Knowledge groups & how Europe’s over-tourism efforts paved the way for resilience

welcome to the future of Tourism podcast I'm David peacock stop owning your own contents young leaders are stepping up bring everyone to the table and imagine they're wild anew [Music] when we look for inspiration and ideas that will help us develop manage and optimize the success and sustainability of our own destinations we often look to Europe their early work on over tourism more than a decade ago pointed to the necessity for much more engaged network of stakeholders within the destination take for example City DNA knowledge groups knowledge groups are expert teams of members who step up to tackle the most pressing challenges in tourism development and sustainability Pablo Ortega novio is the head of promotion for the tourism offices in catalunyas in Spain he's the co-chair of the city DNA tourism information centers knowledge groups Adil ABAC is managing director of hospitality and products with Amsterdam and partners he started as a department manager for tics in 2017 and moved on to head the department he comes to tourism from the Hague University School of Business good afternoon both of you how are you where are you what's it like Pablo you first fine thank you David for for being in this this nice uh podcast so here in Barcelona it's quite mild it's 26 degrees it rained yesterday night so it's quite comfortable after this summer so it's good good happy to be here thank you so you're not getting the heat wave then the south of Europe no no if he's been raining in Spain these days so we are not in danger like in all those regions of the Mediterranean area yeah what's the old saying the rain in Spain stays mainly on the plane something like that yeah it's a treasure it's a treasure for us yeah Adil how are you where are you what's it like uh um I'm really good actually I'm at the office at the moment in Amsterdam um we have a rain as a treasure if you want some more Pablo because we have enough um it's about 20 degree 20 degrees it's perfect now so nothing to complain okay listen it's great to see you both um I want to talk to you today about knowledge groups I think they're an amazing component to the city destinations Alliance um folio so maybe we can start with an overview of knowledge groups what are they why are they important but then I want to drill into tourism information centers now I'm going to tell you I'm biased I mean about a decade ago I was sure tourism information centers were dead and vestigial I had my eyes opened a couple times in presentations with you Pablo in the last couple years once in the Tel Aviv and again in Sofia but first of all let's frame it what are the knowledge groups what are they about why are they why are they useful well the knowledge groups are actually the core of the association see the DNA is a network for more than 120 cities and regions in Europe and it's based on the volunteer work of all its members then each there are seven knowledge groups as you said before and each one is specialized in a specific area of the tourism industry um that is for City cards for sustainability for knowledge and research marketing and for tourist information centers which is the one that I am honored to chair and exactly what we do in our knowledge group is to work for our Target I mean we are a working group of seven people representing the different countries some different regions of Europe and it's a volunteer 100 with weight or a Goodwill because we love our industry and we love to help our colleagues as well and each group is independent it works on its own we try to collaborate each other as well we try to do some projects together uh it's as well a challenge because some groups are quite uh veteran so we have our own working way of doing things and the association tries to reorder that in order to keep them all together so in our case in the tourism information Center's knowledge group what we do is to rethink every day what are we doing in our business um are we dead as you said well maybe not dead but we need a boost of something you know some vitamins um one of the things we do is every every year every every day our scope is to find new ways to adapt to reality and how the industry is changing and how to face that challenges um that's that's what we do actually we have these meetings we meet every year uh in person in a different city every time so we do this huge meeting we call it the experts meeting but as well we do Zoom Meetings online every two months we make open debates and even we do some research and new projects that we can we are going to take later on in order to help in order to serve our members all of them which are interested in and and adapting in knowing the trends and so on super thank you for that so just to recap seven knowledge groups marketing Communications City cards meetings industry research and insights sustainability and a new one called Trend room yeah um and the tourism information centers okay so coming over to tourism information centers and and I am guilty of being short-sighted and thinking that they were at their end until they were reinterpreted Adil you've been you actually came straight out of school and went straight to work and tourism information centers in Amsterdam so I ask you humbly with with an expectation of a you know they're working well for you how are they working what's going on with tics in Amsterdam well to be honest uh from not not directly after school so I had some experience in the hospitality sector in theaters and in amusement park in Netherlands after that I ended up at Amsterdam Partners um how is it I think it's uh the most vibrant and the most adaptive division or sector I've worked in because I talked about it sometimes with Pablo but there there's so many changes that have we started with the regular tic in a traditional office we went from tic offices to experience centers we went from experience centers to brand stores we went from Brand stores to local community hubs so there's a lot of changes in the sector because the demand changed and and the need of the destination changed so I think that it's the most vibrant sector I've ever worked in to be honest that's uh that's I think that's the right word for it okay so hang on it's not your grandfather's tourism information center then no it's not although to be honest I had great talks with colleagues that started off with the first tourist information center and in Amsterdam and I think in the 80s or so something like that and to be honest David we started off like a box office so you got your concert tickets there it started when internet wasn't wasn't existing so people were sleeping in front of the office to get the concert tickets for Bon Jovi just just to give you a glimpse of the golden years you know so I have the stories I just don't have the experience this well excellent okay so what really shifted for me is this we um I I plug into the European cities marketing knowledge groups they've informed so much work that we've done here in North America and so much work I've done in particular you know guys know this story I've told both both you City destination alliances early work on over tourism was was completely completely essential to what we did here in Canada we we ran a region in in Ontario didn't have over tourism but it had all of the um symptoms of overtourism had a disaffected public who didn't know what tourism was who didn't feel connected to either its efforts or its outcomes so we started to look at that so I I in particular been watching knowledge knowledge groups for a while but I will tell you that out of all of them even the one I kept wondering you know how is this gonna how's this going to go was tics because they are so vestigial they go right back to the earliest days of Tourism uh at some point in their worst iteration they became you know unmanaged brochure stops on highways along the way and they were really horrible and it was just to paperways but in Tel Aviv you started to talk about the ability to understand the community the the consumer through tics and was really important Pablo um then you blew my mind so if I can put it in a simpler sense we'll throw a couple Graphics up here in the video when we finally produce it you started with a classic a a slide of a classic tic model and it's bricks and mortar you know it's your information Maps guides tickets souvenirs and that sort of speaks to our collective experience so we've seen really cool tics around the world that's not to say in the last 40 years there haven't been absolutely cool tics and um you know there's some great stuff going on Corpus Christi in the states Brad ottering has completely redefined his tourism information centers and that was part of what got me paying attention as well but you took the classic tic model and you threw up a slide and Sophia Bulgaria back in back in the spring and it blew my mind it was a knowledge navigation slide it was about tourism information centers as the front edge of understanding consumer can you sort of walk us through both of those things and I will throw the slides up so if you want to reference the classic tic model and then the constellation model Pablo I'll do that so walk us through it well to be honest the second the constellation map which is the graphic it was the graphic plasmation of something that was in our minds for years so we in the knowledge group we know we knew already that we were doing a lot of things and this map was the way in order to show others that they don't know exactly what the ICS are doing actually thanks to this image so we did a catchy thing so we put the the what we already knew that you would answer in the audience about what did you think because that's what we what we did actually in Sofia the first thing we did in the presentation was to ask you what do you think we do in a DIC and your answers were selling tickets giving information mobs and something like that something else and a physical place you know the place that you enter a window you ask for info and you leave that we knew already because that's one of the things we wanted to make you see in Sofia that we do a lot of things on our job it's much bigger than all the community even the tourism industry itself even our dmos they aren't aware of that so we need this in order to explain which is the importance and the relevance of the tourism information centers because it's not just giving information uh the bricks I mean this model is not just a model to show you what we do but it is as well a model to show you what are we able to do in the future and what has been doing for the previous years since the beginning and is not related to a physical place our job is related to these three big elements that you can see in the graphics which is knowledge skills and Trust uh knowledge knowledge is something which is completely intangible but these are called business we bring knowledge we don't have information information is on Google you can Google information what keyword we provide you is this super local Knowledge from people who become ambassador of that cities and with this in knowledge we can deliver it through many kinds of channels so we put the TAC the physical bricks and mortar place as one of the different channels that we can deliver this knowledge so now we can thanks to the pandemic we have boosted we have accelerated the digitalization of this kind of of knowledge delivering so now we are using any kind of mobile phone messaging applications we can do web chats we can do information we can do touristic information live on on video calls um the bricks and mortar tic has become just one of our portfolio channels and all this knowledge is not just because we know our destination we know as well our visitors because for years we have been the only ones uh in contact with the visitors before they came so we can influence our this our potential visitors to to choose our destination we can help them while they are visiting our destination and in addition we can even keep in touch with them calling on their feedbacks when they leave so we can retain them we can gain their loyalty in any DMO the only division which is able to be in contact with all the customer Journey that's us I think that's a really tremendously important point which is when we think about a destination organizations the actual physical touch point the human interaction where does it happen and it really does happen at Tic it really and I hate to say it but it's almost the only place it really happens from the DMO interfacing with its visiting public isn't it it is totally and we are very very proud of that and we make we advocate for that um and this knowledge we have is not just because of of the knowledge of our destination and our visitors we have a lot of data we can have a lot of knowledge that can be leveraged by our dmos in order to do a better strategy in the future to know our markets and so on so we have a lot of different ramifications of our work and these ramifications are the ones that you can see in that graphic so let's let's unpack that a little bit at the core of your capabilities rather than putting you know handing out information and then you're very articulately said information is Google's domain and then more and more it is you talked about knowledge trust and skills that's that's the rethinking of the TIC for me and a deal you were there when this when this was presented in the room there was a moment when we all looked at it and went wow wow pics as a navigator instructor for AI we're rapidly approaching a world of massive generative Ai and a lot of the generative AI stuff I see coming out of destinations it's pretty good but it hardly speaks to what's here which is a deep historical understanding of how the consumer asks about consumes and shares tourism so talk to me about the Amsterdam experience when you look at this I see I see a brilliant mind map on how to actually Plumb AIS so that they so generative AIS do a better job what do you see here example 15 years ago we had eight locations we had atic's in the city center we have one right now it doesn't mean that the TIC is dead actually the TSC is dead in the form of 10 years ago so um that's something I tried to explain in the introduction kind of the most adaptive form of running a DRC is being there where you need to be and if that's uh if it's a necessity to be in a city center be there if it's a necessity to be online be there if there's a necessity to be uh working with AI and an AI platform which AI platform uh it can be several ones that doesn't matter because when the internet got invented we thought the TRC was dead out also so then we had another checkpoint when Google was invented we had yes he was going to die as well we're still here guys so I think it's more of of the TIC is still existing but it's changing platforms the moment you are needed on a different platform so we're we're upscaling on online and Ai and we're off scaling on physical presence in stores or locations but we are upscaling our mobile teams in in certain events for example so the the sentiment changes kind of so when you when you look at that core and I mean it would be very very easy again probably to go back to the old model and at the core is actually the facility and that was limiting us when you made that shift to knowledge skills and Trust did you feel that it unfettered the TIC was there an aha moment when everyone went wow if this is what we do the possibilities are endless thank you a little bit of that yeah it was exciting I mean it was exciting for me sitting in that room so are you in Catalonia tell me about your tics obviously you're taking great care of this you're nurturing it tell me about what you what you're doing I'm actually nowadays I'm the manager of promotion of the Catalonia tourist office network is a network of more than 230 pics so that's wow yeah that's a little bit and well we have a management system which is each HVAC is independent it belongs to a different municipality there's some of them are private and for 11 of them are managed by the Catalan government which are directly by us but then we have a network system in order that we provide information we provide training and now we provide software in order to collect data and that's one of the big points that you could see in that in that in that constellation model as well data information knowledge but knowledge in two directions we bring knowledge but we keep knowledge as well from our visitors this knowledge is the one we keep in this Statistics technology for example the one the one we have in Catalonia is is very easy online system that everything I see just registers all the benefits they have according to a different criteria thanks to that in the last three years we have data from more than 7 million visitors and now we are collecting data from the historical database since 2010 and we are collecting on the present so in in a few weeks we are going to be managing a database for more than about 20 million people who has visited our country in about 13 years this gives us a lot of power in order to be a more strategic acoustic we know what the visitors want us we know what they wanted in the past and we can establish Trends what are they looking for in the future as well it's not like and even even beyond that let's bring back the human element because that's the data that's the data side or the TIC let's let's you know we've under leveraged this data forever we've had these people in our officers but the other side of it really is the human side it's not just the data it's the it's literally understanding the process in which the consumer asks questions the best way to deliver an answer how to how to package and produce it you know you know it's like as a as a television producer used to say you know the history of the Olympics doesn't really take three 30-minute episodes but a great producer can put it in there you've got it you've got to distill not just the data points for those people you got to distill the human interactions don't you yeah this is um very important and and it's about skills of our teams we need people who is empathic people who knows and understands and listen visitors and there's another part of our our job the emotional part that's maybe the part of my job that I love the most because we we go we go to the roots we go to the origins of our job we are there to serve to provide service and Welcome to our visitors to make them enjoy the best experience possible in our cities because we love our cities and we want to share them with the visitors all the rest all the graphics all the constellations are just tools to deliver that and if you don't have these specific people that that stars in your constellation that they love the city they love their job it doesn't matter if they have three University degrees and Masters and dog trades it doesn't matter what there's something that it did in its DNA and thanks to that you can keep servicing these people and you can do that not only in person which is the most important but as well if you guys are in the future a metaverse the IC with your avatars behind that Avatar there has to be a human being as well you know and this is what makes me more you know the Romantic part of of this business around and and I think you know tics are not dead long-lived tics and great people doing great work in tics is still the backbone of that so A Deal you could take one of your greatest tic staffers ever and you can actually sort of begin to plumb an AI for answering questions around that person does that idea make you happy it does as long as it's live it's it's it works along each other because I'm I'm agreeing with with Pablo for sure uh the people that work in in tics are getting to know people because they want to not because they have to and that's really the essential part of uh being in in part of any Workforce in any destination uh in the DIC um and I think as long as it it works as a tool instead of it replaces people and it replaces emotion because I don't believe AI can replace human contact human uh emotion because people are still wanting um are longing actually for human uh for human touch and the emotional value or affirmation from a person that has the knowledge and expertise is still really something that won't disappear in a long long long time maybe never actually so thinking about that thinking about the last 30 years for tic is and all the great people that have worked there and told great stories in some sense my heart's a little bit sad we lost some of those stories because we didn't have digital technology and we count on this as human beings the power of the narrative to carry the story but really going forward we have the power to really take great people's great presentations and work that into the future and save it so a great example of this you guys both know arhus in Denmark who I think is doing just a phenomenal job on the idea of um local guides and local experts who share their knowledge when you go apparently when you go to our host and you want to talk about fishing you don't talk to you know a person who knows about fish you talk to a sea captain who was a c for 30 years and ran fishing trawlers and understands every inside piece of the business when you when you go to their forestry projects you get to talk to people who who were Boris wardens and stuff it's that capturing of the brilliant articulate part of this that I'm so interested in as well is is there work on that front Pablo the case of hiros proves our our theoretical model I mean the the physical places doesn't are not important anymore the important thing is how you deliver that knowledge and that knowledge is in each in each volunteer of this this theme of staff volunteer people in working around the city of orders I mean that's what you need they have skills they can talk to others other people that they don't know for anything and they can transmit that love and that knowledge that you couldn't find in any AI or in any database in any Google search you know um this skills this trust remember that the third value we have is Trust it's it's going back to once again to the origins and because why the people is traveling why the people is interacting with other people why in the end of digitalization and artificial intelligence the people still wants to meet other people as long as it happens we are going to be there in somehow behind the counter behind the screen just face to face but the knowledge and love for that cities is going to be delivered anyway so I think that aurus is just being asked to understand that we can do our job in many different ways and in Europe you know is a very diverse continent things in the northern just very different from the south east and west but there are some things that they're the same and this is what we want to do in the knowledge group to put all the common things everything that makes us European or even World citizens if you know you want to put that in in a theoretical place in a model that would be would fit anyone and which is accessible for everyone and everyone could feel welcome to participate in that so yes I'm very happy that we have this example in Europe in orders that it brings us a light at the end of the tunnel so cases are not dead at all they are just it's like the energy you cannot destroy energy it just transforms so we are like energy somehow in some sense you are you've been enduring it is and it is not this you can't destroy it you can only transmute it so to that point even it even at City destinations uh Network tics rebirth is relatively new sort of idea this really this really um integrated complex knowledge skills trust based tic is new you're in that space of early adopters and that's why that's why it's a knowledge group thing in some sense because there's a lot of promise and tics and a lot of Promise them what they can do you both had this moment where you started on this journey and for you both you it's it's quite a ways back but you're speaking to almost 900 destinations worldwide right now as they look at their tourism Information Systems I'm not even going to call it centers uh as they look at get started restarted on this journey Addie based on your ideal based on your experiences in Ashton what do you say how do they start what's the next step whether you're in City DNA whether you're halfway around the world in South America whether you're a North American as you re-think or some information services and Concepts where do you start what's the first thing you should do what's next um start start with the question what makes you relevant nowadays so if you if you're doing what you did 10 years ago when you started off for example make sure that you're still relevant for the group for me it's always interesting to to look at what you bring to the table next to your colleagues that are maybe working in a DMO on online levels on print levels make sure you combine these forces actually to talk in energy like Pablo mentioned bring these horses to the table and look what you can bring to the table to make sure it's a completely complete story that tells everything instead of just sending a message to um to to acknowledge Your Existence because that's something we have to get rid of believe in the power of physical Hospitality or physical contact with um with a visitor and make sure you involve colleagues that have their own forces as well to make sure that you have the same story every time you visit a website the TIC or open a magazine I feel that's really really interesting you added to mount a dimension this that I do want to talk about Pablo there's the TIC it's there in its physical presence also there as a as a key component of of the destination organization um but something we haven't talked about is the ability the TIC to be a an absolute Focus point on creating a new network of stakeholders and by now I'm not just talking about the visitors but the people in town who represent the businesses and the commercial interests and the social interests and the public interests around tourism tell me a little bit about um using tics to strengthen the network inside a destination to make to make it a stronger more stratified understanding destination you've done a lot of work in that area yes we've done a lot because of uh years ago tics were focused only on attending uh foreigners but it's true that the local communities need to be here and as well they need to be engaged in in the in the development of CICS and as well because your local residents they can be tourists as well in your destination then you never have to forget that during the pandemics we realized that many cities didn't have any leaflets in their own language they have in English and foreign languages and they did a lot of work in translating their their Publications and creating new guided tours and activities for their locals because they were the only visitors they should have during the lockdown some other tics that we have already internal markets we were already in a better starting position during the pandemics that would happen in Spain for instance or in France these are countries that they have a lot of internal visitors on another side of this local communities need to be participative as well in what do you offer to the visitors because every day more in in destinations like Barcelona or Amsterdam which are affected by this let's say other tourism which is a abstract concept but let's take that word because it's universally known um local communities need to say their word you know how to improve these situations in our case for instance just as an example because it's the one I know the best the Catalan government is moving the the traditional tic from a new placement and you know what is going to be placed in the most overcrowded and over touristified neighborhood in Barcelona why well because it has nothing to do with it I mean um we are moving that into a venue we are putting the TIC in a museum of history in the middle of the port and the port is one of the neighborhoods which is more overcrowded but the first thing we did was to show the project to present the project to the representatives of the global community of that neighborhood which publicly was famous for being very fighting against tourism you know what happened they loved the project because we went their their homes we went there to explain the project before it was made public and they want the visitors to discover the neighborhood the way they want to show it do you also I know this just knowing from working with you you also though discern the pain points for those operators who were negative to tourism and you showed how the TIC was going to help mitigate that talk to us a little bit about that what we did is to show them and uh they wanted to participate that they want to to to to make you know the new tic is going to be a place that things will happen it will have a small Auditorium it will haul I mean it's not just a counter it's a big space where a lot of different things to show to the visitors and what we want is that the local communities go there and explain their own reality they actually do it themselves the community explains itself they yeah exactly and what we are going to do is to give them the space they're they're going to to agree with that but what date and they are going to explain the traditions and the festivals and so on on their own I love it I totally love it and and even best because this is the Old Fisherman's neighborhood but we still have fishing boats in Barcelona is not just the America's Cup super boats it's just uh it's more than that so we are going to be promoting the fishing tourism with this old fishing boats that they are still working surviving in the port of Barcelona thanks to the idea that they brought us I mean that was the neighbors that told us you could go them and speak to them because they are going to be very happy if you tell the visitors that they can go on the boats and discover the fishing activity in the city of Barcelona so when you go with the truth to your community and explain a honest project this community gets engaged with you and this is a super Advantage because these people that could be an enemy becomes an allyte and you get a lot of better knowledge in the end because you are going to tell a lot of new stories to your visitors that you never knew and your staff gets involved with that and this is establishing networks this is helping the local economy in the end as well to take advantages that visitors of that tourism industry and it's difficult it's very hard in a destination like the hours but you get your benefits and it makes you very happy when you see the results so you're added two things to the last moment here we've talked about Community engagement and we talked about authenticity two key components of tics um two key outcomes and also assets to be leveraged along the way all right we're bumping up against time I could talk to you guys for hours but we sort of put a half hour on this one I'm gonna I'm gonna throw it to both you final words to our peers who are listening about tourism information centers I will say it tourism information centers are not dead long-lived tourism information centers thanks for that I'll throw it to you at the first closing thoughts and then to you Pablo closing times for me is uh of course a nice to be here David but please do make sure that you keep in touch and keep listening to them to the visitor that's visiting you Pablo mentioned over tourism is a big problem in many destinations a lot of destinations are coming to an moment that they really have to create some plans or measurements to to tackle it as well um just to keep in mind that everyone's welcome in Amsterdam as long as you can behave and the cultural or cultural sites that's something I want to give to people and then the nuisance is is important because sometimes you have the impression that visitors are not welcome in the city they absolutely are as long as they contribute and know that there's a lot of cultural heritage within the region thanks for that Pablo last word to you well it's difficult to say anything else from adil's word but uh well on behalf of the knowledge group uh I want to to state that we are loved that the industry and we will do our best in order to help our partners and you know our association has rebranded but I love the old slogan that we had when we were called City destinations as um marketing citizens sorry I'm I'm European cities sorry is that it was called meet share and grow these three words gave us a lot of uh sense and I miss them because well I think they they speak a lot tourism is about human relations and tourism information centers are the temples of disconnections both physically or virtually is where the magic is done and thanks to these people both the ones that they're waiting for the visitors and the ones that they're entering this is small Temple um as long as it happens it keeps happening we are going to be there helping them to do as best as we can I I love that I think we should get a placard that says meet share and grow and we should hand it out to all our tic Partners okay Valencia in October next iteration of City DNA's uh fall conference and I look forward to a really cool presentation from tics again no pressure no pressure okay all right um real pleasure to have you both thank you so much on a personal level for being volunteers with knowledge groups this is the kind of um engagement and involvement that that moves this industry forward it's great to work with you both it's great to work with the city destination Alliance um come back and tell us more and thanks again for being here

2023-08-23 02:59

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