Traveltech for Scotland — Weeknote 6

Consolidating the Community

Photo credits to Adam Wilson

Traveltech for Scotland is back with another weeknote, updating you on our activities in the last month.

This month has seen the development of ongoing projects, and others going live, we have continued to make connections and establish our presence domestically and internationally, as well as developing internally. Take a look at everything in the works:

What have we done in the last month?

This past month we have gone live with projects which have been in the works for some time.

• Our Community Platform has been live for just over 3 weeks and currently has almost 100 members in it. The community has been met with great enthusiasm and positivity, and is already full of conversations about opportunities, questions, and discussions. To join our community sign up here.
• We have launched our ‘Visualise the Future’ project. From an open competition we have selected four Scottish artists whose artworks, visualising the future of tech-enabled tourism in Scotland in the next 20 years, are well underway. We are working towards designing the event, where the artworks will be unveiled, presented by the artists, and discussed by a panel of industry-members. You can register for the event, on the 30th of March, here.
• Our Traveltech Directory — which you can apply to list in through this form — continues to grow.

Traveltech for Scotland continues to build relationships both in Scotland and further afield, and our growing community is a source of business referrals, meaning new traveltech and tech companies coming on to our radar all the time. In the last month we have spoken to:

• Andalucia Lab, an innovation-driven traveltech and tourism community in Southern Spain. We have much in common with their experience of how they are delivering business support, and the challenges their business community are facing right now.
• We met with a group of traveltech representatives interested in forming an exciting new industry group, the World Traveltech Forum. The group is represented by industry professionals from France, Brazil, South Africa, Israel, Spain, London and now, Scotland. Right now we are working out how we can collaborate together on activities, panels, and showcases to platform our respective traveltech communities.
• Location Data Scotland — we are looking forward to this new geospatial data cluster launching on the 23rd of March. Within this there are lots of opportunities for the development of tourism products and services and we look forward to future collaboration.
• A Scottish hotel group about Smart buildings, IoT and the need for hotels to innovate. In the downtime enforced by lockdown, many businesses are wisely using their time to look at innovating for the future. A huge carbon cost in the tourism industry comes from energy costs in buildings, and hotels are thinking about ways in which sensors and can be used to mitigate this.
• Start-up businesses Walks and Waterfalls, and Open Pass Scotland about the challenges of recruiting talented software developers and finding the right digital suppliers. In a time where everyone needs software developers it can be really tough to find the best people to work with. This is something that as a team we have experienced when sourcing digital tools, and an important factor in relation to the online course which we’re currently developing.
• Macs Adventure, who are doing interesting work to scale and develop. They too are working with international developers to access talent globally. Though this has its challenges, it is a great way for Scotland to continue building its international pipelines.
• Hotelphone, who are commissioning and outsourcing development work.
• Urban Foresight, about the sustainability cluster they are about to launch on 30 March which will be a fantastic sister cluster for Traveltech for Scotland.
• Vennersys, on providing ticketing, booking, retail, and point of sale for attractions in Scotland and the UK; and Unbaggaged about directions for their product development and feedback on their service. Both businesses feature in the Traveltech Directory along with many more valuable tech solutions for the tourism and hospitality industry.

January and February saw us host and participate in several industry events:

• ‘Breaking up with Spreadsheets’: Together with the Data Lab Torch team, we explored why spreadsheets are bad for business and how data can be managed more effectively. Check out the event recap here.
• We continued our partnership with Interface and Censis collaborating in an industry group focused on IOT and Visitor management, with participants from across Scotland, including both National Parks, and focusing on rural and costal visitor areas. The groups shared best practice, and their collaboration to address several issues together continues.
• Josh spoke in an industry panel together with LNER, StageCoach and Edinburgh Airport on “Connectivity is Commerce” as part of the Edinburgh Business Festival, organized by Scottish Chambers of Commerce. This event highlighted the many traveltech opportunities within transport and infrastructure which are innovating but also engaging in big B2B purchases. We are aware that, for Scotland to be successful in Traveltech we need to embrace a broad conception of what constitutes traveltech. Notably, LNER are working with QuikServe, one of Scotland’s most established traveltech companies.
• We listened to the Chief Executive of UK Hospitality, Kate Nicholls, present to UK hospitality sector in an industry call, offering valuable insights into the UK Government roadmap, plans for opening up from lockdown, how the sector was coping and what support measures were available to businesses.

What have we learnt?

We continue to learn from community building and what role our new community platform can play. From our experience in the last few months, it’s clear that a community cannot be delivered by two or three people making introductions and connections; what we need is a dynamic space where people can help one another, to exponentially scale the types of interactions we are trying to generate. We are pleased to be seeing such interactions within our new community platform and activity sparked by conversations there, continuing to action; which is incredibly positive. We return to Ben Spiegel’s assertion that, “the best clusters are led by the community”.

Through the community we are also experimenting and getting to grips with a new tech platform, which reminds us that there are always challenges in the new — which can also be said for the online course which we have been developing (more news on this soon). As members of our own community, we too recognize the challenges involved in learning, using and implementing new technology; of identifying the best tools, tech and resources to help us manage not just ongoing projects but daily tasks such as reporting and measuring in the most efficient ways. One major advantage for us is having a growing number of tech experts to call upon!

What’s coming up?

• We are continuing to develop the Online Course for its launch
• We are continuing to expand the Directory as well as growing the Community
• We’re delighted to be supporting the industry campaign #PrepStartsNow created by community members Stampede, to help and support hospitality and tourism businesses re-open with confidence.
• Make sure you get your ticket for the Visualise the Future Event on the 30th of March
• We have various events, collaborations, and actions coming up. To stay updated on all our activities sign up for the mailing list.

Thank you for reading our weeknote and for staying up to date with Traveltech for Scotland. To keep updated on our progress, sign up for our mailing list. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.