Wendy Weijdema

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.

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.