The San Diego
Tourism Authority (SDTA) has just launched a $10 million campaign aiming at
vaunt the city of San Diego as a vacation destination. The digital campaign has
already been spread out across major cities worldwide in the United States,
Canada and Britain through multiple platforms such as television, print,
digital and billboard advertising.
The SDTA
considers using IT in marketing and advertising is vital to survive in a highly
competitive world of tourism. Thanks to advantages of the new technologies
reaching a wide market, San Diego doesn’t only wants to target new targets in
the US but also in other countries.
The campaign
is already well launched in New York City, the big advertisement billboards in
Times Square are welcoming from the end of 2015 the promotion of San Diego. New
York being crowded during the Christmas holidays, San Diego can expect new
arrivals of tourists from everywhere. Digital billboards in Los Angeles and
Phoenix received also advertisements.
The San Diego
Tourism Authority has decided to start running the campaign in June 2015 and in
addition to Times Square’s electronic billboard, advertisements were printed in
famous travel magazines such as Travel + Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, Golf
Digest, Sunset and so on…
Advertisements
on digital tools were also settled on travel website like TripAdvisor, USA
Today, Hulu, ABC, Fox. The San Diego Tourism Authority is ambitious and wants
also Brand USA to perform advertisements on digital platforms in the U.K and
Canada.
That’s how
the city of San Diego is scheduling to do even better than last year by
welcoming more and more tourists who are willing to spend money in their local
restaurants but also shops and attractions.
In 2015, $9.9
billion were spent by 34.2 million of visitors; how much can San Diego expect
after the IT novelty in 2016?
According to Corbinball.com, 9 new technologies are very likely to take off in the
meetings industry for 2016. We will pay a particular attention to the wearables
because, in our opinion, they represent a real opportunity to transform a
meeting into a memorable customer experience.
The “wearables” objects are
one trendy innovation for namely event business industry. These are technologic
objects connecting humans with their devices (mobile, computer, tablets etc.).
We already know the smart watches or smart bracelets; they have little by
little entered our daily life or sport activities. But they are also very
useful for exhibitions and events, as well as wearable beacons - broadcasting
our GPS data and used for receiving directional information in a fair or
exhibition.
In
view of improving, making communication quicker and visitor journey easier,
these objects represent the future.
-For
attendees, with smart bracelets/watches, there is no need of having his phone
in hands, no problem of battery or distraction, no problem of downloading the
app of the specific event etc. These innovations represent a gain in time and convenience.
-For
event planners, it is very useful to measure the flow of visitors in real time,
to know what stands/conferences are the most popular, where a reinforcement of
staff is needed, what information the attendees looked for. Wearables make it
easier for event planners to transmit specific information to attendees during
the event and also to measure their satisfaction
In a word, according to
the article, these wearables help event participants to:
receive
GPS directions
receive directional indoor
way-finding through a convention facility/exhibition hall
open
guestroom doors
make e-wallet transactions that
are faster and more secure than credit cards
receive
conference alerts
exchange
contact/lead retrieval information
use
as admission tickets
make
audience polling responses
enable automated check-in for
registration/meeting rooms
record and track continuing
education unit (CEU) credits and much more.
Convincing example of the
ways wearables can disrupt the meetings industry are music festivals. In 2014,
the Tomorrowland festival sent to each of its participants a connected bracelet
which allowed them to exchange their Facebook profiles with people they met
during the celebration by a simple contact between the devices. See promotional
video of the festival below:
For the Lab Festival, a
French DJ contest, the organizers used wearables to register the audience
votes. According to them, it was simpler to use, reliable technology and
innovative. Thanks to these connected bracelets, participants can use them as
their entry tickets but also to pay drinks or auxiliary merchandises. This
simplifies the overall organization, reduces queuing lines and brings more
security for payments or against ticket falsification. In the end, the data
collected thanks to these wearables allow a better analysis of participants’
habits for future marketing expenses, advertisement possibilities or stock
management for example.
In
our opinion, this technology presents major opportunities to disrupt the event
industry and transform an event as an interactive customer experience. For big
events, this could guide the visitors through the stands and conferences that
interest them, saving them some precious time looking at a map or downloading
an app. This could also be a very practical tool to network without traditional
business cards; like at Tomorrowland, participants of a business event could
exchange their LinkedIn profiles or digital business cards by a simple touch. This
could be used to participate during conferences; to vote or ask questions to
the speaker for example like SLi.Do concept. The major advantage of this
technology remains its intuitive use even for “beginners” and the multiple
possibilities of use it can have. However, an obstacle to its mass development
for the moment remains its high cost compared to simply using beacon technology
in a mobile event app– up to US$10-15 or more per person for a rental.
Technology in the Tourism
industry developed innovative tools to increase the travel process. Actually,
the travellers use websites for information research and booking.
However,
since the launch of Smartphone, 30 million tourists consider their mobile with
the expansion of mobile apps for travel and this number will continue to grow
with the rise of the I.T sector.
Indeed, mobile represents
a core part of travel. Mobile users spend 35% of their time looking for travel
content.
Even if most of mobile users
will complete their booking through another device, each month around 30
million people use their mobile to look for travel information.
Therefore, new
opportunities are emerging for travel Apps.
Among
the new travel Apps, Apple launched its application “ITravel” offering services
on the road for tourists.
For example, it facilitates booking reservation, check-in
at the airport and handling luggage.
But,
there have been other Apps developed for the travellers, such as: Vocre, Flight
Track, SitorSquat, TripIt, Hotel Tonight, Priceline, OANDA Currency converter,
HotelsCombined’s, Room 77’s, Orbitz and Hotel.com.
These
mobile tools giving more power on customers and facilitate their travel
experience.
For
instance, they can easily find a hotel room at the last minute for a best
available price, they have a translation program in 23 languages, and they can check
flights time with the full itinerary.
Therefore,
the Tourism industry can observe the development of a new travel segment called
“Modern Travellers” by which:
-Mobile booking are expected to grow by 20%
- The
mobile users represent especially travellers between 25-44 years.
-50%
of these users considers loyalty program for booking as they can benefit
exclusive offers or rewards.
The
rise of IT in the travel business give more power to the consumer which are
looking for new experience regarding planning their trip. Thus, we can wonder how
traditional travel agencies considered as “obsolete” can compete with mobile
Applications in term of new services.
The Virtual reality will break the
border of events
The event industry’s
world constantly evolves.
The
number of conference significantly increases. General or well targeted events
take place around the world by with a similar configuration. How many persons
attend a conference each year? How many attendees are tired to see always the
same kind of event and to meet persons they already know?
The
world rapidly moves and creates new technologies as we have already understood
;for exampleby the extension of social
media and the birth of the Cloud which has accelerate
the creation of apps that help daily task of each attendees though the
engagement, remote attendance, and the information management.
Thus,
the mobility of each one is becoming crucial and IT can help event organisers
to provide a special conference or meeting being well installed in his seat.
This
is all about virtual reality. The revolutionary tools for organisers that will support
event planners to enrich and improve own events and make it exclusive. The
virtual reality is “an artificial environment
that is created with software and presented to the user in such a way that the
user suspends belief and accepts it as a real environment” just by push a
bottom as explained in the Computing fundamentals glossary. Virtual reality was one of the hottest trends in
2015, but it is announced to be the best one for this year as a “top” seller
for convention centre.
Do you are reinterpreting
or just novice with the Virtual reality? In this article, we will show you how
much the virtual reality is a good tool for the event’s industry.
Transporting attendees in the Virtual
reality though out an Smartphone
Firstly,
Orbulus gives the simple solution to each attendees being enrolled in the
virtual reality by the hands free virtual reality experience designed for
smartphone VR viewers, Google Cardboard, Dive and Samsung Gear. Event
organisers can take person from the conference and going in the virtual reality
though this ingenious system. This is the first apps using Google Cardboard
SDK. Orbulus VR Smartphones is simply controlled by “looking at things we
wanted to give users an above standard pick up and go VR experience that they
could quickly identify with, be engaged with and share”.
Boost the sales in a product launch
Steven Kadoch, managing partner at Ultimate Jet
Vacations says “We want to put every hotelier who walks in here into a little
dark corner, shut the lights off and have them put on the VR headset and really
get immersed into the property. As we can understand, the Virtual reality
becomes a really way to sale and to reinventing the marketing strategy of a
company. This is an innovative instrument to promote a product during trade
shows, simply to increase brand’s image as an advanced firm and attracts new
customers. Let’s imagine you are inside a trade fair among stand, noise and a
crowd people, and with the virtual reality you visit a new hotel resorts with
beaches. “Virtual reality’s most
obvious benefit is that it puts prospective clients, including planners, into
any physical location—without viewers having to be physically present,” Reads the Smart Meetings Blog.
The goal
of the virtual reality is to stay in customer’s mind by virtual experience.
This is the means to change conference, change event and transforms itself in
the virtual dimension. It will also amplify the one to one interaction between
the customer and the commercial but also increase long line of people absolute
wanting to test this new technology. There are companies like Uploadvr that
places in the centre of their core business the virtual reality, and believe
that this is the future. Also, to convince each of event organiser, in this
year will be organised the Virtual reality industry event if the year by the
SVVR (Silicon Valley Reality) which will draw 2500-300 VR professionals and
over 200 exhibitors.
So, what
do you expect to get you in the virtual reality?
