Programme

We will be starting the day with registration and welcome coffee in Sala Mar on the 2nd floor of Veles e Vents. The participants will check in with our team at the registration desk confirming their participation while enjoying morning coffee.

In this session, Nick Hall and Ana Balaguer Sánchez, from the Digital Tourism Think Tank, will take you through everything you can expect from XDW, getting an overview of the programme, interactive workshops and networking opportunities.

We'll hear from tourism senior leaders about their experiences driving change through transformation. The session will kick off with a keynote from Kaisa Kosonen, Head of Digital Development at Visit Finland. She'll tell us more about how the pandemic enabled the digital transformation of the industry, with a strong focus on technology and sustainability, to drive change and ensure the destination becomes more resilient. She'll be joined by Wendy Weijdema, Strategy, Research and Innovation Manager at MarketingOost, for a fireside chat where we'll make links between the importance of having data, and understanding it, but also ensuring collaboration and communication between the different levels in destinations to achieve results and true transformation. Joan-Carles Cambrils, Deputy Director at Fundació Visit València, will also share a city perspective of destination transformation and talk about their experience as the 2022 European Capital of Smart Tourism. Explore what it takes to create a holistic transformation process, looking at these destinations' promotion, collaboration and strategies.

During this ideation workshop, we'll collectively work towards redefining how destinations can be transformed to ensure that everyone's needs are considered and incorporated into the destination's future vision by applying design methods.

In this session, we'll look at a number of hand-picked projects which are focused on place-based innovation. We'll start things off with a keynote from Giannis Giatas, Content Marketing Manager at Marketing Greece. He will help us understand more about their "How to Athens" project and campaign, which encourages visitors to discover the city's untapped neighbourhoods and hidden gems to highlight its culture from a new perspective. Tomas Andersson, Manager of Corporate Communication at Visit Stockholm, will also join this session to tell us about how they're involving locals and shifting towards a more holistic view of the city, which responds to the needs of different target groups. They will both be joined by Chiara Loos, Brand and Marketing Manager at Helsinki Partners who, through a fireside chat, will help us uncover the keys of driving innovation. Join us as we look at change from the highly conceptual to the rarely seen under-the-hood improvements.

In this design-led workshop, we'll be ideating how place-based innovation can be fostered and furthered in our destinations, putting into action everything we'll be learning from the speakers in the session before. We'll be working with this key topic to spur economic development in destinations, focusing on how innovation can be considered from a point of view which merges in-destination experiences and brand image.

Are we promoting places to visitors, or are we shaping experiences which speak for themselves? This session looks at projects which combine tech, data and user experiences to transform the lived experience of actually being there. Ave Pill, Head of Tourism Digitalisation at the Estonian Tourist Board, will be giving us insights into their industry programme on service design and digitalisation, which is helping develop new tourism services and attract more visitors to the destination. Küllike Tint, Manager of Archaeological Collection at Tallinn City Museum, will also share her experiences of bringing history to life through Guidio.eu audio guides and service design for presenting cultural heritage. They'll be joined by Chiara Loos, Brand and Marketing Manager at Helsinki Partners, who will tell us more about the keys to attracting talent to destinations, something they have repeatedly demonstrated excellence in, with campaigns such as the "Helsinki Freedom, Home-delivered”, but also tell about the destination’s learnings on Digital Service Design through projects like “Virtual Helsinki” or “Think Sustainably”.

Time to prototype solutions! During this workshop, we will be putting design methods to work in order to redefine how digital service could look in the tourism industry in the future. What might customer experiences look like in 2050 in light of technological advances?

We'll deep dive into the perspectives of destinations investing in new data-led initiatives, from collaborative data programmes to business intelligence. This session will explore the many questions which remain unanswered from destinations embarking on this journey thanks to the perspectives of Wendy Weijdema, Strategy, Research and Innovation Manager at MarketingOost, and Brian Harte, Head of Customer Engagement & E-Marketing at Tourism Ireland. Wendy will be telling us everything about MarketingOost's data strategy, the importance of being data-driven and the challenges faced by destinations when trying to involve different stakeholders and their needs in this process - sharing with us the keys to achieving results from their experience and learnings. Brian will help us understand the relevance of data within our organisations and how it can power technological solutions. We'll also be joined by Olivier Jager, Co-founder & CEO at ForwardKeys, and Regis Cazanave, Vice President of Product at ForwardKeys, who will share about the importance of data dashboards for informed decision-making.

Data is becoming increasingly central to tourism strategies, both for destinations and for businesses. During this workshop, we'll be exploring how we can take our strategies to the next level by ideating how we can bring in different types of data and maximise their potential.

Kick-off TNW València the right way with our sponsor ZEUS! Join us for our Opening Party on Wednesday, March 29 from 19:00-22:00 at Zeus València for some drinks and bites. Don't miss out on our opening ceremony at 19:30! Meet the other attendees and start networking early. See you there!

Signup: https://tnw.to/openingVLC