Tourism 4.0 - Addressing the Challenges of the Modern Tourism

Tourism industry has always been adapting to the social and technological developments. In the era of digitalization, it needs to adapt again. With more than 1.3 billion persons travelling yearly around the world and increasingly higher numbers to come, an implementation of even a small change in this sector can have a huge impact on the whole society.

By Dr. Urška Starc Peceny

Chief Innovation Officer, Arctur Ltd.

PhD in Business Communication specializing in New Media and Technologies. Leads the Tourism 4.0 department and hacks collaboration formats as lead of NASA Space Apps Challenge in Austria.

1. WHAT IS TOURISM 4.0

The uniqueness of connectedness of the tourism sector and its potential impact has also been recognized by UNWTO (UN World Tourism Organisation), which has even started a dedicated promotion with the idea of Tourism becoming the driver for realization of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Tourism 4.0 is an initiative which following the same goals by forming a new paradigm.

The term originates from the modern paradigm in industry, known as Industry 4.0, and aims to improve the added value to tourism through innovation, knowledge, technology and creativity. Such development of tourism in Slovenia is not surprising. After paving the way in systematic development of innovation in tourism on a national level, awarded in 2009 by UNWTO, Slovenia took the lead also in the field of systematic development of sustainable tourism, crowned by National Geographic in 2017 as the most sustainable destination worldwide. With the Tourism 4.0, Slovenia is again at the forehead of this trend.

The research team at a Slovenian company Arctur with more of 25 years of history of pioneering in the digitalisation and currently the only private-owned supercomputer center in Central and Eastern Europe, has joined forces with major research institutions in the country from the field of tourism and technology to power the largest research project about tourism in the history of Slovenia. There are 3 crucial questions:

• How to use state of the art technology in order to bring tourism stakeholders to collaborate?
• How to create ecosystems in which tourism becomes the driver of the positive impact and sustainability?
• How to merge hi-tech with tourism?

The true essence of this paradigm shift is not only to use technology to unlock the innovation potential in the tourism sector but to affect every field around it by creating an ecosystem in which physical and digital space, infrastructure, people and technology behind it merge into one seamless experience of many personalized outputs. The three main challenges addressed are the management of tourist flows, personalized experience, and boosting positive tourism impact.

2. Merging Hi-tech with Tourism - Is it Really all about Data?

Smart tourism applies ICT across travel-related activities, enabling dynamic interactions and allowing smaller destinations to compete globally. However, data alone is insufficient without analysis and stakeholder collaboration. The Tourism 4.0 Partnership was established to foster this global cooperation among industrial and research organizations.

This collaborative ecosystem shifts the focus from purely tourist-centered to community-centered, prioritizing local quality of life and sustainability. Practically, this is driven by the Collaboration Impact Model (CIM), which uses gamification and real-time data to encourage responsible behavior and manages flows using blockchain-based Collaboration Impact Tokens as incentives.

Safety is another added value of Tourism 4.0 CIM provided by a tool in the form of Digital Passport...

References & Notes

1. UNWTO Tourism Highlights: 2018 Edition.
2. National Geographic: Slovenia, World's Most Sustainable Destination (2017).
3. Tourism 4.0 Partnership Consortium Core Data.
4. All graphic materials copyright Arctur & Tourism 4.0 Partnership, 2019.