Revolutionizing Belize Tourism with Technology: Insights from Dr. Abner Mendoza
good afternoon everyone Welcome to our first session of the second course in the B tourism Futures Series this course is called merging technology and sustainability in tourism today's focus is on technology in tourism my name is Angela from bing.com and I'll be your host alongside Lorenzo Gonzalez from B Adventure so as you know the B tourism Futures webinar series aims to transformed the tourism industry by fostering Innovation and sustainability this initiative was inspired by Lorenzo's dedication to B's economic growth and is supported by the emergent Ventures Grant from George Mason University's merita Center in collaboration with bing.com and The Lodge at Cha Creek so my name is Abner mandosa I'm going to be the I'm going to be the presenter today and um today we're going to talk about technology and tourism uh just a little bit about me before we get started I am the technology director at bing.com I also work as a software engineer I reside in the United States I'm a cyber security researcher a university lecturer I've also served as the technical advisor on idb project that we recently completed the Bing tourism Innovation lab that provided some digital training I also serve on the B digital adaptation project which was a grant project through also Al funded by the idb through the B tourism board um and I also serve the same role in uh subsidiary of Bing called B digital media um most important about me is that I'm a native of San ignasio in K okay yeah Co give me a thumbs up if you can see my screen all right good all right okay awesome okay so we can start H this is what I was I was just introducing myself this is who I am like I said I'm a native of Sonic Nas so you I'm sure a lot of you picked up the accent already so let's get started today we are going to talk about technology in tourism and this is a really huge topic and certainly one hour won't do it justice but I'll just give you a really broad overview of um technology where it's going mostly focusing on where we see things going and some examples of the use of technology and how it can help us get a competitive advantage in the tourism industry so brief agenda we'll talk about the role of what's the role of technology in tourism I think it's self-explanatory I really want to talk about it in the context of digital transformation in the Le because I think that's a really big push both from the public and private sector in bise and then we're going to end talking about some future Trends and and we'll talk about key takeaways and maybe have a free discussion at the end of today's presentation I'll keep it definitely try to keep it under an hour so technology and tourism right so this is a this is an image generated by AI so I prompted Ai and said and so this gives you a hint on what we're going to talk about what we're going to emphasize in this presentation right uh I said a i generate an image of a future traveler at the biz bar reef and put someone under the water with a VR headset and two mobile phones not realistic but this is really the power of AI and it alludes to what the future traveler looks like right they're mobile first and they're really in tune with technology so technology really enhances that visitor experience and really that's the key message here uh that's really what from a from both a guest and a business perspective you know the guests want the most enhanced uh visitor experience from a business we want to give the guests the best experience because they're going to keep coming back they're going to refer us um it also improve improves our operational efficiency enhances sustainability and ultimately gives us that competitive Advantage um that we we always see from a business perspective right and it really comes down to understanding the guest expectations right we have to start I think digital transformation in tourism and the integration of Technology it has to be customer Centric guest Centric so you start at who is my audience what are their expectations on the future traveler it really comes down to mobile first everything is mobile first and they want everything here and now right the new generation they're consuming content in 6 to 30 seconds right so you have to be able to deliver your message within that time frame um 25% of the population today is that gen Z population born between 1997 and 2012 so they're really connected with technology and so we have to tailor our travel experiences to their expectations on what they're used to on technology is what they've grown up with right from a business perspective now I know a lot of you a lot of you in here and listening to the recording come are thinking about it from that lens of how does it improve my business my bottom line right and the thing is it's it can be overwhelming because we're not mostly we're we're trying to run a business we're not trying to be technology experts here right so it's overwhelming it's definitely expensive and then you there's a learning curve that you have to go on learn about this technology so how much do you learn how much do you really need to learn right and do you need to hire more people with the expertise and then that increases your expense so it's always a balancing act to reduce expenses and improve increase profitability but my message here today from a business perspective it data is where everything is and the more you know about your customers will determine how successful you are in the future um so it's really about collecting data and how you use that data to deliver the information about your services to your customers and potential customers and like I said I want to talk about this in the frame of digital transformation so digital transformation is one of the key words that is getting thrown around everywhere these days and especially in B when the push there's a push to digital transformation from the public and private sectors there's a lot of projects happening in the public sector in the context of digital transformation and I think that's really important and timely especially for this postco era in the travel and hospitality industry um and digital transformation is really about taking a holistic approach to integrating technology into your operations right it's more than just having a website it's taking a holistic look at your entire operation starting from the get well really with the guest experience at the center and a lot of people refer to it as Hospitality 4.0
and it aligns with what's known as industry 4.0 the fourth Industrial Revolution which rests on the pillars of the interconnected uh nature of today's uh technology ecosystem with iot big data Ai and Automation and and the goal is in in the context of hospitality is to enhance that guest experience optimize our operations and Embrace sustainable tourism so Hospitality 4.0 is an outshoot of Industry 4.0 this is just a quick overview of what what we mean when we talk about industry 4.0 right and it's
just all these Concepts cyber cyber security which is my my background I is the big thing here so big data analytics and really that interconnectedness and usage of the cloud I mentioned that digital transformation is a really important and trending topic in the lead and in the economy of B is really something that if you're keeping your fingers on the pulse you'll be aware of the of biz's national digital agenda this is a really important document to be aware of just to understand where the public sector is headed to where the efforts are being put and really I think when you read this document the thing that stands out is that it's the goal is one of the main goals is to facilitate digital transformation in polies and really what digital transformation means both from the public and private sector and really digitizing government services and that pushed towards having citizen digital identities for for all the citizens of bise so building that digital culture in bise I think is really important for preparing us for the future digital economy right and within this there's a lot of opportunities for digital trainings grant opportunities that I think a lot of Tourism businesses can can uh take advantage of so um definitely if you haven't done so look at that National digital agenda just to understand where where's what's the government thinking and where are they facilitating digital transformation and how can I take advantage of that but beyond that let's talk about again this is not an exhaustive list but these are some of the trends in tourism technology and when you talk about technology and tourism I think there's a broad range that we have to consider right and it's really not only about the most expensive technology that we might not have access to there's a broad range and there's incremental advances in technology like keyless entry and using the mobile phones and the online looking system the S self-service kios really disruptive Technologies what we're seeing in Ai and the rise of Airbnb for the hospitality sector and the hotel sector and how we had to adapt to that so this is a a list not an exhaustive list as I said um but just some examples to be aware of in terms of what we're talking about and think about that range from incremental advances in technology so it does have to be the big most expensive things and incremental ADV advances are things like reservation systems if you're still using pen and paper to for your bookings you might advance to using Excel and from that you might advance to using a a reservation system and a full-blown customer relationship management system and online payment processing so there are incremental advances you can make in the use of technology and I think it's so in this context it's really important to understand what your digital matur is and we've done that through one of the projects we did with the idb and through a grant from the police tourism board we implemented a digital maturity model that we've piloted at some tourism companies in bise U because I think it's really important to understand what where am I today what am I doing today and where do I stand in that spectrum of not losing technology to using to really advance in the use of Technology um so that's their first start and so one of one of the stakeholders we worked with in B was the B zoo and we really worked with them understanding their digital maturity and helping them develop a digital strategy a digital integration Strate strategy and one of the things that came out of that was the B Zoom map several months ago we launched this and it was really just taking that next step to having printed Maps or no map at all to a fully mobile first interactive map so if you haven't visited the B Zoo recently next time you'll go you'll see this this sign there um and you scan the QR code and you can load a digital interactive map and it's connected uh through your phone with the GPS it shows you exactly where you are um you can get information about all the different um Zoo exhibits and the animals and and Etc and this really improves the zoo's ability to understand their visitors and get real time data on who who's visiting the zoo and even it's connected through their website as well and they can see people who are re we can see people researching trip stabilities they're looking at the zoo then they look at the Zoo map and so that we're collecting data and that we're looking at who's visiting the zoo who's researching the zoo and it opens up a lot of doors in terms of using digital technology for the zoo and um for us as well as Bing internationally this is a this is another example of the use of Technology it brings up an in interesting question about displaced labor so this picture is from the henna hotel in Japan it was opened in 2015 with a fully staffed a full staff of of robots so these two lifelike robots here has replaced the front desk staff and there's a kiosk there right so this just wanted to throw this out to see what are some of the maybe extreme examples of the use technology and there's always that fear right that that technology is going to displace labor and it's going to increase the income disparity within the labor force um but at the end of the day I think it's definitely something we need to embrace another example in Europe is the Numa hotel which is also a fully automated they've automated 90% of their guest Journey from check in to check out ordering room service and and I think some of the reports I've read is that they digitizing 90% of the guest Journey has resulted in 65% lower operating costs versus traditional hotels so there's there's different there's definitely that business case to be made of why technology important and why investing in technology is important um but there's a lot of Trends um a lot of things happening in the technology space and and it becomes overwhelming in when you have to think about what trend is worth adopting I think defin Ely when we're talking about technology today artificial intelligence is um The Hot Topic today and it's not the thing with AI is it's not new um it's been around for a while maybe we haven't noticed it but now it's come this is its time to shine um and I think for us as um businesses stakeholders in tourism we it's very important that we embrace it we embrace the use of the AI because it it is the next big shift in uh technology not only in tourism but in every industry across rest of the world so the question is AI is is really impressive the question is always okay but how do we use it right what uses it if I can you how do I make it work for me as a tourism business and it really starts with data right data and I'm going to emphasize this today is that data is their most important resource of the future if nothing else comes out of this presentation I hope you will come out that it will Dawn on you the importance of beta in today's digital economy so AI is the next big shift without getting technical about what AI is in 30 seconds think about I like to think about AI as this it sounds silly right but this big CL big brain in the sky right and I can connect to it with my mobile phone and it gives me access the the world's data information it's like an it's like having your own personal assistant the most intelligent personal assistant you can think of right there are of course some shortcomings to AI but it integrates data from all these different sources and you have access to it from the palm of your hands and you can ask questions and it can give you answers it can generate content and there's a lot of cool things you can do with AI and we see it we see it every day we seen it in the past maybe if we even if we weren't aware of it the big players in AI of course are chat GPT which is open AI there's co-pilot by Microsoft Gemini is Google's Ai and then of course we all use Facebook and Instagram there's the meta Ai and these you can all access these today and start having conversations with it so this is really one example of what's generative AI or conversational AI so just to give you a quick overview of if you haven't AI is really good at understanding vast amounts of data and allowing you to ask questions in natural language and it will give you answers so this is a real set of data just as a simple example a set of data that I use chat gbt and this is the list of Saturday arrivals at the international airport in B and it would take me some time and effort to really analyze this and understand this and answer questions about this without AI right so without chat GPT I couldn't tell you just looking at this that the busiest time span is between 12 125 p.m. and 1:45 p.m. so if a guest is asking when is the best time to arrive and we probably will tell them okay try to avoid the early afternoon time maybe come late in the afternoon or early in the morning right so you can ask questions like what's the busiest time or what's the best time to arrive to avoid the crosss and is going to tell you based on my analysis of this data 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. and this is one of the questions I see a lot online when is the best time to arrive and why is Saturday so busy especially in the afternoon um other examples of AI is the use of virtual reality technology that was really the trending topic last year so if you follow like ITB Berlin last year they were really talking about VR and AR recently this week the I know the btb released this really cool no barriers Reef project so it's a VR experience of the B Barrier Reef if you haven't seen it yet this is the website travel b.org which really cool augmented reality is also really in the use of technology and AI in the hospitality industry for your menu your menu can now be very interactive and dynamic and you can use your mobile phone and point it at the menu and people can see 3D depiction of what the food will look like in front of them right before they order these are just really cool examples of how Ai and Technology can make the guest experience much more enhanced AI can also do a lot for you in terms of um business analytics and um allowing you to make better data driven decisions um so just some real quick screenshots of real examples of um how we advising are using eii understanding for example in our website what are people searching for on for example one of the one of the top keywords in our website shave with a lot of business with ATM cave and revolving the ATM cave tours and providing information about the ATM cave this is I think this is data from this week we see a trending topic right now is that International music festival happening having these insights and having AI can just generate these things for you and provide it to you in real time really gives you a powerful insights and allows you to make data driven decisions right if I'm a hotel in San Pedro for example I'm looking at that and saying okay there's going to be demand for that music festival and I can drill into it and see where's that demand coming from is it International Travelers is it local Travelers and I can make better operational decisions logistic decisions for my business um on the right here also Advanced analytics we can do Predictive Analytics and this is just showing the trend line of international arrivals in Biz over the span of I believe this was like 10 over 10 years right now you can see that big dip there which was the pandemic and we can see projections for what what AI is AI is analyzing the data not only the data but maybe external data points and giving us suggestions and allow giving us that insight to make uh again better datadriven decisions so I think that's one of the key things that um technology allows us to do is just get insights much quicker much more accurate insights can allow us to make business decisions much quicker in in when it's really critical right the use of AI definitely gives us a competitive Advantage at the end of the day we're looking to increase bookings how can we use AI technology to do that it increases our our efficiency allows us to get insights on predicting demand predicting what the customer needs understanding the conversations of customers online so this is an example of for example how we are scraping data from our booking data what people are booking what questions they're asking on our social channels on our booking emails and giving us that Insight on what are the topics people are are interested in and there's a lot of ways you can use this insight to improve your operations to decide what are the new tours that I should be offering what should my marketing campaigns look like so this kind of gives you that Head Start give you that insight and points you in the right direction um AI again can also be used for like I said Predictive Analytics I went through that already but just predicting in this example what future the the future arrival will look like and it's predicting that it will look very similar as past years but definitely an increase so we see that Trend in arrival data and we've been comparing this so this is a tool we've been using and we've been comparing it I know the btb releases arrival data um somewhat delayed so we we've been comparing to get some ground truth to our and improving our Predictive Analytics and in arrival data and we've been able to to hit the marker closely in predicting um what the arrival numbers will be like I'm not sure what the what this screenshot was from several months ago so it's not the the latest again AI allows us to visualize data so we collecting all this data we're collecting a lot of large volumes of data in some instances and okay how do you make use use of it so these are just some examples of how we've been able to implement uh tools to visualize our data to get better insights from our data that allows us to make Better Business decisions that really is the power of technology is that it just can give you that competitive Advantage because it's giving you uh better more accurate real time insights into what is happening both in your business and in the industry at large depending on what data you're feeding into your tools so if it hasn't if it wasn't clear yet I think the most important thing when we talk about technology in today's digital economy is data collecting information is what the information that you collect from your customers from your from your operations everyone generates data every day and it's really a matter of how do you use that data how can you effectively use that using the correct tools right what I want to say here is everyone definitely if you haven't done yet start thinking about a data strategy developing a data strategy seek a consultant if that's depending on what your needs are to start thinking about developing a a more robust data strategy so you can learn how to use data um there's also a lot of learning opportunities online like I said we developed a digit marketing boot camp that gives that can give you a broad overview of digital marketing use of digital tools to improve your online presence that's available if you haven't seen it through this through the this digital media training portal that you're using right now so it's really about you you really have to learn uh how to use the data what tools are available uh one thing I want to say about data is it must be accessible accessibility of data is important and um also security and privacy of data is important as you develop a data strategy a robust data strategy um security privacy and security has to be one of the um core principles that you start from because it the more data you have it gives you a competitive Advantage but you have to make sure it's secure because if it's not you compromise the data of your guests you compromise your competitive Advantage if people get a hold of your data so hack hackers are actively seeking data and information and access to your systems so key takeaways from today I I think I've emphasized it and I've mentioned it a lot but data is the most important resource it's really about data collecting data knowing your customers needs and just collect as much data as you can in adopt a data strategy and how you're going to collect data and how you going to use that data learning I think is key capacity building taking advantage of digital boot camps and really adopting that customer first approach to to digital transformation within your individual businesses so with that hopefully I know it very short presentation and we could have gone into much more detail into any number of those topics certainly a lot that I may not have mentioned such as the the internet of things and using technology again to collect data to enhance your visitor experience your operations to enhance sustainability within your business in your hotel using blockchain I mean there's there's a lot of information a lot of topics certainly that we could have covered but I think the most important thing when we talk about technology and giving the constraint we have here in time I think just emphasizing the importance of AI adopting AI tools um and and really adopting a data strategy and and learn about these tools is really important so with that I will say thank you and I'll hand it off to or or I'll open the floor for some Q&A hi thank you Mr for the presentation and I hope everyone got some golden nuggets from what was mentioned it's a lot to digest I think because when you mention or when you talk about technology in tourism there's so much to consider just looking at the trends slide that Mr rner had there are a lot of Trends happening but we just had to put let's say 10 on the list because it's a lot to digest understand and see what works best for your business um of course if you have any questions that you would like to ask feel free to add it in the chat but yes like these Trends we were able to narrow down some of the top 10 but there's a lot more Trends happening and a lot more tools aot a lot more platforms that are being used right now so when we mention technology there's just a lot to consider and I think a lot of people just don't know where to start so having let's say webinars like this it could open your mind or perspective as to okay let me sit and consider what I'm using for my business does it make sense does it support my goal with my business is it enhancing my visitor experience does it touch the same key points that Mr Abner had mentioned so it's different things like that maybe Mr rner you could discuss where's a like a good starting point for people to consider what sort of technology to look into or consider with their business as of let's say with the latest trends um you know not to to our own horns too much but I think we developed a really good digital boot camp course that that is freely accessible I how long is the course P it's six modules but if you sit through the entire session it would be about maybe six hours more or less so it's very like consumable lessons there would be six different modules um of different topics and in those individual modules there are like maybe three to five lessons but very short lessons about 2 minutes 5 minutes just so you could digest it a little bit better as opposed to giving you like long 35 minute lessons and then you have to sit through it and understand and apply that to your business so it's six modules and within those modules there are short sessions and there it's free for you to log in and access and take the course and once you complete it you get a certificate of completion or participation for that yes just to answer your question more in more detail I think it's just building Your Capacity and really learning what's out there like I said no one needs to go out and and um be a technology expert expert no one has time for that we're busy everyone's busy running their business managing their tour doing their jobs but I think it's really important and prudent to have a basic understanding of the fundamentals of technology and what's out there on what's being used but it can really it can also be based on your job role today that there is evolution of the the different job roles in tourism and so how do you prepare for the future and ensure that you have the the necessary Knowledge and Skills to be able to adapt as tourism evolves especially postco it's definitely evolving at a much a quicker pace and Technologies I think is at the core of what is driving the evolution of um travel and tourism so it's really important to to just have that basic knowledge the course that we've developed is really basified so it really gives you it really brings it down to a local context so when we're talking about you can guys can see my screen I yeah so when we're talking about the basics of digital marketing and website planning and just types of digital strategies we really put it in the context of belief and what is important to B in Industry what other stakeholders in B are doing right so I think this is a really good course of course it really focus on digital marketing um but certainly there's tons of resources out there and I think there's really simple examples of sometimes there's not much of a learning curve for example to use chatz just sign up for a if you're not using it yet but the barrier to entry is so so anyone and everyone can use it so the beauty of Technology when it's done right is that sometimes you don't even notice and it's so easy to use so I think using tools like chat GPT if you're not bring it yet to understand data understand information respond to reviews write letters just it's really just your digital AI assistant and a lot of people I'm sure are using it um today already and a lot of people just need to get over that fear that it's it's too complicated for me know if you can use a phone if you can if you do anything online you can use Chad zpt right and I think that's a really good good place to get started and just exploring and seeing what is possible um as well um yeah yeah that's great um that was a good question to cover since we were talking about EI I was wondering if you had any other tool suggestions what what else do you recommend that people are using and for what perhaps provide some guidance as to where they should start and and and progress with time yeah I think if you can if you taken an English course in school which we have have um and you can formulate a sentence you can use chat GPT so I think that's the easiest one to use and then tools derived from chat um there's a plethora of tools out there let me see I had a backup slide here one of the tools that I really like is perplexity AI um perplexity AI is very similar to chat GPT but the difference is that um it's a more specialized and maybe more factual um then chat gbt because this chat gbt there's an issue with what's called hallucinations where sometimes it's Mi The Hub and that are not perhaps factual um also you can't reference I think the last iteration of be data from 2022 maybe3 it's outdated as well but what perplexity I let me I can share my screen and kind of show what I'm talking about when I say all right you see my my browser yes are you see my browser okay so here is perplexity AI very similar to chat GPT if you've used chat GPT what I like about perplexity AI is that let's say I'm a hotel right and actually I was thinking about this today so it's a good that you ask this question let's say I am managing Pelican re Village right um so I look at my trip advisor reviews I have S 1700 reviews I really want just I don't have time I want a quick Insight what are you typ about what are the points of micros so I can say maybe and so and I can give it an example and so perplexity AI will reference what I give it but also other online sources and really just give me an and some insight um and and gives me references on where it's getting these fats from right and so I can validate the information that it's giving me whereas for example in chat GB car you have to take it at face value and if you're not a domain export you're not really sure if Chad is telling you the right thing or not what I like about perplexity is that it tells you what the references are where it's getting its information and so you can dig deeper into it right what are they I don't know I don't even know what the answer will be for this all right so see so now I can get a quick answer of what are the main customer complaints now if I want to improve my operations I see the positive reviews are they lack mil so we have to get more that empty um and then so some minor complaints power outing we've been experiences experiencing a lot of power outages in Bel so you see that perplexity it has access to that Real Time online information and can give you maybe more up to-date information right and gu had a about experience with the tour company so you can do things like this and it references different sources so I really like perplexity this is the example of that I was that I had showed in one of the screenshots U with analyzing the arrival data from you know I started with this in chat GPT I just say hey this is all the information and I want to talk about this information here andt said yeah let me break it down for you this so this is like a in in a matter of seconds I have this this digital assistant then can that can just do things much so much faster than I could do or anyone else could do right and I don't need to be a technology expert all I need to do is to formulate an sentencing a questioning English and it gives me all the answers I need another tool that I like that uses some AI is brand 24 I don't know if you seen this this is really about monitoring what's happening online with my brand and there's a lot of tools that do this right but a lot of these tools also will add that AI aspect to it where you can get insights on and just understanding the conversations again this is really listening to your customer understanding what your customers or what your potential customers are asking for online right so I can configure in this case I have Bing K that might be related to bing.com so this is this from today work today I don't know when this was so it just gives me that overview of what's happening with my brand online I can understand the sentiment of my brand I can especially in monetary when there are negative issues mentions of my brand so AI allows us AI will read reviews for example and can understand the sentiment is it positive or negative it can understand topics for example right what I had shown earlier let me go back to my so what I had shown earlier for example I see you had put a comment about har Harry Potter right I don't know what left about that's something that very interest thing right why are people talking about Harry Potter in the context of the leas there's something we don't know is there a trend that we need to hop on I don't know maybe people I don't know what that is about that's an interesting one but I can see that key copper is trending currently so I might focus on marketing efforts and things around key coocker that that we might have yeah so so those are some of some of the tools that I think are really are a really low barer to entry CH like I said the script you can give an example of that Lorenzo that's it allows you to edit videos and produce videos in a matter of seconds or it's text text the video right and then copy AI also in terms of generating content generating social media posts and whatnot um so it really optimizes your time it saves your really AI pools I think the saving time and it can can do a whole lot for you in terms of giving you insights at the end of the day it saves you time it allows you to be more efficient and maybe even focus on things that are are more important then go yeah yeah I love the examples you gave me I I use per perplexity AI sometimes too and yeah I love how it's able to use real time data so it searches the internet and it's able to bring you various sources like information from beer sources that's excellent I had I had seen or used br 24 before so that's like a new one for me I use chat GPT on a regular basis it's basically my a system and and the really cool thing about chat GPT which I would encourage audience to do is you don't have to know what to do you could ask chat GPT what you should do so for example if you enter data you can ask it what are a few ways I can analyze this data to gather insights and it's going to tell you it's very simple as for descript I use the script on a regular basis so what I do is this video recording I just upload it to dript and it automatically creates a transcript and then the transcript I'm able to edit the transcript and then the by by through text I edit the video it's very easy I don't have any video editing skills but however I'm able to just quickly uh update a a video I can also get rid of a lot of my Ms and as and a and things that I I like to say whatever speak automatically I just do that by clicking a button oh yeah see perfect this is this is how how it's used yeah and and this is such a really amazing tool because I know the cost of producing videos we used to do videos five years ago when we used to do videos the cost was it was ridiculous how much it cost to produce a video the tools that you need the expertise that you need and the time and so I think just the time saving Factor here is um really is a gain changer for for sure I mean that's what I do for a lot of things that I whenever I'm considering paying for something I could I break down okay so how much is a an hour of my time work and if I pay for something a product how much is it GNA save me that time so of course I'm GNA pay for like the pro version of chat GPT if it can save I can introduce it to my workflow and see gives me I don't know 5 to 10 hours a week um I was like why not that just it just makes sense same for descript and I don't use copy AI because I basically use chat GPT for that stuff but a lot of clients that we work my organization works with we and they use copy they use jasper. a just to create
content and repurpose content one other product I'd like to highlight that similar to dript it's called cap cut and that product is the mobile first which which means that you can create content for your your um social media yeah I think at the end of the day it's about okay how does this improve my operational efficiency saves me time saves me money increases my bottom line right and that's I think that's one of the main factors to consider when adopting a tool and then and on the other side how does it enhance the visitor experience I think that's always a one of the core questions will this enhance the the experience of my my online audience if I use this and be able to produce a video much faster and cleaner video and in every way you're thinking about the visitor experience so this why I I put this this screen this slide back on the screen here just to reiterate that it all starts the core of it is result visitor experience I think so being customer Centric is always important um at the end of the day like I I always tell the staff of beening that at the end of the day we're not a travel company we're a soci we're a customer service company and I think if you put customer service and the visitor experience at the Forefront of everything I think that's that's really important and everything that we do in other businesses that we have it's really all always about customer service like they said the customer is always right most of it okay great just changing topic a little bit let's talk about data because you mentioned data the importance of data a lot and I was wondering if you could provide us with some insights as to how can tourism businesses ensure they're collecting and utilizing data effectively to enhance the G experience and maintain a competitive Advantage I think it starts with just having a plan you definitely have to go about this strategically because we can say all day collect data and so we're collecting data from Google Analytics and we're collecting data in our reservation system and in our property management systems but I think without a robust data strategy that considers data privacy and Security First first and foremost um and then accessibility of data is also important when I say accessibility I mean that different disperate systems have to be able to communicate and share data even within your organization I I think collaboration is Al also key within the industry because maybe we might have some expertise in where data shaffy might look like and some other company they might not have the human resources or the capital and why don't we collaborate I think another important point to make is that collaboration is really key in terms of how to go about developing a data strategy and ensuring a robust data strategy and there are some regulations in place in B in terms of data sharing especially data sharing accessing data with government entities and we have developed a data sharing strategy through our idb project that was really a foundation if you don't have access to data you might collaborate but then how do you set the parameters to properly collaborate and share data with each other to ensure privacy and security of data the there there there's some considerations definitely coming into play in you know data strategy so I think definitely it starts with developing that data strategy and then just having just some capacity building and how do we use it what do I want over that data that comes out of the data strategy as well what do I want from that information and just learning what the technology is out there how do I take advantage of this how do I how do I use this because you can have all the data in the world but if you don't know how to use it then what good is it to you so that data strategy is important that makes a lot of sense and and I think you can actually for a starting point you can ask chat GPT to help you with a strategy or how you you have trouble sending an email to someone like Abner or Angela about like how you can collaborate Chachi can write that email for you you know I'm just saying that's the starting point but anyway that's a good answer and I think to just to finalize things my final question is around sustainability how does technology or how can technology help a business a tourism business with sustainability I think definitely Su sustainability is um remember there's three aspects of sustainability right there's the environmental economical and and social layers of of sustainability I think a lot of us when we think about sustainability we think about that environmental aspect of it he I think is a is one of the core Technologies you can Implement uh when you're thinking about environmental sustainability simple example is just having U motion sensors in your in your rooms and let's say if you're running a hotel right putting motion sensors in your hotel room can um reduce your energy usage because it can detect when some's not in your room turn off the AC turn off all the electronics and there's a lot there's huge cost savings and then also it reduces your carbon footprint and everyone is happy simple things like for example the map the the zoom map that we did right that was aligned with the with the spirit of environmental sustainability as well and just the use of technology to reduce the need for printed Maps right and and so that that goes a long way in enhancing your sustainability uh it also touches on economic sustainability because then it allows the zoo for example to understand their visitors better to perhaps capitalize push ads and capitalize more on their tours or allows them to sell ads on the map platform so the M can essentially pay for itself so there's that economic aspect of it and then also the C social and cultural aspect of sustainable tourism in that it it engages audience in a way that never before was possible and it can help to promote to a local audience the importance of animals and cons importance of conservation in the Le to the local audience M so I I think definitely integrating technology there's always there's always a case to be made on how it supports sustainable tourism and and not only the environmental aspect of Eno tourism which is hugely important but also think about that cultural and that economic sustainability aspect of sustainable tourism from almost any technology that you implement will touch on economic sustainability because you're always thinking about how do I you I'm going to invest in technology because it's probably going to reduce my cost in some way right and and you're thinking about economic sustainability all the time on in the use of Technology but definitely I think Environmental sustainability is is hugely important especially in the state of climate change and and the in of things and just having sensors collecting data sensing the environment and then adjusting your use of resources is hugely important yeah and that includes using other like renewable sources of energy to which is like solar panels Etc okay thank you for such a great session um you know technology this is your area of expertise so I really appreciate that you were able to share a bit of what Angela says those golden nuggets her favorite thing to say with us with the audience and yeah make us perhaps consider a few things that that were we were thinking about but not thinking about too deeply okay thank you again and I'll just pass it on to Angela all right great so thank you all for joining us this afternoon for the session I hope everyone one like the rental said got a golden nugget that you could take back and sit and consider when it comes to technology see what you could do for your business of course integrating technology is also are always a a beneficial thing to do um so before we conclude I'd like to remind you that the next session for the B tourism futur series is next month on July 17th where Lorenzo will be presenting on Creative Marketing if you haven't registered for that course as yet you could go ahead and do so and I see Mr I'm doing the AI I can't do it on my end so he does a thumbs up and then he gets a little bubble there yeah so this is AI and action right this is AI and action it's understanding my gestures and it's responding yeah I saw the two thumbs up and I saw like fireworks in the background earlier but yes see there's the bubbles but thank you for everyone um for joining us like I said next month session will be on July 17th with torenzo we appreciate your guys' participation in all of our sessions after this session ends there is a test that you can take it's five short multiple choice questions and that is a part of the lesson where you would have to complete and get the certification at the end so thank you once again and we look forward to seeing you at our next session all right thank you all right by bye everyone
2024-06-28 08:09
