Traveltech for Scotland — Weeknote 4 (weeks 9,10, & 11)
Resilience and Recovery
In the last three weeks, we’ve experienced evolving restrictions and ongoing challenges for the business community, and Traveltech for Scotland has continued to witness impressive resilience and creativity across the travel and tourism sector. Working together with our industry partners, we are doing our best to continue to support businesses to survive and grow in hugely unpredictable times.
What have we done in the last three weeks?
Alongside continuing conversations with members of our community, we have participated in a number of exciting events, including:
- Joshua Ryan-Saha spoke as one of the Digital Leaders in an Open discussion on ‘the Power of Tech Clusters’ together with ScotlandIS and Neatebox
- Through Interface, Lesley Judge hosted a second Scotland Round Table event, exploring the Internet of Things for Tourism, in partnership with CENSIS and Traveltech for Scotland. A range of organisations attended, including NatureScot and Sustrans
- We hosted a Destination Data Workshop for the South of Scotland Destination Alliance
- Lesley learned more about the work of Edina through a Discovery Session with Interface
We have met with and listened to diverse tourism organisations including Calmac, Sail Scotland, The Coig, Visit Aberdeenshire, South of Scotland Alliance, and many more. We have also been learning about traveltech solutions from businesses, including Tayl, Stampede, Vocalista, Appointedd, Click Book Stay, Travelnest, Bookster, Tourable Technologies, and many others. Additionally, we are collaborating with various industry partners including the Scottish Tourism Alliance and VisitScotland
Within these conversations we are supporting businesses to get help and advice on data strategies, including through the new DataLab Torch service. Signposting companies to access support for funding, as well as talking to destination organisations about their digital and data needs has also been on the agenda.
A lot of our collective work has been going into working on our community platform over the last few weeks. Alongside this we are constantly developing and building more businesses into our traveltech directory and marketplace.
We are really enjoying seeing collaborative projects develop, as well as engaging with diverse academics and community members.
What have we learnt?
In our second round table on IoT for Tourism much of the discussion was around managing visitor flows more efficiently in outdoor spaces such as rural sites, parks, forests, and beaches. We are continually thinking about the wide reaches of tourism, going far beyond city experiences. We, and many of our community members, are thinking about ways to use technology to improve visitor sentiment, and how to apply AI to personalise the guest experience in these sectors.
Many of our recent conversations have focused on the challenges which businesses, destinations, and organizations are facing through continuing restrictions and lockdown cycles. Many businesses are having to put staff on furlough, reduce workforces, and examine the viability of continuing to trade at the moment.
Through these conversations we are focusing on the ways which Traveltech for Scotland can aid and support the development of reskilling and training towards recovery and resilience. Though so many businesses have pivoted and refocused through the last few months, the challenges are continual and often compounding. How do we stay focused on a better future when there are so many challenges in the now?
What’s coming up?
In line with our thoughts and reflections about how we can take a role in contributing to resilience, perseverance, and positivity during this time we are designing a variety of events and initiatives. We are always looking to cater our actions to the current needs of the community, and all of our conversations and events are allowing us to keep up with these and continue to carve out the scope of our engagement and activities.
We are supporting a number of collaborative projects, the development of which we are extremely excited about.
We are gearing up for the launch of our community platform! Much work has gone into the creation and design of a platform that will facilitate communication and community building, and we are so excited to start inviting community members in.
If you haven’t yet joined our community, or you want to find out more about Traveltech for Scotland, please get in touch with Josh or Lesley — we’d love to hear from you.
Thank you to Joshua Ryan-Saha and Lesley Judge for contributions to our fourth weeknote!
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.
