Off the beaten paths with technology on hand – Twissen Season Report Spring 2017

Global tourism keeps its growing trend, as registered by the UNWTO, which also projects an annual growth of international arrivals between 3% and 4% until 2030.

Despite the economic uncertainty and the concerns about security, tourists keep on travelling, rather focusing their interest towards other destinations, looking for unforgettable experiences to tell to their friends and share on their social networks accounts.

From a business point of view, we have already registered a growing interest towards the promotion and intermediation of in-destination activities, also called experiences. Digital development was initially focused on services purchased before the journey, such as transportation and hotels. Now there is a growing number of players offering duringthe-journey solutions that represent a significant share of the expenses of a trip. In fact, according to what is now widely agreed by the business community, they represent the major tourism expense segment and record the higher development rates.

Tourists’ expectations are evolving and there is a strong demand for new experiences such as living like locals or visiting off-the-beaten-paths destinations. This includes the wish for discovering new places, but also experience surprising adventures. The Japanese Government, for example, allocated about 80 million euros for the 2017 – 2019 period in order to promote the most remote regions and make Japan lovers discover the most peculiar places linked to the local culture.

USA tourists are the most interested to off-the-beaten-paths destinations and, according to a research by Choice Hotel, they include them in their top destinations in 48% of all cases; the higher percentages can be found in the baby boomer segment (31%). Moreover, according to Airbnb, 15% of their customers consider them as an original experience.

This trend also involves technology providers, which are investing on identifying mobile flexible solutions for operators in order to support payment methods, or for information and services booking process via chatbot.

In the Report you can also find about:

• Off the beaten paths with technology on hand
• Brexit, the year after
• European funds focus on transnational tourism products
• Overtourism phobia
• Alitalia crisis in the European air sector segment
• A new legislative context for short-term rental in Europe
• Z Generation, a new target of travellers
• Reviews and web reputation mark new trends in the accommodation sector
• Action, travel!

Twissen