• Analysis of best practice

Know your market and what you can offer – something that is imperative to know and understand when setting up your own tourism, or any business. The city of Helsinki understood that since the Chinese market segment was on the increase, it needed to provide specific and respective information and support to facilitate the traveling experience for this group. As Finland is one of the most technologically advanced world countries, creating and using an app was assumed. 

Understanding their target audience, their interaction with the city, their interests, and itineraries (through interviews) they created an information site that helped the Chinese tourists be in control of the information and their expectations. They could easily navigate through the city and have valuable and important data at hand.  

• Lessons learned from this best practice

Take some time to investigate your target audience and their behaviour on site. Talk with them, interview them, ask questions and learn about their travelling behaviour. Moreover, try to understand their approach to technologies and their use.

• How can social entrepreneurship thrive through this type of business

Imagine creating an app promoting societal issues and combining it with a tourism service provision? Social entrepreneurship can be promoted either as a main tourism service with direct impact or one can promote societal issues through their tourism provision such as offering information and sensitising their guests. As a young person wishing to start your own digital tourism business, perhaps social digital tourism entrepreneurship can be something to consider.

• Transferability potential to other digital tourism areas

Although this app was created by a local authority, its transferability potential is great and can be replicated a smaller or bigger scale. Identify the categories displayed and the selection of information that was chosen to be presented. Similarly, young people wishing to start their own digital tourism business, can create an app to promote a sectoral service i.e., gastronomy in their city and related tours provided by them.

• Possible challenges faced

The initial setup and organisation of app into technical specifications and user-friendliness might be an initial challenge. Collecting city experiences, tours, offers etc, that are ongoing and the necessary updates to the offer list, need to be considered. Cooperation strategies and incentives to providers need to be discussed as well as formal agreements possible made. Timeframes should be considered to meet deadlines and tourism periods/ seasons.

• Community engagement

Working with the community and local suppliers is imperative since you as host, can offer more experiences and information to your target audience. If the community and local entrepreneurs have incentives to participate and promote their own services and products, a sense of community is build but also a sense of collaboration and pride in what you can collectively offer. The traveler experience this as an increased provision catalogue.

Malaga, Spain: 

As tourists increasingly require experiential tourism services and products, the city of Malaga in Spain helped various tourism providers such as museums, event organisers etc, to offer their services and products through their city app. For easier app access, the city installed QR codes and beacons at various places in the city and combine the information provision with social media channels and a chat service.

• Analysis of best practice

With technology at the tip of their hand, tourists want to create their own itineraries and not follow pre-determined routes. Collecting information, sights, event etc. information into one app and allow the tourist to create their daily itineraries will improve their tourism experience, facilitate their preparation and decrease their planning time to allow for even more experience to occur and interactions with the local population. Personalisation and APIs (Application Programming Interface / integrate 3rd party service providers in your website or app) are key to entice tourists to visit a place, so, consider how you can personalise the travellers experience.

• Lessons learned from this best practice

Personalisation, freedom of selecting routes and itineraries and creating own paths are key to entice and keep tourists. Moreover, it can help a business or city to stimulate repeat tourism which is great for the local economy. Analyse the categories promoted and the type of businesses and outdoor activities presented. Try to create an itinerary and break down the characteristics of daily itineraries, i.e., outdoor activities, restaurants, events, cultural trips, sights etc. and the information that is provided for each.

• How can social entrepreneurship thrive through this type of business

Consider linking your digital tourism business to societal issues and promote their awareness. For example, you can integrate your service or product i.e., a digital self-guided tour using AR and QR codes and stimulate interactions with the local community, promote products that benefit a good cause etc. Perhaps even help raise awareness of local issues that can benefit from the exposure.

• Transferability potential to other digital tourism areas

Allowing and empowering tourists to create own itineraries or navigate through a city using QR and location-based information is important. Similarly, you can create apps that allow a tourist to autonomously move around the city and create experiences. 

• Possible challenges faced

Consider the technological infrastructure as well as being able to create and position QR codes and geolocation markers in different places in the city. Will you need permissions? How can you constantly update the necessary information on events and other experiences that you have in your app? How will you promote the app and through which channels? Will the internet provision cater for easy access or are roaming charges applicable? Consider the cooperation agreements and commission rates that might be necessary to collaborate with local suppliers in order to promote them or work with them for their services.

• Community engagement

The community is usually thrilled to promote their events, cultural activities, civil activities, and other community events to visitors. Locate the right people who can provide information and ask them how they want the visitors to best engage with community actions. Are there any causes to promote, events to celebrate, services to encourage etc. Through collaboration structures, you as a young digital tourism entrepreneur, will build your network and lay the grounds of future services.

• Analysis of best practice

Using hackathons or similar events (workshops, competitions) is a great way to generate new ideas and identify entrepreneurial talents. Taking part in these events will help you receive access to instructions, references, expert interviews but also, data sources that will help you with your business and potentially, creating your own business plan. The city of Copenhagen both raised awareness of the city’s work as well as located and invested in new entrepreneurial potential that possibly, long term can benefit the city and offer job opportunities. Learning from such best practices support business ventures as well as offer an insight into state-of-the-art needs in a city as identified by its population.

• Lessons learned from this best practice

Combining efforts either as a city or education provider, will benefit youth to stimulate their entrepreneurial mindsets and allow them to try out their ideas in a safe and supported environment. Moreover, they receive valuable expertise in their efforts to create their own business plans and test them out to estimate their potential commercial value. Hackathons or skills workshops are excellent methodological tools to support healthy competition.

• How can social entrepreneurship thrive through this type of business

Consider creating a hackathon that supports digital tourism businesses with a social aspect or perspective. Usually, the applications contain innovative ideas and different perspectives that only aid a city or organiser due to their diversity.

• Transferability potential to other digital tourism areas

Based on the topality and characteristics of one destination, a hackathon, or open tourism day, can generate different ideas for new services or products or even collaboration structures for the local population and businesses. These types of events are transferable to different sectors, educational areas and can be used to promote and generate new services or products, new resources, new skills and many more.

• Possible challenges faced

Consider the human resources and infrastructure needed to organise such as event as well as the respective marketing and funding needed. Depending on the size and nature of the event, things to consider are: technological experts to provide guidance, business plan support, technical infrastructure for submitting ideas, panel to evaluate and offer feedback, infrastructure to hold events or semi-events leading up to the big finale. Participation numbers and criteria for participation and selection.  

• Community engagement

A great way to call for community engagement since depending on the nature of the event, different community actors can participate and promote their business and actions. Helping youth is considered a bonus since local businesses and entrepreneurs feel that relevant support should be offered to young people to pursue and build their careers.

In addition to the whole case study, the Orange Foundation's research on the industry examines the digital transformation trends in the travel and tourism industry. It compiles some success stories that are transforming how we vacation. Here are a few of the most impressive initiatives and concepts.

Island El Hierro

It is referred to as the first smart island in the world. All of the island's WiFi hotspots are listed in the "El Hierro te sigue" programme. Renewable energy are used to run the network because some parts of the island do not have electricity, and the antennas have been incorporated into the surroundings as much as possible to respect their integration into the scenery. The project satisfies data transit, intelligent information management, and sensorization requirements.

Hotels Lopesan

The hotel visitor will be able to use the Internet whether at the beach, hiking, or walking outside the hotel thanks to a gadget capable of enabling up to five simultaneous connections to phones, tablets, or laptops, among other things. In other words, WiFi connection from any location on the island of Gran Canaria where 3G or 4G service is available.

Shopping tourism in Las Palmas

By implementing a communication system based on beacons placed in the primary tourist sites, the City Council of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria encourages shopping tourism in the city. Within a range of up to 50 metres, the device enables messages to be transmitted to travellers' smartphones and tablets.  

Hotel Royal Passeig de Gràcia

The Hotel Royal Passeig de Gràcia organised the Digital Binoculars experience on its terrace as part of the Smart Living programme, an initiative of the GSMA Mobile World Congress that brings innovative tourism experiences. This allowed users to visualise the city skyline from mobile devices, see superimposed information on specific points of interest, interact with them, and even visit these places virtually.

Malaga Provincial Council 

The Diputación de Málaga has had an interactive augmented reality application since 2012, developed to promote tourism in the province. The Diputación de Málaga and Orange promoted the first tourism application for cell phones, ‘Costa del Sol-Málaga’, with more than 1,000 referenced points, videos, audio guides and integration with Twitter and Facebook. It was the first tourism app conceived for an entire province.

Rías Baixas

A cloud-based technology platform is available in the Spanish province of Pontevedra for the intelligent management of tourism resources and the creation of customised offers based on the experiences of each visitor. The platform has a gateway for advertising and marketing the tourist destination of Ras Baixas.

Winding Tree

Major travel services aggregators like Expedia and Priceline dominate airfare bookings. However, this comes at a serious cost to both travelers and airlines. Booking through these websites often includes hefty fees and surcharges made possible by their largely unchallenged status as gatekeepers. Blockchain-based startup Winding Tree works to unseat these entrenched giants by challenging their role as industry middlemen. Winding Tree is a private company based in Switzerland. Founded in 2017, it reaches numerous parts of the travel and tourism industry, including hotels and airfare. The company uses "blockchain technology to enable a fair and competitive travel distribution market." The company seeks to connect travelers directly with service providers like airlines, hotels, and tour guides with its LÍF token. The aim is to minimize fees for travelers while reducing costs for service providers. LÍF is Winding Tree's platform cryptocurrency. The company’s clever use of smart contracts and the ERC827 protocol delivers better savings for every stakeholder in the travel and tourism industry. Winding Tree's non-profit status assures there are no middlemen adding unnecessary fees to the booking process.

Examples and good practices from other countries

There are examples of course from other countries that are worth mentioning in the document and have wide digital tourism application potential. One is the TimeTravel VR tour from Turkey, offering VR tourism experiences to visitors. The below YouTube video offers an extensive explanation of how this works. 

https://www.investopedia.com/news/6-companies-using-blockchain-change-travel-0/

In Greece, the biggest telecommunication provider, Cosmote, recently launched Cosmote Chronos, where with the help of AR, the visitor can augment the Parthenon, Acropolis and other archaeological sites. 

Funding opportunities 

The objective of Euro-emotur is to boost the uptake of digitalisation and innovation by tourism SMEs, improving their competitiveness in the market through digitalization, paying special attention to neuromarketing techniques to boost the digital reputation of SMEs and increase their performance in the short and long term. Participation for SMEs is free of charge, no co-financing is required.

Conclusion

Integrating best practices in digital tourism is crucial for entrepreneurs looking to succeed in the fiercely competitive industry in today's fast-changing digital landscape. Using best practices in this tool to help you set up your digital tourism enterprise is valid since the lessons learned will be valuable. Incorporating best practices in digital tourism entrepreneurship is not just a choice but also a necessity for businesses seeking growth and relevance in the modern age. By building trust, embracing sustainability, staying competitive, leveraging technology, and adopting suitable business models, entrepreneurs can pave the way for success in the vibrant and ever-evolving digital tourism ecosystem. 

Best practices can be used as business strategies or as business models that can guide you in setting up your business endeavour. By utilizing best practices, entrepreneurs can pave the way for growth and relevance in today's dynamic digital landscape while setting up their business endeavours. Additionally, creating a forum where young people can share their ideas and collaborate will facilitate knowledge exchange and cultivate a supportive community passionate about digital tourism. Empowering young minds to collaborate and share their innovative ideas in a supportive digital tourism community will shape the ecosystem's future and drive sustainable practices forward. This collaborative environment will empower the next generation of digital tourism enthusiasts to explore innovative approaches, drive sustainable practices, and collectively shape the future of the digital tourism ecosystem.