THE INNOVATION OF THE TOURISM OFFER THROUGH SYNERGIES BETWEEN PRIVATE AND PUBLIC: BTO Buy Tourism Online Toscana Promozione Turistica (Tuscany Tourist Board) Ms Alessia Geroni Crete, June 19th 2018
TUSCANY 2
TOSCANA PROMOZIONE TURISTICA ACTIVITIES: Focusing on tourism promotion Working with the Tuscan territories to promote the Tuscan destinations and the various regional tourism products Participation to the main tourism fairs, B2B workshops and roadshows, enhancing the opportunity of meeting between the Tuscan tourist offer and the international tourism markets Promotional campaigns addressed to the final customer: the tourist Toscana Promozione Turistica has also the main purpose to co-ordinate the regional meeting industry. 3
BUDGET: regional, national and european funds + private and public partnerships ORGANISATION: 24 people dedicated to: 2017 General Manager 65 promotional activities IT & Communication Economic & Financial affairs Events & BtoB Promotion & Marketing Products, Markets & Destination Development 607 participants 4
BTO Buy Tourism Online A unique event in Italy, at its 10th edition in 2017, on Travel & Innovation An opportunity of training and information exchange for the professionals supply chain, public and private bodies and national and international experts in digital tourism A format with over 150 seminars/conferences in only two days on subjects related 607 participants to online tourism, web distribution channels, web-marketing promotion and the culture of new technologies in the tourism industry 5
THE CONTEXT OF THE GOOD PRACTICE Changes in the market due to technological innovation BTO, thanks to the idea of a private operator, aims at giving a response to the professionals who have to manage the transformation of the productive processes and the relationships with the market Innovative contents and an agenda addressed to decision-makers, producing and working in marketing, distribution, research, study and training INNOVATION SCIENTIFIC VALUE NETWORKING 6
FIRST PHASE 2008 First edition of BTO increase of appreciation of the agendas, steady increase of the number of visitors and exhibitors 2009 Agreement on a shared organisational model between the Region and the Chamber of Commerce BTO trademark and the domain www.buytourismonline.com belong to Tuscany Region (50%) and the Chamber of Commerce of Florence (50%), that since the beginning have supported the development of the event with an important budget contribution Public-private governance: Tuscany Region and Economic Promotion Agency (now Toscana Promozione Turistica) Florence Chamber of Commerce, representing the local productive system 7
PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION 2012 The technical coordination of the event is entrusted to Toscana Promozione and Chamber of Commerce of Florence 2016 A Technical Scientific Committee is set up to define the contents and programme of the event 2017 Fondazione Sistema Toscana and PromoFirenze (a Special Agency of the Chamber of Commerce) is responsible for the logistics Toscana Promozione Turistica coordinates the organisation of a parallel event: Digital Ecosystems, a national event that naturally fits within the BTO It reaches the target of the first ten consecutive editions 2019 The annual appointment will not take place in 2018: next edition is planned for 20-21 March 2019 8
PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION Promoted by: Mibact (Ministry for Arts, Cultural Heritage and Tourism), Mise (Ministry for Economic Development), Italian Regions It was developed thanks to the collaboration of Tuscany Region and Toscana Promozione Turistica A big workshop of ideas for the development of digitalisation in the promotion of Italy as a tourist destination A series of events over three years, during which the 2017-2022 Strategic Plan for the development of tourism will be defined Aim: encouraging exchange of ideas between the various actors of the tourism industry, between Public Administration and private companies, so as to disseminate best practices on the national territory 9
MAIN STAKEHOLDERS OF BTO Institutions: Tuscany Region, Chamber of Commerce of Florence, Toscana Promozione Turistica, Fondazione Sistema Toscana and PromoFirenze. Direct involvement of Mibact, Mise, Universities, Florence Trade Centre, Enit (Italian National Tourist Board) Public bodies Italian and international companies Big Players in digital tourism (Booking, Airbnb, HomeAway, Expedia, edreams, Priceline, Opodo, Hotels.com, Trivago, ) Social Networks (Facebook, Twitter) and search engines (Google) Specialised press and international research centres 10
EVIDENCE OF SUCCESS Over 4300 individual accreditations for the most successful edition; 62 companies and an agenda of 159 conferences during the two days of the event In 2015-2016 it was chosen by Best Western as the location for the national convention of the group; Among the sponsors: big companies such as Oracle, SIHotels, Telecom, Emirates, Allianz, Unicredit, Airplus, Toscana Aeroporti. A steady increase of coverage by traditional and online media Over 400 Italian and foreign journalists/bloggers involved 75% of Italian Regions involved following the partnership with Digital Ecosystems 700 thousand is the overall budget of the event 75% of the budget generated by the sale of tickets, exhibition spaces and slots for the presentations of products and services From 2008 to 2016 an average annual growth of revenues between 10% and 15% 11
DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED/LESSONS LEARNED Main challenges and criticalities: Creating an attractive event both for private operators and institutional bodies Making it less dependent on public contributions, keeping its identity of not-for-profit event The dimensions reached over the last few years have made the balancing out of location/staging costs and those devoted to programme contents difficult Aim of the next edition: Repositioning of the BTO brand Extending the participation to all professionals of the tourism supply chain such as Tour Operators, DMCs, Airline companies, Service companies, Caterings, Museums, Cultural Centres, Encouraging the participation of non-tourism activities yet related to the industry 12
LEARNING OR TRANSFER POTENTIAL Success factors of the initiative: Partnership of public bodies to support the gradual economic and identity consolidation of the event Synergies with private companies able of implementing innovative proposals with scientific and commercial relevance The investment in an initiative like BTO means engaging in creating: an opportunity for informing, training and networking with an objective value high level agendas with international speakers and relevant current topics a specific educational format an adequate communication capacity to create the conditions for a future development 13
KEEPING THE PRODUCT ON THE MARKET The communication and image of the event can be self-feeding if the event shows a definite capacity of engagement and creation of a community of followers The risk, as happened to BTO, is to create a closed circuit between speakers, scientific management and followers, that does not facilitate the admission of new participants or the introduction of new themes 14
BED Talks BTO2017 1. Douglas Quinby, Senior Vice President Research of PhoCusWright tells his perception of Online Travel in the next ten years. Phocuswright is the most credible and quoted source for data, information and analysis in the travel, tourism and hospitality industry. 2. Aint Vonke, Vice President Market Management, EMEA, the Expedia Group. After 13 years Expedia made a big change deciding to start a strategic cooperation with Thomas Cook. 3. Tao Tao, Founder & COO Getyourguide! The «Experiences market» has entered the collective imagination since the launch of the colossus Airbnb. 4. Hjalti Baldursson, CEO Bokun Experienced. In Iceland there is a great interest in tourism technologies and Bokun is one of the cornerstones, beeing the most important tourism sales platform. 15
contacts: brandtour@toscanapromozione.it