AUSTRIA’S SMART TOURISM AWARD FOSTERS INNOVATION
A challenge for many in the tourism industry is just how to monitor the flow of visitors. Companies or destinations ask themselves questions such as: Where do the guests of my region come from and which attractions do they visit? Which visitor groups did we lose due to travel restrictions, and which did we win in return? What activity profiles do guests have? How can tourism advertising capitalise on those activities and how can we communicate in a more targeted way?
The A1 Smart Tourism Award 2021 aims to answer these questions with “Smart solutions for innovative tourism projects”.
The A1 mobile phone company, Invenium, Österreich Werbung (Austria’s National Tourism Board) and the Federation of Austrian Tourism Managers (BÖTM) are supporting Austrian regions in their efforts to reopen tourism for the summer. Award winners among selected companies will receive “anonymised movement analyses” in order to optimise visitor management and efficient marketing planning.
Austria tourism, like its counterparts around the world, has been hit hard by travel restrictions and lockdowns for over a year now. Cities, tourism regions and tour operators are also facing major challenges when it comes to reopening.
The awards thus aim to the most innovative projects in tourism. As stated recently by A1 CCO Martin Resel: “It is very important to support communities and tourism businesses as Austria prepares its reopening. Therefore, I am pleased to announce the Smart Tourism Award together with Österreich Werbung and the Federation of Austrian Tourism Managers. The award aims to draw attention to innovative projects and events throughout Austria. We will give the winners a new overview of their region’s tourism activities with A1 Tourism Insights.”
“Tourism is one of the sectors most affected by the pandemic. It is all the more important now to join forces and contribute together to the reopening of tourism,” said Florian Größwang, Head of Partner Management at Österreich Werbung, adding, “The award gives a public stage to the innovative spirit of domestic tourism. We want to show how smart digital solutions can support us in the future when facing challenges, such as visitor flow management.”
A1 Tourism Insights – valuable information on regions and guests
As Austria’s largest mobile network operator, A1 gathers daily information from around six million mobile customers. Based on strict data protection laws and a safe technology certified process, this information is completely anonymised and used for analyses of movement flows, visit sequences, length of stay and origin overviews.
The tourism industry can consequently benefit from information on occupancy and visit frequencies of sights and attractions, information on distribution by gender and age groups or on visitors’ nationalities. Collected data are treated as a whole entity and not on individual basis.
Submissions of tourism projects and events are possible until 18 May 2021 under the digital page of A1 Tourism Award. An expert jury consisting of representatives of the Austrian National Tourist Office, the Association of Austrian Tourism Managers, A1 and Invenium will then select the winning projects from all entries. All companies in the tourism and leisure industry, but also municipalities, city and regional marketing as well as event organisers are eligible to participate. The winners of the A1 Smart Tourism Award will receive free movement flow analysis of a tourism region over a period of six months including insights into the origin and activities of guests. The prize includes evaluations of individual events over a period of up to four days.
