoon hi everyone can you hear me thank you so much for the introduction mr chipe and thank you all for being here my name is sarah khan and i'm editor-in-chief of connie nass traveler middle east and i'd love to welcome you all to this special event organized by the singapore tourism board in partnership with intelligence squared and the singapore reimagined global conversations we're all here today because we're all we all love travel and we're all invested in the future of travel and until now travel has had a lot to do with art culture food architecture these are the things that really drew people to cities when they were looking for their dream destinations but the last two years have put all of us and even the most avowed globetrotters into a period of stasis where we've all been forced to regroup and reflect on what travel means to us and also how we intend to travel more thoughtfully in the future the next generation traveler craves meaningful trips they're more eco-conscious and they want to visit cities that are clean green and serene knowing that they are helping and partnering with helping the planet and not harming the planet and after two years of social distancing i think we all can agree that human interaction and things like live in-person events are more important than ever before because we are all craving those interpersonal connections and we've also become much more mindful of how our movements and how our interactions actually impact those who live in the cities that we love to visit so to join me in this conversation i'm delighted to have three brilliant speakers coming on board and i would love to invite them to the stage to have this really exciting conversation first we have dr barca denisha abu bakr who is founder of elevated consultancy and training and co-founder of world women tourism dr nisha is a tourism consultant practitioner academic and corporate trainer and has more than 25 years of experience in the tourism hospitality and mice industry welcome dr nisha thank you so much for being here [Applause] and we also have joining us remotely today michael mcgill who is managing director at rsp middle east and north africa michael mcgill has trained in the uk and prior to joining rsp was employed in a number of high-profile international architectural practices since then he has led design teams to win numerous international architectural competitions welcome michael and then finally we have chavier englada who is managing director at accenture innovation digital transformation energy transition chavier brings 25 years of combined management consulting and operational experience in the digital fintech high-tech media and telecommunications industries in europe asia africa and the middle east chavier was also md at accenture leading on strategy strategy technology innovation and experiences at expo right here where we all are today so we have a lot to learn from you about how things have changed here he's also worked with many of the designers here to create these visitor journeys that we've all been experiencing welcome javier thank you [Applause] so why are we here today having this conversation i think we've all seen borders have been reopening slowly um and we're finally able to start dreaming up these new travel plans and so the questions that we're asking and talking about today are actually much more practical now than theoretical and with our panel we want to explore how cities are approaching these shifting travel trends and new consumer needs in urban design and technology so just a little bit of an overview of what's going to happen today's event will run for one hour for the first 15 minutes i'll invite our speakers to give their opening statements and in the second half we're hoping to have a really lively engaged debate and conversation would love to have you all join as well with your questions we'd love to have everybody talking about this as we pave the way for the future we would love to also continue the conversation on twitter so please tweet us or tweet about the event using the hashtags hashtag iq2 and hashtag stb and so now we're going to talk about what exactly it is that we mean by reimagine cities and can cities leverage urban design and technology to attract the next generation traveler i think a lot of these conversations have been having happening concurrently throughout the pandemic where we've been talking about the importance of urban design the importance of technology the importance of sustainable practices as we are understanding and navigating this post-pandemic world and so now this conversation lets us bring these conversation points together under one umbrella to really talk about how these all interlate and inter interconnect and interrelate to each other so around urban design this is a fascinating time for urban design where you know there's so many different ways that people have been approaching the how to navigate this new world in places like europe we've had to work with existing centuries old infrastructure in places like right here in the middle east things are much more dynamic and evolving and can change rapidly and then singapore is a unique place that's at the junction of old and new where past meets the future at every corner sustainability we've all been aspiring to be more mindful and thoughtful about how we practice our living in our travels and how our movements impact the environment and others around us and then technology has been our most vital tool in battling the pandemic i think we've all seen how important it's been for implementing new safety measures with less reduced touch points at airports with ai solutions to really help us travel more safely and easily so with that in mind who is the next generation traveler i think we've all seen that the pandemic has created this new class of traveler that didn't really exist two years ago we've all thought of global nomads as these free-spirited young travelers who just jet set around the world with freelance income as the you know moving from place to place as the spirit moves them but with all this remote work that we've seen in the last two years this has created a new challenge new opportunity that blurs the lines between holiday travel business travel and actual residency and so this resulting hybrid traveler tends to be more thoughtful and deliberate in how they choose their destinations and cities that they're looking to because they look to their trips as more temporary relocations and not just holidays and they're often more eco-conscious and look to their cities with an idea of what they're looking for for residents not tourists so this is a whole new world that we're emerging into and i'm really excited to learn more about it through our fascinating panel and so first i'd love to invite dr nisha to the stage for your opening statement thank you [Applause] thank you sarah and um very good afternoon to everybody um what i'm going to be sharing with you in the few minutes if i can have my slides please it's based on research uh how do we understand the next generation traveler in terms of their attitudes their needs and their motivations so and the next i'm going to be touching on is what are the implications for urban design and technology and finally some examples from my part of the world which is singapore the next slide please so when we look at the new generation traveler there are three dimensions we need to look at as far as their motivation and behavior and their needs concerned so the first one is authenticity so this is a generation that is very their travel is a construction of the identity so they are very conscious they are very curious and cautious traveler so authenticity is at two levels one is with respect to nature with respect to their sense of well-being and thirdly with sustainability so destinations which tend to be favorable to these destinations are those that leverage on greening concepts so green spaces green corridors one that has got a decarbonization agenda walkability pedestrianization those sort of destinations tend to appeal to them destinations that have got very high green index for example if you look at singapore it was by mit recognized as the top country in the world for its green index which is talking about the green canopy that is uh above our city um we have a vision of 2020 to have 80 of our buildings green right so these destinations would tend to appeal the next dimension is authenticity with respect to lived and real experiences so we are talking about this generation favoring uh local experiences living close to local neighborhoods so what would that mean of in terms of physical and digitally bringing these localized experiences which are very personal to these new generation travelers so i want to introduce this concept of creative place making here because the concept of clear creative place making would avoid the whole idea of serial reproduction in cities or what we call plagiarism of cities right so what this means is in creative place making we need to understand what is the distinctive character or the dna of your destination or our destinations and try to leverage on the creative industries like film design um fashion and of course architecture and using that bring the the the uh distinctive character which is important or which could have meaningful and inspiring connection with the new generation traveler how do we do that so perhaps in the panel i'll share a little bit about what we have done here in singapore to bring that sort of authenticity with the new generation traveler the second dimension is flexibility convenience and choice and this is one generation that in the way that they work the way they live and the way they play they need that choice and that flexibility so how do we provide that to them in terms of whether they are a b leisure traveler traveling on behalf of business but they want to have that flexibility of also playing and experiencing that destination can we bring about urban cells which is basically a 15-minute city that provides the core tourism services or could we even look at decentralization of core tourism services to peripheral areas which are suburban and not congested in city centers because they favor local neighborhoods and local experiences can we look at work-life integration where we use smart city technology and tourism to bring that sort of an integration with their work-life balance right when they travel so whether it is going to be sharing economies like we work sort of work spaces that are found very close to neighborhood areas where they can actually have that sort of a experience of integrating this so we will talk more about that in just a bit the final is how this uh generation has got a preference for an integrated and interactive world so what do we mean by that is that this generation transcends the boundaries of a physical world and a digital world it transcends the boundaries of a professional world and a personal world so how do we integrate that and and how do we use approaches like smart city planning to ensure that this tool can be integrated for them they have a very high regard for a digital economy they've got a very high regard for a sharing economy and for example cities which are instagramable tend to appeal to them and we are very delighted today singapore is now the number one most instagrammable city in the world so that appeals to to this particular generation so um can cities also provide intelligent mobility and that is important for them because it's sustainable but at the same time provides convenience provides flexibility but how can we also allow for the b leisure traveler or the business traveler who prefers to work from anywhere so this is a generation it's not but work from home but it's work from anywhere so can we use smart technology and tourism to be able to allow them to work from anywhere either a living lab concept that i see the district 2020 is all about right or we can provide for digital twin where they can actually do that when they are able to stay away from the country of residence and to be in another city where they can work and enjoy tourism experiences at the same time so um the smart tourism concept that we are all talking about today would be where we address the final but i just want to end uh the the presentation here by talking about at least the three concepts here that we need to think very carefully in in a post smart post smart approach to moving towards a wise approach and i'll say a little bit more about that because if we are focusing too much on smart tourism then i think we might be very homogenized in just a bit and we have to start thinking about a more human-centered approach to tourism because it's tourism is very much a relational concept and not something very consumptive and that's what i feel that smart tourism tends to do and very quickly i just want to share with you the next slide which actually features uh singapore as a biophilic city and the word biophilic tend to be very important today is not just about us being a city in a garden or sitting in the nature and having a thick green canopy and green index but the biophilic nature talks about the interrelationship of us and the ecosystem and we focus a lot on that sort of an ecosystem where we respect the nature that is around us and how much of emphasis we give to that in terms of our liveability in in singapore so we'll probably touch that later on in the panel and the next um slide is looking at a a small city we are a very small city but with i think very audacious goals and very big dreams and one of the dreams that we we hope would eventualize very soon is this a particular district which is a tengah district which is in the neighborhood but it's going to be one of the best in terms of smartness but at the same time it's got to go have farm ways for people to engage in that it would have also got gardens a very thick canopy around that is going to be car light in fact all cars will be underground and not above the ground right and it is going to be filled with nature but local community is going to be there and inclusiveness is going to be uh the primary concern in in this particular development the final development i just want to share with you is is again a very big ambitious goal which is the next slide please uh which is the punggol district park this is the epitome of smartness so this is this is going to be the latest where we have academic institutions uh scholars and and students are going to be the experimentation is going to happen innovation is going to happen as well carlite streets it's going to be filled with waterways and waterways are already there a living community is in there and it is going to be also been incubation area for for companies that are going to be in there as well very interesting idea it's it's unfolding very quickly and beautifully and i'm looking forward to this as well so finally this is the best news i've seen recently before i came in here that we are now the most instagrammable place in the world so with that i end uh my short presentation and hopefully during the panel i will share a little bit more about the experiences in from singapore thank you thank you so much dr nisha we're definitely looking forward to hearing a little bit more as we continue the conversation later but for now i'd like to turn it over to michael who is remote hi michael so nice to see you hi thank you so much for being with us yeah thank you for the invitation and unfortunately i can't be there in person but i will try my best to virtually contribute to the conference thank you we're looking forward to having you thank you and i obviously am i'm a passionate architect and who believes that design and technology are key generators in the development of our future cities our cities are inhabited by residents and travelers who interact with the city through different experiences it is these experiences that i believe can attract new generations to our cities in the future before the covet pandemic there was already a desire in my industry to look into sustainability wellness and technology to be the design trader generators for our buildings of the future but since the covet pandemic this interest has accelerated extremely with more focus on people's health and well-being so first of all i just want to talk about the sustainable experience when you travel to any new city or you live in an existing one the integration of a sustainable living has become a key factor in our projects we want to create a stronger connection to the natural environment we want to use local natural building materials to reduce the carbon footprint of our buildings it's these ideas i want to share if if we look at the first project in zanghun china so this is very interesting it was inspired a lot by what our team has done in singapore but it was actually looking at the full city and identifying parks and green spaces uh that we uh connect vitalize basically with the aim of allowing the residents of that city to get closer to nature and to experience the natural resources that they have of nature in their city so if you go move on to what we what we call these are connectors so we created a series of connectors through these forests which actually connected into the city along these connectors we created activity pavilions for well-being for relaxation for fitness and so the idea is that nature is driven into the city and people can access it another project which also looks at the environment is a project i done in sri lanka this project is a high-end hospitality project in a very beautiful site in sri lanka and our main focus here is actually to have the lightest possible footprint into nature that we can possibly achieve so you can see these pods are actually the rooms and they're lightly imposed into nature so we completely restrict respect and work with nature in our design and then the next project in terms of sustainability which is very important to us is materiality so this is a resort hotel in in china but the local timber and the local source of timber was very rich in this in this site so we wanted to use that natural resource to develop the architecture into a modern vernacular architecture in this hotel in all our projects wellness is also very important in promoting the well-being of the guests and the residents of the city the next generation of young and old people are more concerned about their physical and mental well-being as designers we are responding to this through new building typologies there is a growing interest in fitness hotels wellness resorts where the guest is attracted to having an immersive regenerative experience i've recently designed a wellness resort which we can see and which is actually a smaller scale hotel which is more respectful that people want to be in a smaller scale experience we've regenerated gardens and in this facility your diet is controlled your fitness regime is controlled you've got medical diagnostic and the whole idea is you revitalize your body and mind on a more urban context and we can see a project that we've done which is actually a fitness hotel on the next slide and this is where fitness is a dna of the hospitality experience with high activity spaces low activity spaces this is a running machine running facility inside the lobby um and we're actually looking because people want to exercise and want to take part in these activities and to look after their well-being and we even explored this further into the rooms of the hotels where you actually bring in gym equipment so people can have that experience inside the room as well through all of this technology has been a driver in our designs and will be and i believe technology is there to enhance the experience with the building and the city fabric as designers we envision a future where technology and the environment is a seamless experience this can be seen in a project that we recently developed for a client where he wanted to push the boundaries of a futuristic hospitality experience in this hotel we were challenging the realms of engineering construction technology to create an iconic design instagramable as you say and also looking at the room design where we're looking at touch services and the seamless experience of technology and people we are currently working with our clients real money future cities with the vision to attract future generations to our projects and i look forward to discussing these poems further in discussions today thank you so much michael [Applause] thank you and as somebody who obviously works at a travel magazine i'm very i've seen some of these developments coming into hotel projects and i'm really excited to see more about the hotel of the future and chavi looking forward to hearing what you have to say about technology especially as it relates to our experience here at expo thank you thank you very much so i wanted to start saying that what we've lived in the last couple of years have been a massive disruption of nearly everything right so on one side we've seen a massive disruption of everything we're doing in the way we live and the way we work and this impacted all our industries all our businesses and um just a second impacted in a way that only a few manage to get it right and this is important because the reality is that we're seeing wildfires in australia we're seeing uh disruptions in economies in in china in in multiple areas and then covet hit and kovitt brought us all of us home and we saw a few industries a few within and in the trouble in the tourism industry we saw a few players that really got it right because they digitized they brought technology really at the center and we're going to talk a lot about technology as an enabler and we're going to reflect about how expo has been a reflect of this as well throughout the journey we saw that the leaders in the digital space pretty pandemic were 2x doing better than any other of the players around that so they were doing better revenues they were engaging better with the customers the pandemic their digital readiness allowed them to accelerate even further and as they come out and recover the digital readiness accelerated and they are 5x growing faster than the rest of the players right and why this happen because the reality as human beings we faced four completely new realities one the human experience all of a sudden we were all locked in our house we were completely deprivated from the interaction the human interaction what we have today which is so precious technology dramatically changed and realized things that i've never seen before take the covet vaccine so before in the past we we needed 10 years to synthesize a vaccine today moderna through the technology they implemented at scale they had digital studios everything connected bringing data ai together they managed to and synthesize a vaccine that is effective still date much faster than ever seen before then work we stopped working from the office and we started working from home we stopped traveling all of a sudden and we managed to do things that we thought were never possible before from home and of course all these there was a common denominator a more incredible focus on sustainability because if in the past we were saying that every future business needs to have digital at the center what we're seeing now to survive every business in the future and travel and tourism needs to reflect a lot on that it's a sustainable sustainability is going to be the name of the game because if we've gone through a massive pandemic impact recovered what we're heading through the climate change is going to make us 10 times or 100 times even worse unless we take action now sustainability needs to be from the top to the bottom a priority so there's there's a new way that we're seeing that tourism will be reimagined reinvented right so there is a magic tour uh that we're seeing for travel for tourism to go through where the experiences are going to be fundamentally better personalized interactions are going to be absolutely data-driven and micro sense ultra-convenient and we're going to see priorities completely reshaped and why we're seeing four key technologies that enable that one is distribution ledgers everything related to blockchain and so on is going to be at the core second ai data data everywhere to personalization we need data across third ex-rbr mr extended reality virtual reality there's a lot of things we can showcase without having to be there anticipating for a trouble for an experience and last but not least quantum to maximize the time to market on those and the reality we're seeing that executive in the travel we've done a survey a global survey as extension across the end industry and we're seeing 92 percent of the executives of all the companies understand that the travel and tourism industry is changing rapidly and they're testing things innovating on things but they are still not scaling them so it's time to scale it's no longer time for pilots and not only that they're seeing that these technologies will change dramatically in the next few years how they operate but the reality today a lot of the the processes still really remain unchanged so there is a call to action for faster movement right leveraging all these technologies to accelerate and and and this will make uh impact about how operations needs to be fully re-engineered so how we use and how we manage these technologies to do better crew schedules the maintenance of the fleet and so on there's so many things we can do through technology as well the individual the convenience needs to be refined so robots ai can be applied at scale to optimize experiences to to breach the gaps of languages and so on and but last but not least we need to re-imagine travel with virtual tours with virtual experiences and so on anticipating i'm going to show some experiences what we've done here in expo now and to close the customer the customers is to be completely reconsidered how do we treat the customer how do we operate with them how do we engage with them right and now bring it quickly into the middle east the middle east is a a number of economies that were oil centric and are still oil sensitive today and they're massively pivoting into diversification they all have the vision 2030s and we will see that all those bring trouble and tourism really at the center of this and expo is a great example of this i recall when we were starting this i was part i was i had the privilege to be part of the design from scratch of the experience of everything you see here from the technology from the digitization and the vision was let's make this the best experience not only of a traditional expo which is business to business but a business to consumer with a lot of uh new experiences underpinned through technologies on foot on cueing on retail on everything we said we're going to discuss more on the panel on this right and all these bringing the two parts the human side together with the technology we're going to talk more about that and to do this to do this many different dimensions but we always started by the customer experience we identified what do we the visitors of expo want to do what type of archetypes of visits we're going to have right the ones that come from for leisure the ones that come from business the government ones the way they interact and how you should i use data ai how should i use innovation in the cloud all these pool of technologies really made the difference so for us sustainability technology and of course the human site at the center and i'd like to close with this quote and hopefully have a more debate around how we'll deliver all this extra experience together thank you thank you so much javier [Applause] thank you to you and thank you to all of our panelists for their opening statements and so now we're going to start the discussion portion and i would love for anybody to also raise their hands and ask questions as we go along the way but first i wanted to start with something that i've just had on my mind a lot as we've been kind of going through this pandemic where we were on a different trajectory everybody was before 2019 and when it came to a lot of the topics we're talking about today with hospitality the hotel industry was definitely moving towards a trend of you know really communal spaces and shared living and things like that in sustainability we were all trying to think of our own personal footprints and what we could do with single-use plastics and things like that and avoiding that and just kind of avoiding harsh chemicals and just how we interacted with our environments on a personal level and with technology as well we were kind of doing different things and then we've had all these pivots that have been happening so with technology the qr code is something i've been thinking about a lot it was something that was pretty much in 2019 nobody knew what to do with and kind of was not really there now it's been back from the dead where it's a vital part of the post-pandemic life and with sustainability on us you know on the other note it's sort of like we were going towards this direction but now there's been a lot more masks everywhere and you know people people using harsher chemicals when they do their cleaning because they're so nervous and then with hospitality obviously it's a lot of social distancing and that means we can't have the communal spaces so i'm really curious to hear from each of you about some of the trajectories we were on and the types of pivots that you've seen and that we've had to do in each of our different spaces and so i thought perhaps we could start with michael because this is something we've seen a lot with hospitality where you've had to reimagine the way a lot of these hotels and architect these spaces are designed now for the new normal so michael i'd love to hear your thoughts yes sarah um the the the trend at the minidim is obviously more intimate and hotels that we're designing are smaller they're more dispersed and the spaces and the connection they have with nature is stronger and so i guess coming at a hotel now it might be a smaller more intimate hotel that hotel will be located deeper into the nature and then there will be activities that people will then go and experience the environment more rather than a very large scale urban hotel which would have been of the trend maybe five or ten years ago and our clients are now looking at these more discrete smaller and dedicated experiences for travelers and then obviously in terms of the urban hotel we're saying that there's a trend with a business leisure that people when they go on business they want to have their exercise activities they want to have the things that they're used to and but obviously they want to do it in their room or they want to do it in a more secure environment rather than in large gatherings of people and then it's also challenging because a lot of the design that you've been working on has been in the works for a long time so what sort of pivots have you had to make in some of the projects that you're already working on to keep in mind some of these new changes and needs yeah well a lot of our clients and i it's it's a lot of exploration so they're revisioning re-exploring and and they're they're really um you know it's changing on a daily basis really um and then i think someone just mentioned him you know it's it's taking the next big step to turning these visions into reality because then that takes a lot of investment construction periods can be up to three four years so um it's very much the clients are still waiting to see what happens um but obviously they do these smaller boutique which are we we believe is a safer investment for the clients they're they're moving ahead with those rather than the larger scale projects but i i don't know what is your feeling your experience well i'd actually love to hear more from both of you as well well one of the things i would like to say is that the nature of trouble that we we we we had in the past where business and malaysia were quite balanced if you will and growing heavily and all the infrastructure was catered for that is pivoting now because companies have seen that you can be you can have a productive work remotely you don't need 100 of the times the face-to-face interaction which is always very relevant in some occasions but in many others not if it were only three months of pandemic that wouldn't have not settled within the pnl of the companies and it's been two years and it's continuing and businesses are continuing to prove so i think there is a re-imagination about what the future of travel will take for business right even for leisure right because they may come earlier back into or or back into normal but business a lot of the business travel will never eventually get where it was it needs to be reimagined yeah right and i think here this is where the technologies the xr vr and so on we've seen we all zoom wamp uh webex and so on and continue to push so i think this is one of the major disruptors from these days and will change the infrastructure hospitality and everything yeah and also actually on hospitality and just actual as it relates to spaces the business travelers are now traveling with their families because there's remote school and because both partners are often working so now it's not just a business traveler would have a single hotel room and that's all they needed and they needed the technology infrastructure now they need to have space and they need to actually think of business travel combined with family travel it's this new hybrid traveler we're talking about yeah i mean if you look at the statistics in the research when you look at the new generation traveler we have 94 claiming that they will do be leisure travel in in the recovery phase you know so whether destinations are going to be prepared in terms of how do you entice the leisure travelers to come to your destination with that infrastructure mixed developments for example and also in terms of smart technology that will support them from working from anywhere in the world and and we are not talking about short span of time perhaps we could also look at prolonged periods of time where people would actually move to another destination and work from there so we have new words like you know slow nomads for example they are nomadic when they are working but they're going to another destination but they prefer a slower lifestyle because the pandemic whether you like it or not has affected us emotionally mentally and socially so that's one thing that we need to look at and i think in a very hyper-connected world we also see a heightened sense of loneliness that has happened during the pandemic as well so uh how do we use smart technology to create a relational sort of work when people travel or relational tourism experiences when people travel becomes very important for us to think about so technology we've got to be very careful about the overuse of that and smartness of technology and city planning because again we are in a very unprecedented and extraordinary time where although we are hyper connected but we are also looking at a situation where people are uh emphasizing bonding yeah and if you if you couple this with the sense of um sustainability so people is more and more conscious about the carbon footprint yeah they live right on every step they do and you see new generations even more aware of that so i would say that there is a call to action as well on that that will change the pattern of behaviors of consumers but then how do we do that authentically because i think now we're also seeing sustainability as a buzzword right so how are the destinations that you're familiar with actually leveraging what their efforts and their impacts are in a way that actually feels authentic and relates to the travelers and really entices them it's going to be a combination it's going to be a combination of things because there's indeed people is more conscious and and it will imply first from the architectural side it's a call to action to you guys because you'll need to rethink spaces that as you were mentioning people travel with the family in a laser space or in a maybe lower cost space so it happened in the states right so the bay area that used to be super expensive and so on saw a lot of immigrants going into lower cost areas within the states because then they could and they could work remotely perfectly well so created booms of opportunity elsewhere so there's migration flows that will change and so this requires urban planning architecture to cater for all these new types of consumption yeah and it's also an interesting opportunity for cities because i think in the early the first phase of the pandemic in 2020 people were more leaving the cities for more remote areas but now because as you're saying we're seeking these human interactions and we're missing a lot of the dynamism of the cities that we love so now there is an opportunity for cities to attract those people back who are kind of out and seeking those socially distant isolated destinations indeed and then shavi i would actually love to hear more from you because obviously we are at expo and um you know technology was been a driving factor for exo from the beginning but obviously with everything that happened with the pandemic you've had to pivot you've had to make a lot of changes add new technology and new experiences to make this viable and to make it the amazing event that it is today so can you talk a little bit about that journey with expo specifically indeed so actually we i recall starting from this was a pile of sand one tree the tree of life nothing else and a design a concept and we said how can we ensure that this and we didn't even know about kobit it was not completely unheard of so we wanted to make already by design the most sustainable space ever which means because exports in general most of the buildings are dropped are not misused else everywhere in the world right we have exp and we said no by design we want more 80 or more percent of the construction remains and that's why it's very important to plan upfront what's going to happen after expo so that is the legacy of expo and how we make this uh the smartest city on earth with cloud 5g and so on so that it can be embraced as a hub for innovation companies and so on so it was by the design of it right and and all these took us the design through how the space needs to be the experiences need to be and the technology on this right and and today when when you scroll this this uh street you see the robots from talabad delivering you you you see the drones doing shows and there so somewhat but we have the airport here so you need to complete new airspace protected from the drones here because we have the airport and you cannot have interferences so a lot of things were had to be considered to be overlaid to create this so one of the things we said this is the smart the smartest city today in the world because there are so many layers but it's an invisible technology yeah we don't we didn't want the technology to be visible everywhere there's there's so many video uh surveillance to ensure to avoid the stampedes to avoid all this but all this needs to be invisible to make sure that we make it the most human and sustainable possible right so it was by design it's exciting it's been really exciting to see it all play out too or to not see it the things that are not visible correct and to see how seamlessly it works and and just maybe just one other remark is when kobit hit a lot of the design of the spaces were very touched yeah so everything the interaction was about touching this and experiences so a lot a lot of the effort was how to make touch less how to take biometrics to be able to recognize faces to be able to so it took a lot of effort of re-engineering what in the beginning yeah was more a touch driven experience right so these are things that uh from the uh from the hindsight seemed seemed simple but it required a lot of effort to pivot and thanks to the technology underlay allowed to uh reshape and innovate on on the solutions that we we developed well it's amazing and i think we can all agree that it's been really fascinating to see it all unfold it's amazing see it live right so definitely january 2020 for us february was tough we said wow is it going to happen yeah right but here i think we had the leadership of uh the minister her excellency rim was was fantastic right she said we're stopping we're closing down but we will come back and we're going to make the best deck ever and i think leadership in this type of things really uh are the only the way forward right definitely and this has now been like this is a role model to the rest of the world i think everybody's eyes are on expo and some of the innovations that are happening here and we're gonna see this roll out throughout the world um in the coming years and actually michael i wanted to bring you in on this too because some of this invisible technology that has been implemented in expo and these these new experiences are obviously you spoke a bit about the importance of technology in hotels but what are some of the new things that you've had to add in the last few years like can you give us some examples of some of the changes and how technology has been able to integrate and well for us the technology is about information management so like a singapore is a leading city in in this implementation that the whole city is is built virtually inside the computer and all of our designs is actually built virtually so the information technology that's driving our designs now we can monitor the water flow to monitor the heat can monitor the people moving through the building so it allows us to have so much information at the at the designer's fingertips to basically improve the design and then when that design then gets built and realized all of that integrated knowledge and the information technology model is passed on to the building user and that model is plugged into the city model so then all the cut all of a sudden your city becomes this integrated information model which is is basically what have i said as well and then you could then control and understand and make your city more efficient and respond to the people of the city because like i'm an architect and all our designs are respond to people and i love technology but for me the most important thing is people and then technology is there to embrace people and to make life more efficient and better for people not to be the driver of just doing technology for the sake of it so for for us and it's all about that uh high level of information noi that we get and then also using ai and to help in our design process that we can then have all this information and use iai models to give us different options and studies and then so we can explore the design in a more efficient process great thank you and then dr nisha i wanted to ask you we spoke a little bit or you spoke a little bit about authenticity and the the need for travelers to live like a local in a sense which is i think a trend that has definitely preceded the pandemic but more so now that people are looking to relocate for longer periods so how can this hyper localization really be used to attract travelers to new cities you're talking about creativity or yeah yeah so i i would say that um when it comes to like you know localization of experiences for the new gen traveler um the thicket the thing we have to think about is you know how do we bring creativity in place making right creating a sense of place in our destination that would be able to bring that distinctive character and dna of a place so whether it's the physical space or using a digital space how do we connect uh the traveler with the local experiences become very important and how we think creatively regarding this is critical so um maybe i'll just share a little bit from from singapore so we have been experimenting with this quite a fair bit because we we've got a very strong culture in singapore that um that we want that to surface and although we are part of the larger asia how do we create distinctiveness about singapore in the eyes of the traveler so there's a particular precinct that's called the kampung glam precinct which is where the arab street is like the middle east is in their sort of thing so uh we've got conservation buildings we've got heritage in there and um so we conserve the houses in there and we create that awareness of the heritage and culture in there as well and we bring in local artisans the the enterprises the shops in their um showcase the the traditional art of food making for example um and as well as gastronomy that has been there for for decades there in singapore uh we have mural art on on on the uh shop houses in there and we we do this thing called co-creation right where it's important to co-create an experience of the people who visit the people who live in there as well as the people who work in there so you need to create a co-creation of that experience and how that happens is when the travelers come in there and they sit down they they are by the the roadsides and enjoying themselves and that creates that ambiance uh of that particular area we have artists performing in there but what is impressive is the technology that we are using and a whole digital transformation has happened where the government has started to work with digital companies to look at e-commerce in there to push notification on what is happening inside like workshops that are going on in there uh to look at intelligent mobility working with grab uh as an app uh hailing uh company and so how do they deploy these sort of things and in totality create that experience to people and what what uh xavier mentioned about the technology should not be so stark you know that it destroys the authenticity of the place you know it's got to be done so subtly that it its convenience is flexibility but at the same time it creates the ease you know uh in which people can access the information in there so beautifully done that that place is now ranked as one of the best tourism sports they're in singapore regardless of whether it's coveted or not but it's still thriving as a destination so i would say that's a beautiful example of an interplay of innovation and i'm talking about technological innovation but we look at social innovation at the same time and that i think that's primary and also look at how we could use creativity from the creative industries you know to bring that alive in terms of authenticity and if i may want one of them sure to deliver all that that is one thing that we we have now which is underlying everything which is data we have so many we we are hyper connected all of us absolutely yeah and we have so many points of contact that allow us to build a digital twin of ourselves and the more we can use this data to create the so what's what is relevant for this person basically what is relevant for that person this is an area where i think there's still a lot to be developed and when i see the case of singapore and we work very closely with shanghi airport to create all the experience of passengers in changi and changi every year stands as the best airport in the world or not by chance because the design the design yeah the design mindset the innovation mindset of the leadership there about i want to make sure that the spaces are and you don't see this technology but it's everywhere the time between one side to the other the experience the food that so everything is super well personalized through data right and and i would say that that is an effort to be done by the industry beyond that to embrace that data to be able to personalize the experiences because at times where we're going to be fighting for a smaller cake because there's not that many travelers yeah like in the past to get the larger share we're going to be more personalized we need to be more relevant that's right and that's really what hyper localization is all about exactly definitely now these are wonderful examples from singapore which make me even more eager to get back there as soon as borders reopen it's been far too long i think something i'm also just really curious about from all of you is who where do you look for your expertise and guidance right now because a lot of this as we keep saying we're and we are in unprecedented times so who what are your north stars how do you kind of see what research do you turn to what role models you turn to to really help us navigate these unusual times and xavier perhaps we can start with you look look um it's a great question because uh as we with all the changes that we're experiencing and i was sharing some some some pictures about how the world has changed the reality is that we need to go back to the human beings asking interrogating the people how their experiences are changing and based on that how their preferences so it's very important to connect now you again back on to the data based on the behaviors through mobile mobility you you get to know a lot about people so there's a lot of insights about behaviors about feelings and so on you can get without even having to interact right so there's a lot of data digital research we do and then we couple with physical research interviews and so on and every three to six months we conduct research across the impacts of what we're leaving into the behaviors and to the the the future the futures because of the businesses of the people of the technologies of the spaces and so on right so back to basics interrogate people and that's what we did in expo before we landed the experience we interviewed people from all over the world we had an estimate about where is going to be the people coming here and we asked what do you expect from expo the first thing we understood is people do not know what an expo is it was the response 90x percent were completely deviated they thought it was completely different so there was and then i saw what about education about before coming come to dubai we said okay then let me explain you what an expo is and how you can get a great experience for your remember and so it's a lot of dynamism then it's nothing you can't rely on long-term case studies or research like that you really have to just evolve in the moment exactly and it's co-creation as you said right because you need to you need to define the solutions based on the inputs and then revert back is it what you're looking and then fine-tune and dr nisha what kind of resources have you been looking towards so when you look at tourism because i come from that industry i i wouldn't say that there's so much of research that is available then whatever we used to collect will become irrelevant or has become irrelevant now but i would say that you know there is enough research done cross sector cross-discipline right so when you look at architecture like for the topic today we are talking about you draw information from architecture for example on what are the needs of the new traveler with respect to architecture you take a little bit from environmental design you know and what they are looking at in terms of the design of the environment and sustainability and you draw from there and that is management research like deloitte talked about you know urban design and what are the top 10 things that we need to note in urban design mckinsey talks about you know the new gen uh workforce or people so what you do need to do now is to to intelligently or intelligently use intelligent data you know and you have to try to to make strategic decisions from that it's very difficult to do organic research and try to to find a solution to what we're doing so now i think cross-sector collaborations are important when we start to make decisions of this sort cross-discipline information becomes very critical and i think this is where consultants come in they make sense of data bring it to tourism organizations or hotels and we make our decisions based on that at the moment yeah yeah that makes sense and then michael how about you for architecture and hospitality design in particular where have you been looking the last two years to get your inspiration yeah again it's a lot of collaboration so currently we're collaborating with other um specialists in entertainment field and the hospitality field across the world actually and reimagining projects and then basically that all comes into trying to understand where the industry is going and and and there's no clear answer you know what i mean and that's why a lot of our clients are really you know digging in and trying to understand it and doing this visioning exercise um so it is a little bit of um you know let's put something down on paper let's brainstorm it let's discuss it let's say let's test it and then obviously we work with the financial consultants and business modelers then to then put some numbers against that in terms of number of people capacities and how that thing can work as a business model so so that's where we are at the minute but it's that collaboration and from it basically many different sector specialists that feed into the architecture environment and then on the sustainability side obviously we work with sustainable engineers and we're looking at energy we're looking at all the carbon footprint and and and pushing that part of the design process process as well and so then in the future generations of our buildings our buildings will be less carbon footprint and more environmentally friendly so it's a really exciting period of time for designers because we get to explore and get to create um so it would be interesting to see how it develops over the next couple of years definitely it's very challenging but it definitely inspires a lot of creativity i'm sure yeah and so i think the next question i have for all of you is what cities and um you know obviously we talked a little about the research and the inspiration you get in the data but what cities do you think that you each look to as inspirations and you know what projects

2022-02-25 08:32

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