From 23-25 October, NECSTouR was a partner and active participant at the Tourism Innovation Summit in Seville, Spain which this year attracted nearly 8,000 delegates. Our Tourism of Tomorrow Lab held an interactive one-and-a-half-day data summit with several NECSTouR regions covering subjects such as managing statistical data, Generative AI, APIs, etc. The summit was led by NECSTouR’s Data Scientist Daniel Iglesias and covered much ground across many important areas.

NECSTouR’s Managing Director John Fitzgibbon participated as a panelist in two sessions of the conference programme. On Wednesday 23rd, John spoke about NECSTouR’s role in guiding destinations to achieve a smarter, more sustainable approach to tourism development and how AI as a tool can help us reach this goal more efficiently. It was an insightful discussion involving Misa Labarile from DG GROW at the European Commission, Olga Preveden from the Austrian National Tourist Office, and Dolores Ordoñez from AnySolution, expertly moderated by Ana Moniche from Tourism Andalucia. The panel explored how AI and data are reshaping the tourism sector, the European Commission’s plans to ensure accessibility for smaller destinations and SMEs, the critical tools needed for destinations to implement data-driven, sustainable policies and how trusted data spaces like DEPLOYTOUR-Deployment European Tourism Data Space can enhance destination management, resource planning, and sustainability.

On Thursday 24th October, NECSTouR participated in the panel chaired by Debbie Flynn discussing the consequences of climate change on tourism which provided the opportunity to talk about some NECSTouR regional case studies and the progress that is being made through regions coming together to define their climate action plans for tourism as signatories to the Glasgow Declaration.

TIS provided a valuable opportunity to meet with regions/DMOs, explore the latest trends and connect with the tourism eco-system at a premier event on the tourism calendar.