“Wow, that was such a great workshop.
It really felt good to work internationally again.” Bastian addressed these brief words to another participant following the“Data Space for Tourism” workshop, to which we were invited in April of this year.
With this positive experience, we subsequently applied for various calls and lectures outside the DACH region.
Our efforts were rewarded when we were accepted at the beginning of August: our proposal for a presentation“From B2B to H2H – Destination Strategy supercharged by AI” was accepted and Franziska and Bastian were invited to the Autumn Conference of the City Destinations Alliance in Valencia, where the Global Destinations Sustainability Forum was taking place at the same time.  

The event:

In line with CityDNA’s new strategy, the“Welcoming Wegeneration“, the focus of this event was on positive values and future prospects.
This was expressed in the central question: Doom or Bloom? Accordingly, the programme consisted of positive examples around the topics of sustainability, digitalization and inclusion with the aim of transforming mindsets, promoting sustainable leadership and collaboration and driving innovation forward.
You can find the exact program here.
Representatives from the member cities of the City Destinations Alliance and several destinations from Europe as well as Canada, the USA and Japan took part.
The event was moderated by the absolutely fantastic Signe Jungersted, who managed to get hundreds of professionals from all over the world to fight Plants vs. Zombies with her open, positive manner.

 

The atmosphere:

The general mood among the participants was very positive, although there were mixed feelings about the future.
The challenges we all face are huge and all participants are more than aware of this.
Perhaps it was due to the fact that the GDS Forum and CityDNA were taking place at the same time that a large number of people from the sustainability sector were present, who often take a more critical view of the current crises and challenges.
Nevertheless, all those present were absolutely aware that something (everything!) must be done.
The questions of“whether” or“wouldn’t it be enough if...” never arose.
This absoluteness in terms of content also ran through other topics: Whether digitalization or inclusion and participation, it was always just a question of“How?“, the topics and fields of action themselves are 100% set and were accordingly not questioned in any way. The best practices presented, all workshops and many discussions had the same or similar tenor: we can only achieve real improvement through genuine system change!“To be honest: We will not safe the world by all recycling our waste and upcycling old bicycles,” said Rhys Williams from the University of Glasgow.
This requires an absolutely realistic view and a clear scientific basis.
There was a lot of talk about critical optimism, the need for emphasis and the state of “being positively pissed”.
One central question kept coming up, which shed a different light on the seriousness of our shared concerns:“Does your budget reflect your goals?” The will to change is clear and must go beyond what we do! The best example: achieving 100% in a sustainability index or certificate does not mean that you are acting 100% sustainably.  

Content highlights:

In terms of content, the conference was quite refreshing and many very good projects and approaches were presented, some of which were previously unknown to us.
We would like to give you a few highlights here as examples.
If you have any further questions about the presentations mentioned, please do not hesitate to contact us.

  • In his talk about the solarpunk movement, Rhys Williams took the participants on a journey into a future between utopia and realism.
    It describes a positive future and the path to it, which is achievable with today’s means.

 

  • Xavier Font from the University of Surrey presented the Andalusian Way, which puts the carbon footprint in relation to the length of stay and local expenditure when choosing marketing activities abroad.

 

  • A number of projects relating to inclusion and participation from Europe and the USA made a particular impression:
    • Alison Brooks shared with us the city of Mesa’s journey to becoming the first Autism Certified City in the world.
    • With the Bordeau Solid’AIR project, Julie Benisty Oviedo proved that tourism organizations can also work together with social workers to enable disadvantaged people to participate in cultural and social life .
    • VisitBarcelona is introducing additional queues for people with“invisible diseases” following the World Parkinson Congress.

 

  • Csaba Faix from Budapest showed us how the BudapestTuning project can involve people in the city today in the development of tourism activities.

 

  • Damiano Cerrone and his team from UrbanistAI impressed us with the completely new way in which people can participate in the development of places and spaces and bring their ideas to life with the help of artificial intelligence.

 

Our contribution

Franziska and Bastian were also allowed to make a small contribution in which we show how the DMO’s perspective must change if it wants strategies and action plans to be implemented.
We will be preparing another blog article on this in the next few days.
However, we can already reveal the quintessence: Companies don’t change their mindset, people do. As part of the presentation, we were also able to show one of our small AI showcases.
In it, we asked for crazy project ideas and what resources individuals could contribute to their implementation.
Our AI then formed groups of people from all over Europe who have similar ideas, identified a common sense and a new comprehensive project idea.
It derived an action plan for this and identified the resources that were still missing for implementation.
We are delighted that this small case was so well received and that we got positive feedback from all over Europe!  

 

And now?

We are very much looking forward to the next steps in our cooperation with the City Destinations Alliance and are already in contact with other cities and regions.
It is an honor for us to be able to make our contribution to a better tomorrow in the future, perhaps even on a European level!
Are you interested in our AI applications or would you like to find out more about individual presentations from the program?
Then feel free to contact us via the usual channels!
Until then, stay tuned!