What can the tourism industry learn from IoT?

One thing that we both agree on is to not go to the same place twice. So It’s really hard to manage and then comes the challenge of prioritising and listing what we want to see or do. I believe the Internet of Things (IoT) could definitely help us in making these decisions.

According to Cisco[1], there are 14.8 billion IoT devices at the moment and there will be around 50 billion by 2020. This is bound to have a profound impact on the tourism sector, a sector that drives the economy in many countries[2].

To me it’s obvious that through the IoT, tourists can both make the most of the places they visits and benefit from the very best information and services they want.

We have seen some projects related to services, especially in the hotel industry. Take, for example, Hilton Hotels and Resorts and its Hhonors[3] scheme. Your smartphone lets you check-in and gives you access to your room without the traditional electronic key-card. You can request any additional items or gain access to common guests areas such as the gym or pool. We could imagine even more possibilities like adjusting the lighting and temperature can be automatically based on sensory data from IoT devices. Hotels could predict customer behaviour and recommend promotions, activities and much more, based on information collected from IOT devices.

The hotel industry is yet to see harsh competition coming from companies like Airbnb and HomeAway. It could be a great idea for them to join the digital revolution via the use of IoT and keep ahead of the curve. One has to understand that the war isn’t solely about price; it’s also on customer experience.

Back to the travel experience, how can the Internet of Things play a crucial role assisting tourists during their trip? It’s fairly simple, IoT devices could help identify local attractions or activities. It will occupy a preferential level of business intelligence for all local data and analysis. Derived from the tastes and preferences of visitors, the information will be given in real time to enhance the tourist experience in a way that best suits their needs. In most cases the time available to tourists is limited with different tastes to cater to. Thanks to IoT they could make better use of their time by doing the type of activities they like best.

Over the past few years we have seen the emergence of NFC and QR codes that were developed to enhance the tourist’s experience but to me it’s not as good as it can be due to the manual process and many bugs. Let’s take the example of Santander[4] in Spain which, with over 20,000 sensors, gives people an interesting way to enjoy the city. With the app you can get live information required as a tourist such as bus timings, city festivals, parking availability, concert, and monument information. Another example would be the augmented reality application that was developed for touristsin Palm Springs in California[5]. The app “VisitPalmSprings” includes key features for those looking for what to do and how to get around the city in real time. It is really good to avoid what I call the “what do we do next?” issue when you realise that all the things that you had planned to see actually take less time than you thought.

Of course, developing IoT tourist applications will be meaningful if you can demonstrate to visitors that you are providing them with additional value.

The Internet of Things has long been a hot topic in the technology industry as the next step in our digital era and great things are to come in terms of:

-          Innovation from the tourist industry itself: hotels will be able to connect hotel technology and guest devices to improve their ability to increase guest engagement and operational efficiency. It’s a great opportunity and a new start.

-          Tourist experience: we will see a greater customer satisfaction. The race for innovation will be beneficial for visitors due to better service and better use of the time during their holiday.

-          Innovation from Cloud service providers: new tools need to be developed to process all this data. An example is the IoT PaaS TimeSeries platform developed by OVH and available on RunAbove.

-          With an estimated 403 zettabytes of data travelling on the world wide network, providers better be ready to put their infrastructure on steroids.