Traveltech for Scotland (End of) Quarter-Note
Taking a look at Traveltech for Scotland’s last six months
From August 2020 until now, Traveltech for Scotland has launched, grown, and evolved. A huge thank you to our community and to our industry colleagues for their responses, support, and participation over the last six months. In this End-of Quarter-note we want to share some of our highlights, lessons, and future plans with you.
Highlights from the last six months
- We’ve received a hugely positive response to our cluster launch in August 2020.
- Established relationships with over 60 traveltech businesses
- Consulted and advised more than 35 businesses and organisations in the tourism sector
- Launched our very own ‘Lightning Talks’ — our industry events showcasing Traveltech businesses
- Published our own weekly Traveltech newsletter and our ‘Weeknotes’ series on Medium.
- Selected, designed and prepared our prototype Community Platform (launching 2021).
- Built our Traveltech Directory featuring 105 traveltech organisations and 35 case studies. In collaboration with the original Scottish Tourism Toolkit, this platform matches tourism challenges with Scottish-based traveltech organisations. This was launched on 4 December 2020.
- Hosted our first Collider Event on technology and tours and participated in two industry round table talks and a webinar exploring the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) with Interface and CENSIS.
- Presented at diverse events including the Digital Tourism Think Tank X-Festival 2020
What we have learnt & what we’re working on
- We are focused on moving from engagement to building community and action
- In the last six months, through our countless meetings, conversations, and events we have been constantly listening to the issues, needs, and wants amongst our community
- We are continually coming to terms with the challenges presented to the Travel and Tourism industry due to the pandemic and continual lockdown restrictions
- Cater to your audience: we have adjusted many of our original plans and events according to a) community feedback and b) community sentiment. With so many businesses focused exclusively on survival many of our planned events didn’t feel appropriate or effective, leading to us pushing many things back into Quarter 3.
- We are improving our referral and guidance techniques, minimising the number of unnecessary interactions before businesses or companies receive the advice, guidance, and support they require.
- Setting up communication and sharing workload / tasks between our own team. Limited to communication online for now, we have to be very productive with our own meeting times.
- Designing and running events with a purpose. Many people are experiencing event fatigue, and we need to make sure our events have a clear reason. At the same time, how do we run events that replicate the personal, informal, naturally occurring interactions cultivated at in-person events?
- How do we consistently keep ourselves and our community focused on the focused while still taking the current emergency into account?
We have made various observations around specific industry insights:
- Travel technology and tourism companies both need to adjust to a customer base of local and domestic visitors rather than international ones for now.
- The current lack of use of sensors within the tourism industry despite their huge potential and wide application. How do we provide support and infrastructure to encourage this adoption?
- Evidently, there are many barriers to tourism companies adopting technology (lack of time, strained finances, absence of knowledge and guidance, risk aversion, etc.). We are learning about what we could do and provide in order to encourage this process. Are there ways we could explore potential broker or digital practitioner roles to facilitate companies’ technology adoption?
- The current crisis is a force which overwhelms all other concerns, leading us away from focusing on the climate crisis. Environmental sustainability is critical to the industry, and central to our priorities. We are finding ways to integrate this into our practices.
What is coming up — 2021
We have many exciting things set to happen in Q3:
- The official launch of our Community Platform is set to happen in the New Year.
- The further development of our TravelTech Directory and encouraging its use. If you are not represented and you want to be, please fill out this form.
- Continue to host a variety of events and workshops ourselves and with partners.
- The launch of our ‘Envision the Future of Technology and Travel in Scotland’ creative content.
- Developing an online course.
- Building our governance so the voice of traveltech and tourism organisations helps steer what we say and what we do.
We have met a huge number of people and grown considerably for it. Now is the time to really drive the action the community needs: finding funding, collaborators, helping innovation and — most importantly — spreading the word locally and globally about the great traveltech industry in Scotland
A special thank you to Aileen Lamb and Kim Robertson at Scottish Enterprise, Marc Crothall, Karen Christie and the team at the STA, Patrick O’Shaughnessy, Vicki Miller and colleagues at VisitScotland, Siobhan Jordan and the team at Interface, Rachael Wakefield at Censis, our industry colleagues at ScotlandIS, Fintech Scotland, CodeClan and Tech Nation, Peter Syme, Ed Watson, the team behind the Scottish Tourism Toolkit: Karin Gidlund, Megan McGurren, Jemma Reid, and Thayanne Scardini; and Gordon Morrison and Helen Henderson of ASVA for all their contributions and support. Thank you also to the amazing, innovative and creative people behind the traveltech businesses we have met and spoken to this year — we look forward to growing our community together with you all in 2021.
Thank you for reading our Quarter-note and for staying up to date with Traveltech for Scotland. To stay updated on our progress, the launch of our community platform and future events, sign up for our mailing list. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
