In a half day event, keynote speakers discussed isseues concerning Ticino Tourism and Innovation.
LUGANO – The 6th Obiettivo Turismo was held on Wednesday, 4th November at the Palazzo dei Congressi in Lugano with great success. The Obiettivo Turismo is an event and meeting place created to discuss timely and significant issues of concern for tourism in Ticino, Switzerland.
This year the program offered to all operators and tourism partners present, time for reflection and debate, urging them to discuss important tourism issues. The 2012 edition has particularly focused on the theme of understanding a variety of applications of tourism. The event’s Special guest was Hon. Federal Councillor Johann Schneider of Ammann.
The first part of this half day event, entitled “Time for innovation” featured welcoming speeches mainly by local body representatives, including Marco Solari, President of Ticino Turismo; Honorable Lorenzo Quadri, National Councillor and Mayor of Lugano and Honorable Laura Sadis, Director of the Department of Finance and Economics. Among other presentations focusing on Ticino Tourism, including the “Re-Invent Summer” presentation by Martin Nydegger, Business Development Responsible of Swiss Tourism, and the “Splash & Spa” presentation for the most innovative Aquapark in Europe, by Entrepreneur Rocco Cattaneo, great attention attracted the half hour presentation entitled “The new media in tourism marketing” made by Dr Dimitrios Buhalis, Director of the eTourism Lab Bournemouth University and President of the International Federation for Information Technologies in Travel and Tourism (IFITT). During his speech Dr Buhalis underlined the incredible opportunities for dynamic engagement with all stakeholders and travellers brought by social media. It was indicated that user generated content can provide inspirational material to encourage more travellers to consider destinations and tourism products and to become part of the travel decision making. Lastly the future of tourism was discussed, which lies in interactive and ambient technologies that will enable us to interact dynamically with our environment, with Context Based Services and Augmented Reality being two critical technologies that will develop incredible opportunities for tourism organisations and destinations to promote their products at real time and interact dynamically with travellers to optimise tourism experience through cocreation.
The second part of the event, “Not only tourism”, was organized in collaboration with the Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Craft and services of the Canton Ticino (CC-I) and featured the roundtable “Innovation: Instructions for Use”, moderated by the journalist Marco Bazzi. Speakers included Rico Maggi, Dean of the Faculty of Economics and professor at USI; Honorable Lorenzo Quadri; Alessandra Tedeschi Toschi, Co-Director of the Observatory on Tourism of Laghi and Marketing Professor at the University of Milan and Lorenzo Leoni, Director of the ACT Foundation and Managing Partner at Agire Invest, who discussed the use and application of innovation in sectors other than tourism.
The evening closed with a networking event giving the opportunity to participants to engage with each other, build business relationships and further discuss their issues of interest.
Vicky is the co-founder of TravelDailyNews Media Network where she is the Editor-in Chief. She is also responsible for the daily operation and the financial policy. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Tourism Business Administration from the Technical University of Athens and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wales.
She has many years of both academic and industrial experience within the travel industry. She has written/edited numerous articles in various tourism magazines.
