Newsletter #5 - March 2025
We are excited to share the fifth update on our project! We are happy to report that everything is progressing smoothly, including the various subprojects we have been working on.
Exciting News: Registration is now open for our third annual conference! Join us on Tuesday, June 3, 2025, from 09:30 to 16:00 in Chur. To register, simply click below.
We can’t wait to see you there! This conference is an important opportunity for us to share the latest updates on our project, highlight key actions and plans for the future, and most importantly, connect with you. Stay tuned for more details on the program and speaker lineup, coming soon!
SP1
National Data Infrastructure for Tourism
First steps in developing a Swiss tourism data standard
As part of the development of a common infrastructure for data exchange in tourism in Switzerland, we have attempted to create a common data standard by mapping available data trees and completing them with industry-specific data types.
This initiative is based on the "Charter on Cooperation in the Field of Non-Personal but Marketing-Related Data," which aims to foster data sharing and collaboration among tourism stakeholders. As of its announcement in May 2024, the charter has been signed by all 13 regions of the RDK, Switzerland Tourism, HSLU as well as IT tourism service providers such as discover.swiss, Neusta destination.one, Alturos, Ipeak Infosystems, General Media SA and SwitzerlandMobility. You can learn more about the Charter here.
The Charta Core Group consisting of 9 representatives of tourism regions and IT service providers has officially commenced its activities in February 2025, marking a significant step toward harmonizing and standardizing non-personal, marketing-related tourism data. The work does not start from scratch. The group agreed to use schema.org and the extensions developed by the Open Data Tourism Alliance ODTA as the basis for its activity. First discussions and decisions on mapping aimed to classify glaciers, Kurhotels and guides. The core group meets monthly and reports about its decisions via our website.
Coming soon: Innovation & Mapping Festival
The long-awaited event - Innovation & Mapping Festival is set to take place in mid-March in Zurich. This one-day event fosters innovation and cooperation in the tourism sector through a dynamic hackathon-like format. Participants will work in teams to tackle nine real industry challenges, presented by SISAG, Open Journey Planner, discover.swiss, Guidle, Switzerland Tourism, Lucerne Tourism, Arosa Tourism, HES-SO, Sierre Anniviers, Crans Montana, Goût & Région and Sitios. The challenges focus on various topics such as optimizing transportation and tourism movement for seamless and efficient travel experiences, exploring how AI can enhance tourism services as well as finding solutions to promote sustainability, boost regional tourism, and develop digital tools that enrich the visitor journey. The festival is organized by Institute of Tourism and Mobility HSLU in cooperation with Destination.Lab and Switzerland Tourism. The event takes place in Zurich on 14th March. We extend our thanks to the partners of the Resilient Tourism project for their invaluable support in making this event possible. More information about the festival below.
SP2
Service Design, Business Processes and Business Models
As announced in the last newsletter, we are currently focusing on the development of business models in general. To be more specific: For the hospitality industry, we are currently developing - in collaboration with various hotels - a morphology for the development of business models; these are essentially structured around three dimensions: (1) infrastructure, (2) service, and (3) ownership. We shall discuss first results at the Hospitality Club meeting on April 3. For the mountain railway industry, we are currently developing business models for energy generation, use and distribution. In doing so, we are relying on a comprehensive conceptual basis for energy generation and, with regard to its application, on case studies with various cableway companies. It is already clear from the outset that the high complexity of the entire system required for this makes such projects more difficult, especially as it is often unclear who takes on which roles in this system (cableway companies included).
In collaboration with the HSLU, we are currently working on the first evaluations of the results on the question of what makes people want to be tracked and thus disclose their spatial behavior. To this end, we have surveyed several thousand test subjects in Switzerland, Germany and the USA. It is already apparent that, at the end of the day, it is primarily hard transactional benefits that encourage this willingness. Contrary to expectations, gamification plays no or only a subordinate role. We expect to be able to present more results at the Flagship Conference.
SP3
Modelling the Resilience of Tourism Systems
Modelling endeavours for SP3 are in full swing. We are actively implementing new actors of the tourism ecosystem inside the model as agent groups with their own specific behaviors, decision-making processes, perceptions of the environment and associated responses. Currently, the model features tourists, hotels, ski lifts, restaurants and other touristic places of interest, and communes. It showcases tourist flows as they plan their activities, and how touristic appeal for the touristic destinations evolves in response to various phenomena. The model is an executable software that launches simulations given a set of initial conditions, which then generate datasets for the evolution of the simulated system in output.
We have also inaugurated a crucial milestone for SP3: creating an interactive dashboard that connects to the model. It comes fully equipped with a pipeline for collecting the user’s input parameters, enabling them to experiment with several pre-made scenarios or devise their own, running the simulation with the given parameters, then analysing the results and finally displaying them using dedicated visualisation tools such as interactive maps and dynamically generated graphs. For this task, we have already identified a series of parameters that the various profiles of users can tweak in order to customise their simulation.
Assessing Digital Maturity in Tourism: A Benchmarking Approach
As part of our ongoing efforts within SP3, we have conducted multiple surveys to assess the digital maturity of tourism stakeholders in Switzerland and across Europe. These studies provide valuable benchmarks, offering insights into the evolving landscape of artificial intelligence (AI), digital marketing, and data management in the tourism sector.
One of our key initiatives is the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Distribution Strategies in the Hotel Sector study, carried out in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, France, and Italy, in collaboration with EHL. With AI rapidly reshaping the hotel industry, this study explores how hoteliers adopt AI-driven solutions to enhance guest experiences, optimize revenue strategies, and improve operational efficiency. By gathering industry perspectives, we aim to identify challenges and opportunities and develop actionable insights to guide AI adoption in hospitality.
Building on our 2024 survey of Swiss tourism organizations, we have now expanded our research to include the 2025 study on AI, Digital Marketing, and Data Management in Swiss Tourism Organizations. The new findings will be published in March 2025, while the 2024 study is already available here.
Beyond these large-scale studies, we are also evaluating the digital maturity of key tourism stakeholders in Valais. This research, which includes hotels, restaurants, and cableway companies, serves as an input of our SP3 simulation model. By incorporating real-world data from these actors, we aim to better understand digital adoption at a regional level, with results expected by summer 2025. These surveys provide a comprehensive view of digital transformation in tourism, helping both businesses and policymakers anticipate trends, overcome challenges, and harness new technologies. As we continue refining our SP3 simulation, these findings will serve as a critical foundation for modeling the resilience of tourism systems in a fast-changing digital landscape.
SP4
Coordination, Orchestration and Communication
Coaching program in Canton de Vaud
The third edition of our coaching program is now underway, featuring four promising projects. If you are particularly interested in one of these projects, please feel free to reach out to know more or identify potential collaboration.
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Lausanne Tourisme (DMO) : This project focuses on improving the quality of hospitality in Lausanne by digitizing the "Programme Expert" to expand its reach. The initiative aims to optimize information distribution about the destination through multi-channel tools and enhance guest reception by providing hotel receptionists with an interactive program that deepens their knowledge of local offerings.
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Fondation du Château de Chillon : Managing one of Switzerland's most renowned historical sites, the Foundation seeks to integrate digital technology and artificial intelligence to enhance the castle's security system and visitor experience. AI-powered surveillance would provide multiple benefits, including strengthened security, improved visitor experience, and optimized operational costs.
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Alpine Regenerative Hubs : The Alpine Regenerative Hubs project aims to transform alpine tourism into a driver of ecological restoration and community empowerment by developing a platform that connects businesses, communities, and travelers to fund local regenerative projects.
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Ballons du Léman: a company specializing in hot air balloon flights in Suisse Romande, aims to develop an AI-powered assistant to enhance its visibility. This digital tool will leverage various data sources to dynamically generate marketing strategies, including targeted social media posts and prospect identification, to expand the company’s reach.
Additionally, we are proud to announce that one of the projects from Year 1 has recently received an important Innotour funding: The Smart Region led by Nyon Région Tourisme, Lausanne Tourisme and Blent. This initiative is now officially starting and already shows promising results. Stay tuned for further updates on this project's progress.
Resilient Tourism Podcast Series Season 3
We are excited to launch the Season 3 of our Podcast Series! Three episodes, including one featuring Michael Thomann, are already live. This season focuses on the theme of "High Tech High Touch," where we engage with various professionals from the hospitality and tourism sectors to explore how we can digitally transform the industry while maintaining the essential human touch. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast to catch all the upcoming episodes! The episodes are available on Spotify, Youtube and Apple Podcast.