Cardiff Met virtually attended a Museums Association webinar entitled Digital Futures Embracing New Strategies on 29th April 2021. Diana James summarises key insights on how museums in the UK responded to the challenge of the pandemic using digital technology, what they learnt and how the Next Tourism Generation project can help inform new strategies and address skills gaps.
On Thursday 22nd April 2021, at 15:45-17:00 our partner Breda University of Applied Sciences will participate in (and moderate) the Digital Skills for PostCovid Tourism webinar! If you are interested in attending sign up to the event here.
Digitization and global pandemic have radically changed the way we travel
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According to the recent UNESCO report “Museums around the world in the face of COVID 19”, 90% of museums, globally, have been forced to close their doors during the corona crisis and more than 10% may never reopen. Most cultural professionals have been forced to work from home and many have adapted their traditional roles to support different departments and functional areas of expertise. Faced with extremely challenging times, the management and staff of cultural institutions have been able to respond in rapid and creative ways to the social and cultural needs of their societies, taxing their professional skills. Museums and heritage institutions have experienced several changes during this process, many of the trends and new practices will remain after the crisis and management and staff will need to be ready to welcome those changes. Through this thought-provoking and stimulating period, NTG digital and socio-cultural skills have become even more prominent for museum and heritage professionals. This piece presents some of the most interesting initiatives developed by museums around the world during the lockdown period and the way professionals have responded to the challenges. It also presents some of the trends that will probably continue after the crisis.
Helping people to acquire key digital skills is vital to the recovery post-Covid as we all know. However, one issue that we are seeing at a global level at People 1st International is just how important it is for the efforts of employers, banks, NGOS, other funding bodies and government agencies to be aligned, so that key stakeholders are in the loop on key initiatives. This will both ensure that there are no unnecessary overlaps between projects, and that funding for skills development is spent in the best possible way.
In the tourism industry digital skills are becoming increasingly important as the workplace develops. Therefore, being fluent in these digital tourism skills is more in demand than ever and employers are now constantly on the lookout for employees with them. This digital demand can be seen in the industry, which is why digital workers are becoming increasingly valuable, and employers are pushing for more skills in the industry.
In 2020 an increasing demand for digital workers has been noted, with industries relying on employees to work from home to stop the spread of COVID-19. The tourism industry has been no different, relying on employees being digitally present, showing how working digitally has become invaluable this year.
The COVID-19 pandemic put serious pressure on tourism and hospitality (TH) companies. Hotels, restaurants, travel agencies, visitor attractions, sports facilities, event centres and other companies had to close their premises for several weeks as part of government measures to curb the spread of the virus. Their financial resources were depleted and some went into default.
Changing travel patterns require various tourism industry sub-sectors to adapt to the wide-ranging needs of customers. With the increase in leisure time, most people travel several times a year. Next to that, new destinations are being introduced; cheap flights are offered by multiple airlines, while the consumer decision-making process becomes even shorter. A Next Tourism Generation Alliance key partner, the University of Sopron, looks into ‘new platform services’ (UNWTO, 2017) and how digitalisation is bringing radical changes to tourism and hospitality. The blog explores a cutting edge robot café and an innovative smartphone-controlled hotel in Budapest, Hungary. READ MORE
The vision of Visit Finland is that Finland will become a smart, pioneering destination, that provides the best customer journey from daydreaming to travel. This vision has resulted in Visit Finland’s mission to build a nation-wide digital ecosystem to support sustainable growth in travel. Kaisa Kosonen, Digital Development Manager at Visit Finland, explains what Finland does as a country and as a tourism industry to get the country digitalized. In order to reach a final goal, based on the mission and vision, various Next Tourism Generation (NTG)-related skills are necessary nowadays for DMO’s. Several of them will be highlighted in this blog, such as data analysis and augmented reality.
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