Toscana Promozione Turistica

(Tuscany Tourist Board)

Ms Alessia Geroni

THE INNOVATION OF THE TOURISM OFFER

THROUGH SYNERGIES BETWEEN PRIVATE AND

PUBLIC: BTO – Buy Tourism Online

Crete, June 19th 2018

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TUSCANY

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TOSCANA PROMOZIONE TURISTICA ACTIVITIES:

Focusing on tourism promotion

Working with the Tuscan territories to promote the Tuscan destinations

and the various regional tourism products

Participation to the main tourism fairs, B2B workshops and roadshows, enhancing

the opportunity of meeting between the Tuscan tourist offer and the

international tourism markets

Promotional campaigns addressed to the final customer: the tourist

Toscana Promozione Turistica has also the main purpose to co-ordinate the

regional meeting industry.

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General Manager

Events & BtoBPromotion &

Marketing

Products, Markets & Destination Development

IT & Communication

Economic & Financial affairs

BUDGET: regional, national and european funds + private and public partnerships

ORGANISATION: 24 people dedicated to:

2017

65 promotional activities

607 participants

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607 participants

BTO – Buy Tourism Online

A unique event in Italy, at its

10th edition in 2017, on

Travel & Innovation

An opportunity of training and

information exchange for the

professionals supply chain, public

and private bodies and national and

international experts in digital

tourism

A format with over 150 seminars/conferences in only two days on subjects related

to online tourism, web distribution channels, web-marketing promotion and the

culture of new technologies in the tourism industry

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THE CONTEXT OF THE GOOD PRACTICEChanges in the market due to

technological innovation

BTO, thanks to the idea of a private

operator, aims at giving a response to the

professionals who have to manage the

transformation of the productive processes

and the relationships with the market

Innovative contents and an agenda

addressed to decision-makers, producing

and working in marketing, distribution,

research, study and training

INNOVATION SCIENTIFIC VALUE NETWORKING

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FIRST PHASE

2008First edition of BTO BTO trademark and the domain www.buytourismonline.com

belong to Tuscany Region (50%) and the Chamber of Commerce of Florence (50%), that since the beginning have supported the development of the event with an important

budget contribution

2009Agreement on a shared

organisational model between the Region and

the Chamber of Commerce

increase of appreciation of the

agendas, steady increase of the

number of visitors and exhibitors

Public-private governance:

Tuscany Region and Economic Promotion Agency

(now Toscana Promozione Turistica)

Florence Chamber of Commerce, representing the

local productive system

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PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION

2017

2012 The technical coordination of the event is entrusted to

Toscana Promozione and Chamber of Commerce of Florence

2016 A Technical Scientific Committee is set up to define thecontents and programme of the event

Fondazione Sistema Toscana and PromoFirenze (a SpecialAgency of the Chamber of Commerce) is responsible for thelogistics

Toscana Promozione Turistica coordinates the organisation ofa parallel event: Digital Ecosystems, a national event thatnaturally fits within the BTO

It reaches the target of the first ten consecutive editions

The annual appointment will not take place in 2018: nextedition is planned for 20-21 March 2019

2019

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PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION

Promoted by:Mibact

(Ministry for Arts,

Cultural Heritage and

Tourism), Mise

(Ministry for Economic

Development),Italian Regions

It was developed thanks to the

collaboration of Tuscany Region

and Toscana Promozione

Turistica

A big workshop of ideas for the development of digitalisation inthe promotion of Italy as a tourist destination

A series of events over three years, during which the 2017-2022Strategic Plan for the development of tourism will be defined

Aim: encouraging exchange of ideas between the various actorsof the tourism industry, between Public Administration andprivate companies, so as to disseminate best practices on thenational territory

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MAIN STAKEHOLDERS OF BTO Institutions: Tuscany Region, Chamber

of Commerce of Florence, ToscanaPromozione Turistica, FondazioneSistema Toscana and PromoFirenze.

Direct involvement of Mibact, Mise,Universities, Florence Trade Centre,Enit (Italian National Tourist Board)

Public bodies

Italian and international companies

Big Players in digital tourism (Booking,Airbnb, HomeAway, Expedia,eDreams, Priceline, Opodo,Hotels.com, Trivago, …)

Social Networks (Facebook, Twitter)and search engines (Google)

Specialised press and internationalresearch centres

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EVIDENCE OF SUCCESS

€ 700 thousand is the overall budget of the event

75% of the budget generated by the sale of tickets, exhibition spaces and slots for the presentations of products and services

From 2008 to 2016 an average annual growth of revenues between 10% and 15%

Over 4300 individual accreditations for the mostsuccessful edition; 62 companies and an agenda of159 conferences during the two days of the event

In 2015-2016 it was chosen by Best Western as thelocation for the national convention of the group;

Among the sponsors: big companies such as Oracle,SIHotels, Telecom, Emirates, Allianz, Unicredit,Airplus, Toscana Aeroporti.

A steady increase of coverage by traditional andonline media

Over 400 Italian and foreign journalists/bloggersinvolved

75% of Italian Regions involved following thepartnership with Digital Ecosystems

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DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED/LESSONS LEARNED

Main challenges and criticalities:

Creating an attractive event both for privateoperators and institutional bodies

Making it less dependent on public contributions,keeping its identity of not-for-profit event

The dimensions reached over the last few yearshave made the balancing out of location/stagingcosts and those devoted to programme contentsdifficult

Aim of the next edition:

Repositioning of the BTO brand

Extending the participation to all professionals ofthe tourism supply chain such as Tour Operators,DMCs, Airline companies, Service companies,Caterings, Museums, Cultural Centres,…

Encouraging the participation of non-tourismactivities yet related to the industry

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LEARNING OR TRANSFER POTENTIAL

The investment in an initiative like BTO means engaging in creating:

an opportunity for informing, training and networking with an objective value

high level agendas with international speakers and relevant current topics

a specific educational format

an adequate communication capacity to create the conditions for a future development

Success factors of the initiative:

Partnership of public bodies to support thegradual economic and identity consolidationof the event

Synergies with private companies able ofimplementing innovative proposals withscientific and commercial relevance

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KEEPING THE PRODUCT ON THE MARKET

The communication and image of

the event can be self-feeding if the

event shows a definite capacity of

engagement and creation of a

community of followers

The risk, as happened to BTO, is to create

a closed circuit between speakers,

scientific management and followers,

that does not facilitate the admission of

new participants or the introduction of

new themes

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BED Talks BTO2017

1. Douglas Quinby, Senior Vice President Research of PhoCusWright tells his perceptionof Online Travel in the next ten years. Phocuswright is the most credible and quotedsource for data, information and analysis in the travel, tourism and hospitalityindustry.

2. Aint Vonke, Vice President Market Management, EMEA, the Expedia Group. After 13years Expedia made a big change deciding to start a strategic cooperation withThomas Cook.

3. Tao Tao, Founder & COO Getyourguide! The «Experiences market» has entered thecollective imagination since the launch of the colossus Airbnb.

4. Hjalti Baldursson, CEO Bokun Experienced. In Iceland there is a great interest intourism technologies and Bokun is one of the cornerstones, beeing the mostimportant tourism sales platform.

contacts:

brandtour@toscanapromozione.it