View of one of the hotels integrated into the Hotelverse platform with digital visits. /
2023 FEATURES
Tourists demand more personalized experiences and the sector in Spain is reinventing itself to capture the increase in demand despite high prices
The pandemic has broken the mold in many economic sectors that have changed their models once the crisis has been overcome. One of them is tourism, which after suffering a historic sales collapse has had to reinvent itself to now take on the great ‘boom’ of both national and international demand. Experts consulted at Fitur, the international tourism fair that was held this week in Madrid, point out that new tourists are more demanding and demand more personalized experiences.
SiteMinder’s World Hotel study reveals that hotel reservations are already 23% above pre-pandemic figures. But something has changed: reservations are now made at the last minute. For example, according to the platform’s data, 60% of the reservations made in the last week of December were for stays between December and January.
Some hotels are also offering new experiences to their customers, not only at the time of the trip itself, but also in the previous reservation process. To do this, they use systems such as Hotelverse, a platform that creates “digital twins” for its network of associated hotels. This allows the future guest to reserve the exact room in which they will stay with an immersive experience to walk through the hotel from the website. Thus, the client can check with 3D images if their room will have views of the pool or if the sun shines in the morning, among many other features.
Fermín Carmona, co-founder and CEO of the company, explains in an interview with this newspaper within the framework of Fitur that the reservation experience “had hardly changed in the last 20 years” leaving the hotel sector “far behind” compared to others such as fashion or technology. “Our solution allows hoteliers to add value to their website, improve the customer experience and differentiate themselves from other channels such as comparators,” says Carmona. This idea will already be in operation this year on the website of 1,500 hotels from different chains such as Iberostar, Radisson, Grupo Presidente or Palladium.
Home exchange
In addition, in the pandemic a new type of traveler has emerged that is not fully a tourist but workers who take advantage of the possibilities of teleworking to visit other countries. They are called digital nomads. Spain is one of the main destinations for these teleworkers due to the climate and the cultural offer, among other factors, but in many cases, having to pay for two homes, the one in their city of origin and the one in Spain, puts them off.
To solve this, a platform was created that allows travelers to exchange homes for a while and thus save a large part of the cost of living away from home. This is Born 2 Be Nomad, the first housing exchange platform for digital nomads, which was born from a group of four friends in the Canary Islands who decided to undertake this project in the midst of a pandemic.
Their slogan is clear: ‘Your house, your currency’, and they intend to create a community of teleworkers who exchange their homes anywhere in the world to save money, expand their business markets, see the world and maintain their level of work.