Arctur enabling data driven tourism at the Black Sea

22. 6. 2020 / Tourism Tourism 4.0 for the Black Sea (T4BS) project partners organized the first cycle of workshops with the aim of raising awareness about the role data analytics can have for sustainable tourism development in the region. Each event titled Data Analysis for Sustainable Tourism Development Strategies have hosted key stakeholders of the local tourism ecosystem in Romania, Ukraine, and Georgia.

The first workshop took place in March parallel to the first International Conference in the Black Sea region on Blue Development: Ecosystem Services on River-Sea Macro-ecosystems. Among high representatives such as Jeffery Sachs, Laszlo Borbely and Nicholaos Theodossiou, Tomi Ilijaš and Urška Starc Peceny from the lead partner Arctur, held a keynote speech on the vision and tools of Tourism 4.0 on behalf of the T4BS project. They have also presented the Tourism Impact Model and its benefits for the strategic planning of resources in tourism at the workshop in Romania, which has been opened by Ion Munteanu, Governor of the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve Administration.

The workshops planned in Ukraine and Georgia have been postponed to May due to travel restrictions posed by the pandemic. As a result, the local authorities and government representatives, research institutes and tourist providers as well as other representatives of the tourism business environment have attended webinars, organized by the local partners, who provided the translation of both presentations and the following discussion. The presentations focused on the context and the goals of the project, explained by Thanos Smanis and Matteo Bocci from HCL Management, and detailed presentation of the Tourism 4.0 tool being tested at the Black Sea by Tomi Ilijaš and Urška Starc Peceny from Arctur.

There has been a high interest for collaboration in the project and transformation of tourism at the Black Sea. Hence, the workshops received media coverage, such as Cristina Caluianu speaking of T4BS project on the national radio in Romania and Mamuka Berdzenishvili presenting the project on regional TV channel. They have emphasized the importance of collaboration for the implementation of Tourism 4.0 tools that are dependent on access to data sources. For this reason, data-driven tourism shall be co-created in cooperation with data owners, local authorities and governments striving to develop more sustainable tourism in the region with the help of technology.