On September 25, Universidad Europea de Canarias and the Association for the Progress of Management (APD) organized a round table entitled Digital Strategy: Evolution in the Tourism Sector, a debate in which various experts participated and agreed that tourism needs well-prepared and well-trained professionals to be able to manage the digitalization process that the sector is currently undergoing.
Participants included the managing director of Promotur, María Méndez Castro; the director of GF-TIC, a tech group belonging to Grupo Fedola, Florencio Hernández Cruz; the Head of Corporate Communications and the Santa Cruz de Tenerife City Council, Patricia Delponti, and the administrator of the property Hotel Meliá Hacienda del Conde, Buenavista Golf & Spa, Javier Burzaco.
The event was opened by rector of Universidad Europea de Canarias, Cristiana Oliveira, who remarked that “the tourism industry is experiencing unprecedented growth thanks to new applications geared towards the world of travel. The data indicates that, in the last year, 70 percent of new clients came through these devices.”
All of the speakers agreed on several relevant issues: that training is vital to work nowadays in the tourism sector; that digital tools lend a huge competitive advantage, but that knowing how to manage the data received through them is vital, through the specialization of Big Data or other disciplines; and that behind any new application are people who deal with people, meaning that the human dimension is still essential.