Tourism 4.0 Introductory Webinar (3rd edition)

hello thank you for joining us at the turbet tourism 4.0 Third Edition I'm Blanca cross project coordinator of the tbit project and head of the European projects unit at the Catalan trism board after almost two years of the TB project I suppose and hope that you already are fam familiar with it nevertheless let me share with you few insights the goal of the tby project is to support the tourism smmes in their digitalization process who we are we are a Consortium of eight organizations from seven different countries catri board the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce the Paris and Co the aruru the cluster Hospitality Brussels the Iceland tourism cluster the laan University of applied science and NES tourism Innovation Center from Portugal how do we support the uptake of digitalization to the tourism smes by working through three main areas the first one is learning sharing knowledge through studies webinars like the one you are joining today as well as skills through the go digital skills program and also the digital Readiness index tool the second one is building connection connection between the tourism and the technology ecosystems through for example the series of 14 podcasts the tour TCH your five weekly takeaways to tourism success and finally the third one is testing and implementing digitalization projects through the direct financial support allocated to 62 tourism smmes so through this webinar we aim at presenting the main results on the publication we have for is on the current top Technologies and their application by the tourism smmes through very insightful interviews with technology experts I hope you will enjoy it so thank you very much uh good afternoon and welcome to this webinar on behalf of my myself too my name is marien I'm working as a principal Lector here at laand University of applier Sciences in ran vland and hello everyone uh my name is Marta Salvador I am a project coordinator at Nest tourism Innovation Center in Portugal uh today we have the pleasure uh as we've been having to work together for the past months we are presenting uh the results of um of the the ear top release of Technologies which is a publication that we have been doing for the past two years so this year uh it will be the uh Third Edition of this publication in which I can just share for you to have a a slight view on what is expected uh so this uh reflects um this reflects some uh efforts that all the Consortium of tbit have been doing in in researching which are the latest trends in Technologies for the's adoption and this year in the third publication we are focusing on four Technologies augmented reality virtual reality uh blockchain and Internet of Things uh and in this report we'll find a little bit more you will gain insights on what these Technologies are how can the the the smmes adopt these Technologies and what are the challenges uh so this is what you will find in the report if you look for the other ones from the pre previous years last year we have talked also about cyber security cloud computing artificial intelligence and contactless and the first report on 2022 it was about online sales otaa data analytics and platform economy um to give you just a short Insight on on what this is um we are also presenting this webinar marit do you want to take the floor now yes in this in this webinar we have three very interesting interviews about the those topics relation of our top release Mr Israel Blanco SI at Cactus uh discussing relating iot topics uh Mrs ma MAF R CH of visit Explorer discussion more about augmented reality and virtual reality possibilities and then Mrs da pivik blaner president of the blockchain alliance Europe and she's um uh discussing of course blockchains issues we hope you will enjoy this webinar as well as your reading trip of year 2024 the Pras we hope you will get some new ideas or growing your own awareness Within These important and interesting topics in tourism sector also if you want to look for more information and forget to visit our website tbit point. thank you hello I am Sandra deut I am EU project manager at the Catalan tourism board and it's my pleasure today to facilitate this interview where we are going to be talking about internet of things the so-called iot together with our guest who is Israel Blanco hello Israel he's the CEO of cactus which is a multidisciplinary consultancy offering sustainable iot iot Engineering Services hello is thank you very much for joining us hello Sandra thank you for the introduction so uh as we all know Internet of Things is a transformative technology that has been actually fostering revolution in the way the devices the objects and also the systems interact and communicate with each other at the core of this Internet of Things technology H we find that we embed in everyday objects uh with sensors with actuators and also with connectivity capabilities that enable them to connect and to exchange over the Internet this uh interconnected network of physical devices creates a seamless and also and uh intelligent ecosystem where information can be shared but also information can be analyzed and can be acted upon in real time so there are a lot of uh opportunities actually of this technology of Internet of things for tourism smes and this is why we would like to know a little bit the views and the insights from Israel on how this iot can actually Provide support uh to tourism smmes in the day-to-day uh business in the day-to-day operations uh with the relation with the customers relations also in the way maybe the uh their customers experience uh their products their services so what are your views on this Israel please okay s thank you for the question yeah indeed uh there are several aspects uh that we should consider in order uh when we want to apply technology to this small uh tourism ma me sorry businesses uh the first thing is uh cost reductions no the when we apply this kind of Technology one of the um easiest cases to think of is for example when we want to uh digitalize for example uh some of the processes while for example making the reservation uh making the entrance to the small hotel for example or or house whatever uh so it's a reduction that would imply a reduction on human resources no that's something that technology can provide I'm not saying that that is good or not good depending on the aspects of how you look at it but it's something that technology is already providing us here uh I'm from Barcelona here in Barcelona I'm watching every day more and more small hotels who are people less let's say no it's everything digitalized all the reservation and all the process so that is one of the main things I'm not saying it's the thing I like the most but it's an obvious thing that technology is providing and it's getting more and more obvious no and it's everywhere another thing like you were saying it's it's I think personally it's more interesting is how can we improve the user experience no how can we make the user happier in the whole experience of using the facilities of of the hotel that can be related into the personalization of the experience on the room for example imagine that we uh put a small QR code on the entrance of the room and by scanning that QR code you somehow have a web app that allows you to manage the room and customize the settings of the room uh automatically to the C to the customer or even before the arrival of the customer you can set up the special conditions of the room for them according to its needs or whatever they may like these are some things that technology can provide also the one thing that we think is very interesting is the carbon footprint reduction because at the end all these businesses they can be small but they are all using energy no they are consuming Energy power electricity they are consuming water so digitalization can improve the usage of these resources and that's one of the main things so it would uh imply reducing cost to these businesses but also contributing to a more sustainable world uh I will I will explain you some some examples uh in further questions if you want or or right now as you wish we can do it later on if you want okay yeah perfect and yeah okay uh no that that it about about the question okay and for example we we talk about these huge opportunities but also we know that there are a lot of challenges actually and especially for those small and medium Enterprises which a lot of them they are really uh composed by very tiny teams uh what would be like the main challenges uh you see that this uh tourism smes made face uh when applying iot Technologies in their in their systems okay yeah one one of the main with the obvious uh things is the cost obviously not the cost of implementing all this technology in the small business it's something to be considered and it's something sometimes uh that needs to be understood from from this sms okay it's it's not easy another thing that I would say is that uh they need and we at Cactus as an Engineering Services it's it's a work it's a job that we have to do I would say daily it's uh to make things easy for them in order for them to understand what's the variety of technologies that they can use and what are the best Technologies to to their case because of course there's a lot of solutions that can be installed there are there are a lot of providers that will you know fight in order to win and in order to implement their solution and that is not always in the best interest interest of the business so from our point of view uh it's an important job to uh uh you know to give a good guidance in what technologies they should be implementing open Technologies uh that you know will allow them to interact with more and more different devices and not propietary Solutions that's one of the main things so I would say that one challenge is to be proper uh guided in order to know what you have to use for your usage case and to bring the value you need in your business EX exactly so find the the best uh Tech yeah the best solution let's say the best approach yeah the best technological approach regarding your your value proposition the value proposition you need and also what technology to use yeah right and when we think a little bit on on cost Effectiveness like what is more or less the the the breakdown of this of this cost um for for a tourism yeah that's that's that's an interesting question because things have changed a lot uh throughout you know the last I would say 20 30 years uh I say this because if we are focusing for example in the small hotels or bookings and these kind of things uh when you had to digitalize some physical elements of the business uh some shutters for example the door the lights the water flow Etc you had to use a lot of protocols I'm talking about technology now a lot of protocols that were caed and when we say cable you have you can understand we have to you know assemble the all these cabl so make like a big infrastructure so it's expensive so this digitalization on the past was very expensive still today you can use these cable Solutions like mod boost Conex different kind of solutions uh which are expensive but the good thing that has happened over the last I would say 7 10 years is some kind of democratization of of this business I mean there's a lot of new protocols that that have been invented have been designed and standardized that allow to digitalize some rooms some spaces with devices that are that are cheaper because they use different protocols protocols that are Wireless of course this has some advantages and some disadvantages but this has brought without doubt a lot of democratization of the sector so we can digitalize with a lower lower cost compared to 20 years ago and would this require also like uh more maintenance or is it the same because at the same time all this happen in a in a in a world where technology changes super super super fast so in a way what are these kind of ongoing maintenance that is required for this type of of Technology this is a this is a question we Face a lot of times and and I completely understand because there's a there's a lot of maintenance cost or it has been no uh in the last years one of the main advantages uh of these new let's say Technologies is that um these little devices that can be you know placed all over the hotel or the room uh most of them work with batteries and they consume they are ultra low power devices so they consume a little amount of energy that most of the time they are sleeping they just detect some things and they act and uh uh over the last five years there has been a lot of investment especially in Europe about harvesting Technologies which are technologies that are able to harvest energy from different sources light uh temperature even radio waves from the ambient that can then uh help these tiny devices uh to not to consume so much energy from the battery but from these these other sources of energy Instead at Cactus we are specialized in these kind of devices for instance so that at the end reduces a lot the amount of uh human work in order to you know keep maintain all the all the devices I'm talking about devices that can last up to 10 years without maintenance okay most of the devices that we would place in a uh in a in a hotel for example yeah because what I think is that uh in order to ensure let's say a successful implementation or integration of of iot um in in a tourism for examp example um we need of course to engage with the staff and then of course uh in a way dependent on how we are applying this technology also we would need in a way to engage uh the the customer so how does this happens uh according to your experience uh yeah that's that's always uh tricky uh I mean technology is not sexy we always say that no most of the times so it's difficult in order to engage people the good thing is that well I don't know if it's the good thing but the Contemporary thing is that we are more and more used to use the phone right everybody knows how to everybody I would say almost everybody knows how to use the phone and this is going to get worse or better better depend on how you look at it but the usage will increase so we are a digitalized people so uh I think the digitalization of spaces will be something required in order to you know uh fit with people in the future especially so this example about the QR code that I gave you when you enter to the room in order to set up the room in order to use the room the TV the the service room the shutters the lights whatever will be something that I think will be mandatory somehow because people will be so used to that so the only thing we have to do is uh keep up in the digitalization of the physical world some people talk about digitalization which is physical and digital of the world in order to keep up with the what the people will will need and expect and of course a good uxui that's user experience and user interface on the solution uh will be mandatory also to make it attractive and and and in this regards because we are using the device and most of the times in a way uh from the side of the customer is going to be probably their their phone for instance how do we ensure in a way this data protection and security because a lot there is a lot of interconnection no a lot of data running and and how this is secured that is indeed the I would say the most um challenging uh issue that we still have I mean of course there are different uh approaches or different considerations that need to be applied in when you are worried about security and we should be worrying about security uh the thing is that one of the problems when you are designing a very small small device that consumes a very small amount of power that we were saying before the computational the computational power of this device is reduced so the amount of things that this device can do is reduced and one of the threats is security because it cannot compute a lot of you know uh software in order to be to prevent these attacks okay the thing we have to say is that at least from Cactus we always advocate for standard Technologies like Bluetooth White these technologies have its own security standards and that always have to be fulfilled it's some encryptions standard that are accepted but they are uh well exploited I mean we all know how to exploit the security of a Bluetooth Network or a Wi-Fi network does that mean that it's not secure it has a certain level of security nothing is uh you know absolutely secur less I mean everything can be broken or the thing is that the amount of technology that you need in order to break Bluetooth or Wi-Fi for example is not available to everybody I mean you have to you know be really specialized on doing that so I would say yes it's a big concern I have to say there are some methods and we for example when we work with this technology we apply these methods course but it's it's a concern that we all at least be a should be aware of that everything is breakable in terms of security we just have to be cautious and apply all the methods and methodologies that we are recommend to okay of course yeah and um in in if we consider that h a tourism let's say would like to to to invest in iot um but as always no little money we want fast return of investment how what uh what would it be so how do we measure the success of this iot Technologies yeah yeah this is related to the first question we have been discussing uh it's hard to say okay the obvious thing is if this technology is able to make this business uh um to have less Human Resources no they can maybe not use that much people and so the digitalization can provide the same uh um effects on the business that's one thing uh it's not the thing we like the most of course another thing is looking at long at long-term Investments no I guess uh and we have some examples again talking about hotels for example hotels that this digitalization of the space the fact that you can manage with your phone the whole room the fact that it can personalize the experience that you have while using the hotel uh on the hotels we have implemented this we have seen that the hotel have a new claim for people to use their hotel so at the end they expect but this is a long-term investment that more people consider to use that facility because it's more attractive regarding technology and as we were discussing before since the the society is more and more digitalized I think it's a good investment I think it's a good idea uh also of course another direct effect is what we were saying if you do it correctly it will allow you to save money with the energy consumption and that's I think it's very important the water consumption which is extremely important and all the resources that you need digitalization will it's mandatory in order to optimize the energy you use the carbon footprint so that's the that's one of the main things yeah I think there's there's also a lot of room still for this seamless experience no so it's there and I think we value it very much but I think there's there's a lot more to be to be done and to be kind of promoted actually when when when a for example a hotel would invest in iot how this communication you know on on how this would impact uh the uh a better experience of the of the customer could be could be done and so according to to your views how do you see uh what are the emerging Trends and I know that you work also on you relate this iot technology with sustainability so also what what is what is how this relation happen and what are your views on these emerging Trends related to IR okay uh yeah regarding Trends uh specifically talking about technology only like I was saying before the trending is to democ the to to to instead of cabling everything it's uh using devices that are Wireless throughout a lot of different uh protocols okay but this allow to you know using this small cheaper devices to have digitalization of spaces so what that's good news I think that's democratization like we were saying of the technology so uh all let's say more people can you know access to the digitalization market that's one one of the things uh I would like to say also um that when you develop these things and this is a very Cactus thing this is a very particular thing from our company is that okay the digital ation itself regardless of how you implement it will allow like we were saying that to save energy to save water so just the digitalization process will allow people to save money and contribute to a more sustainable world so that's a thing iot by itself regardless of how it's implemented it's helping the digitalization is helping but in Cactus we are specializ specialize also on how we develop this technology regardless of its final usage okay and that is when uh we insist a lot in something called Green Computing which is not an invention of cactus it's a well-known invention and it talks about how do we develop software code and Hardware uh What uh protocols what instances how do we do it because and nobody or every time more now more and more people is starting to talk about we have to start discussing all the servers in the world world with all the code running which is huge and it's getting uh great bigger and bigger and bigger we have to understand that this is consuming a lot of power so the thing is could we implement the same functionality but using less resources and the answer is yes and that's what we are focusing on on standardizing and making people understand the clients that we develop the solution that requires fewer resources um that's what we try do do you have do you have some practical examples on on on on this precisely H yeah what you were mentioning now or or maybe other experiences with tourism industry yeah yeah the main the thing I have been talking throughout the whole interview is the hotel example so I'm going to just talk a little bit about that only yes uh that is one is is a success story because we were able to implement our solution which digitalized the whole room of the hotel and and we implemented that in different in different hotels and in different places and it was a success because indeed just only the savings on uh light on energy that was used because most of the rooms were uh sometimes you know empty and even today there's a lot of places where the lights still on and nobody's there it seems like something easy to do like it this should have been implemented 15 20 years ago the answer is yes but is it still not done so there's a a lot of job regarding that we have to do and another example this is a kind of new one from this from this year uh a client that had a solution that was also focused on hotels um in order to save water through gamification it was a device that we are designing actually we are designing it right now so I can explain up till certain point but this a device that it's uh you put it below the shower and it has a screen okay it has some LEDs and some colors it's playful okay and through G verification it tells you how you should use the shower in order not to be showering more than four minutes so it's like you have like four stages okay and uh it helps through gamification you know to um you know aims to reduce the time of the of the showering and that device is at the end connected to the PMS of the hotel so the hotel Hotel can understand who is better using the the usage of water so consuming less water and then the hotel promote somehow or make some you know discount on the people who are doing it correctly and there the this client made some tests and uh they were saving up to 34% of water in a in a hotel so that's an interesting case because through gamification we were able to in the in this in the tourism sector save energy save water and at the end make the customer more happy so it's a good example I think it's a great example and also especially nowadays also with all these problems that we have in in catalunia with water and and and I think in other in other parts of Europe as well um and and H and also like trying to provoke this uh change of mindset between with the user no to make the user and the customer be part of this change that we want to drive thank you so much is I think it has been super insightful having uh this conversation with you and uh we hope to to follow a little bit more on what Cactus H is doing and we will be doing in the future so we stay in touch and uh thank you very much thank you Sandra it's been a pleasure thank you we stay in touch bye hello my father hello thank you for accepting our invitation for the tbit project whichs to which aims to well to uptake the the which CHS to boost the uptake of digitalization and Technologies for the tourism so um for our audience I am Mara Salvador from NES tourism Innovation Center from Portugal this is mafala she's founder and um CEO of visits a are a company that focuses on improving uh the visiting experience through AI AR VR and gamification exactly please correct me and tell us more more about you please okay yeah exactly that we we are a platform um that uh is used for generating tours and visits on site or virtually uh for any destination or visitor attraction or any operator that wants to use use our platform to improve the visitor experience yeah okay thank you so given that you are an expert on this topic we invited you to well to to explore a little bit more on the arvr and so for a starting point I would ask you to tell us more a bit more on what are the benefits for the tourism companies which in fact are are a lot and and uh well and they how could they benefit from this technology concretely um well um what we believe is that um AR and VR technology is definitely a way of uh improving and generating impact and engagement during any visit for any tourist um because there's it's a way of uh bringing some stories that are uh hidden and that you cannot show because the they are not there anymore uh for Geographic um reasons or for historical reasons uh um I don't know you are in a archaological site and you don't know how it looks like in the past and then you bring immersivity to to to bring how it looks like and for you to feel how it was in the past those kind of tools when I'm talking about they are really useful when you are doing um visits to different tourism attractions and um VR and um and the experiences of virtual reality are also truly interesting um not only on on site when you are visiting uh something and again you you you want to immerse on the on the stories but also for planning um I mean VR and the the the the immersive experiences that VR can bring um might give you a a really interesting tool for marketing in in travel um for users and for travelers to take a look at to the destinations that you are planning to go and then they decide more with more conscious where they want to go the plans for their their uh travels and everything so um I'm I'm not just the only one who is saying this all the studies studies are going to that I mean I mean for example for this year Master Card um did a a study for Trends in travel and um they realized that 43% of of the tra Travelers will use Virtual Reality to inspire themselves um and to to plan better to to really understand the destination before they go and this is a really powerful Tool uh for marketing purpose so um I do believe that AR and VR might um not only improve onsite visits but also in the inspiring planning um issues yeah yeah so it is a tool that has this duplicity of use which can yeah can just can be used and exploded so one of the one of the topics and for the the majority of us when we think of the of the technology AR VR Solutions we often associate this with huge costs that for instance for a small company it might not be affordable it might be just too hard and when we have to focus on whether we continue the operations or or we we invest in the technology and given that there are so many Technologies how would you say uh well first of all what are the main challenges in adopting and and the other thing is connecting and considering the cost structure uh can you Enlighten us a little bit more on um well on this on this topic yeah I mean um I would say that uh the main challenges for for these Technologies um has to do um still has to do with uh not not the software itself because I think that technically the the the access to this kind of uh Frameworks is quite easy um but in terms of content there's still still a challenge uh because when you are talking about doing an um an immersive experience and preparing an immersive experience you are talking about um something that needs to have a a a a big impact you are not talking about showing a video or a picture is something that um will require some knowledge in terms of um 3D models and uh and the the visual effect of this and the aesthetic of this and it's important uh to take care of all of the details um in terms of the visuals of these of these experiences and um and I think that the main challenge will be to find the right partners and to find the right um people to really uh generate these models in a really uh realistic way which is U the first challenge I would say that uh would would um we would face when adopting AR um another one will be uh well we you you when we are generating models that uh we want to present in in AR you normally need to have access to uh internet for for example um unless you have tools in your mobile to see offline uh experiences and that might work but when you don't have and you need to have access there's a challenge regarding the 5G which is not fully adopted and um and there might be uh some technical issues here for those who want to adopt adop in places where you don't have a really good um connection okay of course that there's ways of overcoming this in our case we are providing solutions that might be um ass assessed through an offline um version uh but it's still a challenge okay um another thing I would say is that um there's still some um I would say the challenge for the ones that are thinking about using AR sometimes and for those who sell this experience like us is that they feel that is something that is quite unaccessible um and um that is quite expensive which is not true uh I mean this area VR and VR got a really interesting boosts during covid and the reason why is super logical people were at home they wanted to have experiences in places and they couldn't and the only way that they could go there and immerse on the on the reality of those places that they could not visit was through Arn VR and so people really uh try a lot of things in Arn VR during this period and then there was a boost and an opportunity for the companies who were developing these tools to improve these tools to launch a new to found new companies around this um so everything start to be more competitive and the prices went down so nowadays um you can have access to these tools with a really not expensive Solutions which is quite interesting so I would say that there's there's still the idea that this is something that is not accessible but it is at this moment um so what I feel in the market is that people um are still thinking that maybe this is not a priority because maybe be too expensive which is not uh and so um I would say from my point of view in this case my challenge would be to tell them to tell everyone in the world uh kind of evangelize people to understand that this is accessible and that this is an amazing and useful uh tool um for any uh destination and for any uh tour operator hotel to use mafal one of the challenges that I would I would uh remember to also add to to the point that you said which Al also connects to the cost structure is about well the people right uh I mean and when I speak of people I speak of well the the team the the staff that will uh have to deal with this new technology and also maybe worrying about the well the adoption of the public the tourist because maybe we imagine that the younger generation we will be more uh into it but then um if our Target is not that much how will be the public respond so my question is if do you think also that this um um well the the the training for the for the staff for the audience for the engagement of all these people is it still a challenge or you think that considering your experience that the adoption has been uh much smoother at the moment and and and imagine do you give some some some training do you provide the thatt when you are selling those those Technologies to companies how does it work in uh yeah I mean I think it I think it's much easier now uh to think about the adoption of these Technologies um one is that because people start to have more access to these kind of experiences around the world uh when they go to a museum when they were at home and uh someone told them about how to visit virtually church and they go inside and they see uh and so people are more used to to the tools um and there's no necessary training for for that I would say but of course that this is a process and we are still not in the in the maturity of and and the and the perfect scenario for the adoption as you said for the older Generations maybe there are some people that are not really used to that and they will they might find um some difficults to to understand but here is the challenge for companies to make it easy to make it easier and uh as I said as this Market got so competitive the ones that are developing this they try to do it seamless they try to do in a way that people uh can use really fast and really quickly and really easily um which has to do again with competition that uh level up the the the quality of of the of the flow of user experience which is uh quite good news um there would be a point where this the scenario of adoption will be just perfect of course we are still not there we we we will we will achieve that but there will be some things that will help on that for example besides the the the general adoption of these for people to try to understand to to to see that there's nothing uh really hard or really difficult to in the assess um also the the devices and variables that we will be using in the future will help us on on on that imagine that in the near future um you will be used to put your AR glasses uh while you are visiting a museum and that is super seamless while you are visiting you can see things around you um AR elements in your glasses and you don't need to do anything actually so as soon as these kind of devices like ar ar glasses and things like that are truly adopted by by the mass Market that will be much easier to why people are not adopting these um these devices and these Hardware um maybe because it's still too expensive but it will not be that expensive in the in the future um I can give you an example in the past uh we could only got AR glasses uh from all lands almost from Microsoft and they could cost you $3,000 3,000 EUR um and nowadays uh well I went to mobile work Congress the the two weeks ago and you can see there are so many AR glasses so um simple and so and uh and um so cheap like you can find um devices for uh 500 EUR or things like that that will help on this adoption uh and that will help on the asset that will help help on the interaction with this kind of experiences because people will adopt people will start to buy uh people will want to have these devices and in this when this scenario happens of course that um even for the older ones it will be so easy yes and this connects to what it would be my last question but in the end you already answer it because it would be like the emerging Trends but as you are saying as the cost is is coming down it will be more accessible to everyone and so the adoption of this technology will be much easier so as we just have um like one or two minutes left I would I would invite you to well highlight some some successful cases I don't know if you would like to invite our audience to I don't know maybe share uh or maybe highlight one of your experiences yeah what would you like to highlight in the end as a for people to I think that I can give some examples of what we have been doing and how we can um use these kind of Technologies in different um scenarios um I think that one of the most interesting examples that we we had in in the with our clients uh was one historical Village in Portugal that is ala where we got an award for that too where they they had there are a small village with an amazing castle that was gone and um with the French invasions they destroy the castle that there's no Castle anymore and you can find so many um places where this is happening where you go there you don't see uh the the Heritage places that they they had in the in the past and uh this this is um um a Pity and so uh in this case we used AR to bring back this Castle um and to bring back um the scenario of um in the in the 19th century of how it looks like with the with the the French with the English and with the with all the the things that they were doing there and all the stories that happened during the FR Invasion and the and the impact that we got was quite interesting so people people really enjoyed and then still now so we we we implemented this like I don't know four years ago we are still receiving um compliments and U people that give us feedback like um it is amazing to have this experience and to have the opportunity to see the pass through AR another example is that um we when you think about and VR we can think about this this uh natural uh connection that I told but there's so much more um in Hospitality for example you can use a VR for having a nice planning for your for your trip and for your hotel if you can see the rooms if you can see the surroundings if you can see how it looks like maybe you will you will book uh faster um and this is qu might be a really interesting use case also that now we can start see some hotels adopting um and it might be super interesting to think about that too um and um and yeah I think that in general um as I said um for historical reasons in historical places for uh Hospitality even for tour operators for use uh for for having a tool a better tool for having a better service during the visit of their Travelers uh um there's so many use cases where we can apply this and where well well Travelers will will be amazed by by The Experience because they they want experiences they don't want just visits and the and the immersive experiences might give them this um impact and this experience that they are searching for yeah and this might be a great way of complimenting the visit and to engage to the next absolutely yeah so uh to our audience that heard this example from mafala we are going to add this example to the publication that we are releasing the year top Technologies of uh your release so we are adding this YouTube uh link that mafal has just shared with us and thank you mafala for sharing these thoughts with us and these insights and uh see you thank you see you Mara thank you so much bye bye goodbye you bye bye so hello everyone H it's Mara again hello Tanya hello very nice to meet you and thank you for being here with us together at this webinar about blockchain uh just a short presentation about my my guest today our experts Tania planker she is a president of the blockchain alliance in Europe and she will give us um a short um a short Insight because we only have 10 minutes and um you will give us a short introduction on well what are the value propositions with blockchain technology for the for for tourism smmes uh we also wanted to know a bit more what are the challenges to implement and to adopt um what are the you know the scalability and growth uh um concernings and also it would be good if you could give us also some examples of how that the the smmes could really adopt this technology how this can be done because in the end of all the technologies that we have gone through so far this one must be the one the most challenging one so the floor is yours T thank you very much thank you uh thank you for the lovely introduction so I said we will talk about blockchain technology and um I will share my screen because I have my uh presentation prepared about blockchain okay MH let's maybe start the slideshow this is how it is okay so this is going to be blockchain for tuis we will talk a lot about all the questions that you asked Martha uh and uh we will start a little bit about the hype cycle or the adoption of blockchain Technology we see here that we have really a lot of possible use cases for blockchain technology it is not just one technology it is technology that is used through different use cases and we can see that a lot of um those are not not going to be implemented or mass adopted in two to five years but some of them will be and are on the verge of mass adoption for example crypto currencies and blockchain wallets are already there and blockchain wallet is um a building block of every good blockchain um use case as we will see uh um in the the next slides I won't talk about all the all of those because it will take too much time but we will talk about those that are really can be easily implemented and one of them is payments payments with Bitcoin and other crypto assets and of course blockchain payment infrastructure I will show you that there are many crypto payment providers right now um on the market that you can easily Implement into your payment system even if you are I don't know store at a touristic site or a really small small this is a possibility that you can Implement uh crypto payments into your payment system you just have to find the provider that is in your country and uh then choose one and uh Implement that and it really is easy as we will see this in this video you can pay by a crypto wallet that is on your phone that is actually an app or with a special card and you see that payment is the same as every payment um that you make with u Fiat money or uh other cards okay let's go and uh why you should do this because there are by one of the of the res research papers there are more more than 420 million crypto owners worldwide and the top countries where that have crypto owners are India USA Vietnam and this is the growing market so people do have crypto assets and Bitcoin and they want to spend them also as a means of payment not just a store of value or an investment and so on and uh what happened when um Merchants actually implemented this in us more than 85% of merchants uh they see this in the US as a high priority and they also had an increase of return on investment uh up to um this is the sorry 32% not not 327 that would be a little bit lot up to 40 uh% of new customers and this is something you want to tap into the into that um into that market uh as anme of course because it is easily implemented and uh usually uh it does the uh investment for smmes is not that high they just have to have the right hardware for it uh or a program on their computer so um Mara maybe any questions about payments before we move to to another topic yes I would just jump into the security um issues because I think that's always a major concern for the for the company you mean as security as in the terms of being hacked yes so the payments these are payments are regulated as every other payment especially here in Europe they have to have license licenses as payment providers it doesn't matter if they are dealing with Fiat money or they are dealing in crypto so they have to be compliant with all those regulations uh especially if they are also Hardware provider like POS systems or they are a provider of the digital cards so this is something that uh is the the concern of those that are doing payments but for the for the uh Merchant or for the this is um let's say safe because they are regulated as every other business in the pay payment industry so um definitely let's say the risk is not high because there are cryptos involved and the other thing is yes that the merchant usually does not receive the cryptos on their uh on their uh account they're receiving the Fiat money okay so for them and this is happening in the real time very well also for each country because we have different countries here in the in this Consortium we should go uh each should go to their um country representatives to get more information concerning the payments blockchain in in in payments right um yes of course I can I can tell for Europe that we have this aligned because uh uh most of the are European directives but yes if we're are talking about other countries uh there should get more information how the uh crypto payments are regulated okay SE let's go to another one the centralized identity and use cases based on the decentralized identity this is just a outline of the infrastructure that you need um for the use of decentralized identity because the decentralized identity is actually a digital wallet when we store where we store our information and the important thing is that we have the control over our information with which entity we will share that information that is um happening on the trusted uh framework and we also have some verifiers and issuers uh in the system with verifier these are for example governmental bodies that are issuing some sort of documents like your passport and the verifier is another in this case governmental body or body of control that is verifying that this is the the the right one so this is some sort of an in infrastructure and this is an example what you can have in your digital wallet when I'm talking about digital wallets this is really an app that is really user friendly and easy to use because otherwise you know this would not be a use case that would be uh very um useful for um Mass adoption so uh we can see these are some use cases that we did with the company that I'm involved with we issued some digital certificates for sers and coners of distilled beverages what they can do they can build the whole portfolio of their um experiences in in this um in this uh realm so we also uh issued some digital credentials and these were the awards for the finest Jin and Juniper Spirits again those that are doing that they can again build a portfolio of the the similar um digital credentials and rewards that they are getting and what is the beauty of it it cannot be forged it can it can be very easily traceable it can be also it is very transparent who is the issuer where did they get it and uh what was the award and of course there is a digital um digital credential uh for for um people um you can store in your wallet different credentials as we saw before passports um Health IDs and so on so these are also some other tourism related use cases um as said it can be used for travel documents it can be used for um access management for tourist capacities uh this is much easier because the all the documents are there in your digital wallet and you just have to share with the different entities then Insurance um the insurance um is much more automated with smart contracts for example if your flight is delayed more than two hours and you need a refund you're also uh then this happens automatically you don't have the whole paperwork loyalty programs are also possible and the centralized booking hubs um it is similar to those that are centralized and we using right now but but what they don't have is uh you don't share all of your data with them you just give the access to those that you want to share with this is the main difference T do you have any use cases for in the hospitality uh scene vertical um like hotels or do you have any cases that you can share uh so that the people who are watching us they may look into more information uh there we didn't do an actual pilot or use case with the the company that I work for but there is a possibility to do this because when you have this um digital ID ass set you can store everything uh inside that ID it can be also just shared as a credential that means in theory if not required by law when you know we have our ID scanned and so on and somebody's that storing that uh on their probably server or a computer we don't know how save that data is here as a verifiable credential there is a possibility that the hotel is a verifier and they just check if we have that credential that means no storing for them and that means that it's um completely also safe and uh um there's no need for for duplicating that data uh every time that you check in the hotel so this is for example one and there are many more documents that that are like that and can can be accessed as a verifiable credential I imagine for instance the driving license when you rent the car right I just wanted to say that yes the driving license your ID or passport um those are things that are getting replicated um every time that you enter a facility and uh this is just not feasible and it's not also feasible because because um the security should be um you know on a higher level here and sometimes is simply not because I understand that the simple Hotel cannot have a you know very secure room with servers and everything uh as a bank uh it does does it's not happening so these are some some of the the possibilities and yes it eliminates the paperwork because you just share the information this can happen automatically and repetition because we are repeating again and again doing the same paperwork so yes yes yes so uh this is slowly uh because uh we also have an initiative on the European level for Europe I can say this this will be uh sooner reality uh because we also have on the European level already uh confirmed digital wallets that are compliant with all the regulative and Technical aspects um that are required by this European commission initiative so this is something that that is happening right now and will be massively used very very soon good to know good to know okay and then uh the NFS we heard a lot about nfts in in the previous years uh I will just skim through the use cases um that happened here in Slovenia I'm from Slovenia um and uh this is one where where the it was a promotional campaign for our country it was called ifield Slovenia nft those were photographs that were actually you could access with a with a uh special card and nft and store it into your wallet um so this is this is one example this is also um plan nft this is our major sports event that is happening in Slovenia it keep jumping and you could also bid on nft collection that was made with the ski jumpers at that year um and the third one uh those are the this is the promotional uh campaign for one destination for Porto Ro they decided to make goat nfts and if you collected more of them then you could have some benefits uh in terms of also memorabilia uh and so on so these are use cases that are actually addressing Generation Z generation Alpha the digital natives um sometimes uh they are merging the digital with the physical in terms of if you collect so many nfts then something else will happen to you you will get a t-shirt or a special experience or something like that it individualizes experiences at certain um destination to a certain point it depends how good the business model is and uh actually as I said the digital wallets are now so user friendly that no in depth understanding of the technology is needed um of course there are some challenges um we thought we saw a lot of ideas and a lot of uh wonderful ideas but the business models were not so adequate or not so well thought um the pr was sometimes more relevant than the actual business model and did not get traction at the end um for those that are actually um also issuing nfts that had some monal value there is also not enough regulation and there there is a lot of room for different scams and of course there are unreal expectations as from the holders as from the issuers because um when there is money involved and some value to those nfts uh sometimes they don't reflect the the True Value uh of those in the market um I'm sure that you have some questions for the nfts too no yes uh so so concerning because I always think of my Target and the target are smmes tourism smmes do you think they they it's already welld developed for them to adopt it's already uh or it's just for the bigger players or for the destinations because from the point that I see the use cases are always more on the on the on the part of the destinations not not to the um yes but it is possible for smmes for to adopt them they actually also work as a digital Loyalty cards this is something you can collect your nfts as you know as your Connecting Point collecting points in the store and when you collect some of them uh then you get then you get some benefits so yes we are I let's say not exactly there yet but we are very very near and there are smmes that are using this uh uh possibility to to to have digital loyal cards that are actually nfds by their design very well Tanya I don't think we have more time this was really a snapshot into into blockchain I don't know if you have more slides to show us no this is it uh but otherwise I could talk for an hour I know know we don't have time I hope this was valuable these are some things that really is targeted for smes and it is for them to use very very soon very well if people if one of the people from the audience want to know more about where can they look for what is your address the website so that they can look for more information okay it's blockchain alliance. SII otherwise if you just write tanya.

plar uh at blockchain alliance. SII you can also reach me via email I'm very available very glad to chat about blockchain technology Tanya thank you very much I always learn a lot from these talks thank you and hope to see you soon thank you thank you thank you for the opportunity thank you hello I hope you have enjoyed the webinar and you have gained some new knowledge and interesting insights on what are the current top Technologies and how they can be adopt by the tourism smmes I will like to leave you with a video that summarize the results of the tur project since this is the last tourism 4.0 webinar we will do thank you all for your participation along the different activities delivered by turbit I really hope the project has been useful for you and I look forward new opportunities for future collaboration thank you very much [Music] bye [Music] [Music] [Music]

2024-05-12 18:53

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