Marina Lanzarote will host the conference “Canarias en digital. Innovation and digitization, protagonists to boost tourism” next Friday, March 11, organized by Telefónica, where authorities and experts will discuss the strategies, demands and forecasts facing the protagonists of the tourism market today, and about the relevant role that digitization and connectivity have for boosting the sector in the Canary Islands.
The director of Telefónica in the Canary Islands, Juan Flores, will open the conference together with Jaime Manrique de Lara, director of Magma Innovation Services, who will be the moderator of the round table in which José Valle, president of the Lanzarote Business Circle, Ángel Hernández, head of Sales at Telefónica in the Canary Islands, Victoria de León, Head of Acelera Pyme at the Chamber of Commerce of Lanzarote and La Graciosa, Laura Sanz, CEO & FOunder Ecosistema Pitaya Coliving, Fernando López. CEO The Thin Line, and José Martínez, president of Magma Innovation Services. It will address the value of safe tourism for Canarian society and the economy, and the role that new technologies play in its future.
The conference, which will be closed by María Dolores Corujo, president of the Cabildo de Lanzarote, can be followed via streaming through the Telefónica Grandes Empresas Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/TelefonicaGGClientes/featured.
Tourism and digitization
The tourism sector is a fundamental pillar in Spain, representing 11.8% of GDP and generating 14% of jobs. Innovation has always been an ally of this sector and, now more than ever, technology has become a key piece to boost tourism and offer solutions and initiatives aimed at mitigating the socioeconomic impact that the Covid-19 crisis has caused in the sector and accelerate its recovery. Although the impact of the health crisis has been very different depending on the type of tourism (coastal, rural, urban), at this time it is essential to position oneself as a safe destination, complying with all health and safety recommendations, guaranteeing travelers covid-free spaces and offering completely personalized experiences to regain their trust.
Digitization is the great lever for the recovery of the business fabric and also a driver of key sectors for the economy such as tourism. The entire business fabric, and especially SMEs, must rely on digitization urgently.
The tourism sector in particular, which has been greatly affected by the crisis, is making a very important effort to adapt to the circumstances and the new demands of customers, which involve digitization and, increasingly, the choice of sustainable tourism options. In this sense, cities, thanks to their strategies to become smart cities, are transforming into Smart Tourist Destinations (DTI) by incorporating digitization to improve their efficiency (noise measurement sensors, waste management-circular economy, traffic analytics, Smart parking, etc.), thus becoming attractive and sustainable destinations.
Travel is already recovering, but travelers do not want to be crowded, so applications that speed up entry to venues, such as facial recognition systems, are on the rise.
Innovative solutions
Within the framework of the Tourism Innovation Summit -an event to transform the tourism sector through innovation, technology and sustainability-, Telefónica presented several technological solutions and products that advance what the future of this industry may be, ensuring destinations and spaces, without forgetting to offer passengers trips that meet their expectations and do not endanger the environment. For example, a solution for simultaneous translation into more than 80 languages that allows fluid conversations between people who speak different languages thanks to the immediacy of 5G response.
For this revolution to occur, it is necessary to have an infrastructure that guarantees that connections and data exchange occur almost in real time, regardless of where we are. Something that 5G connectivity, edge computing or the cloud will provide. In this sense, Spain is in the best possible position to carry out this tourist transformation. Today Telefónica's fiber optic network reaches more than 70% of homes and businesses, and 5G reaches more than 1,300 municipalities, which means that more than 80% of the population has access to this technology.
