I’m at the first Web Economy Forum, in Cesena, Italy. It is, unfortunately, terribly under-attended, which is a shame since the first session I’ve gone to was quite good. But it’s being webcast, so we can hope that there are people listening who are not in the room.

Note that because of the translation, these notes are especially rough and choppy.

The first speaker is Prof Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt from the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute in Germany. Chinese travel is increasing: 1 out of ten world travelers are from China. The Net and online media are highly significant to travelers figuring out where to go. Some celebrities who blog when they travel have 50M followers. The biggest online travel agency has recently changed its characterization from online to mobile travel agency. It’s social media, not Web sites, that get people interested; people want to hear from their social group. China already has twice as many people online as the US does.

He takes the local area as an example. He suggests that for a town like Cesena, the customers are not the busloads of travelers but those who have been around Italy, and are looking to move from sightseeing to experience. A single tourist who discovers a local shop can drive more visitors, but a new deal (about which he cannot yet speak) lets a visitor set up an online shop in China through which the Chinese can buy from the Italian shop. [Nice combination of the social, personal, and mercantile.] He gives an example of a Chinese film star driving lots of traffic to a Tasmanian stuffed bear.

The next speaker, Aurkene Alzua-Sorzabal, says that international markets have grown remarkably, but how much has that benefited local regions? We need new anaytics “to support the intelligent monitoring of visitors, in order to anticipate and improve their performance,” so that we can get new insights in complex industries such as the “hospitality field.” Behind all this is Big Data, but that’s just the raw material. How can we use this data for our businesses?

She talks about some tools her group has developed. First they use Big Data to explore pricing. Every 24 hours, they crawl the data on accommodation prices — 12,000 hotels in Spain, 14K in France, etc. They can then ask question such as what is the average rate for 3 star hotels in Bilbao on a given day, or what is the most economical hotel in Paris for Easter. They can forecast pricing for special events in a locality and its surroundings. They can see the weekend effect in Ireland and across countries. They can see the effect of availability on price. She gives more examples and asks how we can better use the digital world to understand the physical world?

Q: People only trust user-generated content that comes from other travelers.

Q: Italy is the 8th destination for travel in the world. Tourism accounts for 10% of the Italian GDP. We need to find the next big way that tourists book their travel. TripAdvisor is an example of how tourism is changing. Tourism is not just about finding a hotel. And Air Bnb, too.

Wolfgang: When the Chinese come to Venice, they’re looking for Marco Polo. Aside from the airport, there’s nothing there. So, they’ve learned through social media that there’s nothing there about Marco Polo, so they stay away. The Chinese are proud that their culture came to Italy. You should be catering to this need.

Q: We have a great UNESCO heritage in this country. What shoud we do?

Q: Maybe cultural goods aren’t the way to sell tourism in emerging countries. In China, Marco Polo is unknown. Young people in America know Rome only because they’ve played Assassin’s Creed. They know our cars and clothes, not our culture. Culture works in a few countries.

A: Wolfgang: That’s not entirely true. It depends on the segments. Marco Polo is taught as part of Chinese history as bringing Chinese culture to Europe. When we surveyed younger Chinese people, Italy is seen as the home of beautiful men, maybe from the statue of David and soccer players. For travel to Europe the main attraction is blue skies, no pollution.

A: Aurkene: People go somewhere because they have a narrative, perhaps from history of movies. But now they lack narratives. These narratives tell them what they’re looking for in a place. It’s not about places but about narratives.

A: Wolfgang: Yes. Cesena has been the home of three Popes. It’s not about history but about power. This is an image you can build on. This place has inspired people to become powerful.

Q: We can’t sell our homes as a product or as an experience. The relation between the people who come and the people who host are the real opportunity and the next big thing: peer to peer. If you get too many people, you lose the relationships.

Q: We should be demanding open data about tourism.

Q: Are we still welcoming?

A: Wolfgang: It’s not enough to say the customer is king without knowing that you have to greet the Japanese man first and the woman all the way at the end, whereas in China it’s a matter of hierarchy, not gender. So you can’t be welcoming without training.

Wolfgang: The broadest segment isn’t nation but language. If you want peer to peer, you have to share a language. And it’s probably going to turn out to be English.

Categories: business, liveblog, marketing, travel dw