The third edition of the 3T conference took placeon March the 12th in the Kaptol Boutique Cinema with various topics related to tourism and technology.
This the confirmed connection of tourism as the most important industry in Croatia and technology as a great support to tourism. The conference's director, Oleg Maštruko, opened the conference and pointed out the high share of tourism in Croatia's BDP. He emphasised that this and the digitalisation of services shouldn't be self-serving, but act as a tool to increase the efficiency and profitability of tourism and other sectors.
He said the framework for this years' conference was partly developed from topics covered in the previous two conferences.
The keynote speaker, Miikka Rosendahl, from the leading VR studio in Europe - ZOAN, presented to the audience how Helsinki got to be the European Capital of Smart Tourism and how they built the virtual platform for Helsinki. This virtual platform plans to attract at least a million virtual tourists in 2019. This complex project was realised by using different technology solutions through 3D modelling. VR Helsinki is made to be the digital platform with which visitors can tour Helsinki not just in the actual surroundings, but experience the city from the beginning of the 20th century, buy designer Finnish products, or send them to friends.
It also allows users to meet other virtual tourists from all over the world and enables them to explore Helsinki together.
The company works closely with many tourism stakeholders in Finland such as Finnair, and the plan is to fully launch in 2019. The question for conference participants at the end of the lecture was which locations should be virtualised in Croatia, and what and where exactly would be the most attractive locations for virtual tourists to visit.
The second keynote speaker was Natalija Havidić from the Ministry of Tourism, and she presented the digitalisation project for public services in the tourism sector as part of e-Croatia 2020 project.
The plan is to develop public digital services by the end of 2020 and improve and connect services in the central tourist database, as well as improve the e-visitor system and the website Croatia.hr, as well as other e-services. All the data collected would be used for business intelligence in tourism and other related services.
Ilija Brajković from Kontra moderated the panel entitled “Smart marketing in tourism – what really generates bookings". The participants were Analytics Lead from Bruketa&Žinić&Grey, Robert Petković, Head of Digital Marketing for Maistra Petar Milevoj, Internet Marketing Manager of Hotel Dubrovnik, Tomislav Kosir and Martina Srnec, Head of Marketing Department from the Croatian tourist board (HTZ).
All of the present panellists agreed that most important thing in planning marketing activities in tourism is to choose a quality promotional ''mix'' which aims at all important markets, as well as the continuous need for research into the desires of potential guests in order to provide as much information as possible. They emphasised the importance of having a great website for a product or service in tourism. and the importance of choosing suitable social networks which act as a good support for such promotional mixes. They agreed that word of mouth always beats other promotional efforts, therefore a good product and excellent service will always pay off.
The second part of the conference was traditionally split into three areas with main topics – technology, marketing and experiences. Questions about digitalisation in tourism, various booking platforms and digital solutions for payments, virtual reality in services and different IT solutions were covered by experts from Hrvatski Telekom (Croatian Telecom), Combis, Auka, Ericsson Nikola Tesla, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lemax, SedamIt, Spotsie and other such participating companies.
In the afternoon, there was another panel in which the topic "Croatian tourism in new technology surrounding – Growth limits" with moderator Željko Ivanković, from the Polazišta i perspektive think tank, was discussed.
The participants were Martina Nimac from the Croatian Chamber of Commerce, Neven Ivandić, from the Institute of Tourism, and Petar Rimac from the Expedia Group. Neven Ivandić presented the results of the research on some of the key issues of the sustainability of Croatian tourism and pointed out problems that come with the growth of tourism. The panellists debated on trends in other tourism destinations, like the shift from small family businesses to resorts, and adapting to the needs of tourists with digital solutions.
This years' 3T conference brought about new topics, interesting lectures and offered suggestions on how to deal with constant changes in tourism. The 3T conference is slowly building its brand, and it may well be the one in Croatia that helps tourism businesses to find appropriate solutions for their business processes along with the use of technology.
