Introducing 3BaysOver: a platform built by tourism people, for tourism people
3BaysOver is the result of frustrated tourism people coming together with talented technical people to build something with a clear target audience, and a clear purpose. The audience is tourism people, companies and organisations. The purpose is to make it easier for them to network online, to collaborate, and to do business.
As many of us in the industry are aware, travel & tourism supports some 290 million jobs around the world, whilst generating nearly 10% of global GDP. Yet many of us in tourism feel poorly connected to each other: there is no simple and effective way for industry members to network and interact. Attending tourism trade fairs is a good option, but it shouldn’t be the only one; face-to-face interaction is a great way to do business, but it shouldn’t be the only way. And printed brochures, contact list spreadsheets, business cards, and faxed vouchers are just not the right tools in today’s fast-paced business environment.
Before creating 3BaysOver, our founders were growing increasingly frustrated to see so much innovation and change taking place on the consumer side of travel, yet so little innovation benefiting the B2B side. It was as if the digital innovators had no idea what went on ‘behind the scenes’ in the industry… We believed that an industry made up of so many passionate people deserved better tools to connect them to each other and let them innovate together. Since no such tool existed, we set about building one.
What particularly motivates us in our mission is the fact that it’s often the least connected and least accessible tourism professionals who hold the greatest expertise. It’s these same people who usually have the least to spend on marketing and technology. And they’re also often the ones who are most invested in ensuring that tourism practices in their destination are carried out responsibly and sustainably. Money should not be a barrier to these or to any other tourism voices being heard, and this is why being a member of 3BaysOver is free of cost.
We are further motivated by this: tourism, more than any other industry, is powered by human relationships and trust, yet go to any tourism business website and chances are you won’t learn much about the team, about the human story behind the company. Unless you already know them, finding the right people to reach out to if you want to collaborate is no easy task. We want to help change that by making it easier for the people and their stories to be known. We also want to make the relationships that tourism companies and organisations are in — their alliances, partnerships and affiliations — easier to display and strengthen.
Finally, 3BaysOver has also been designed with the unique and specific needs of member-organisations in mind. For too long, a lack of good networking solutions has limited the extent to which tourism associations and tourism boards can work effectively, even when they play such an important role in the industry. 3BaysOver’s member-organisation feature seeks to change that. The same feature will also benefit tourism & hospitality schools, whose students, alumni and faculty can use it to interact, while the platform gives students the chance to start building a strong industry network before their careers begin.
If you work in tourism, then 3BaysOver is a platform designed to make growing your professional network and collaborating with your colleagues, partners, and prospects more enjoyable and more productive. You can use it to share updates and discover new products, events and job opportunities. Our mission is simple: to enable a more open tourism industry, where members are more connected and more accessible — regardless of where they are and what they do. If you’d like to join us on this mission, you can request access to the network here. And if you’d like your industry contacts to also join the community, then be sure to tell them about 3BaysOver.
We hope you’ll join us soon.
