Technologies presented by Eric Basha at Enter 2008

The following three videos were presented by Eric Basha, head of Tourism at Microsft, at the Enter 2008 Conference in Innsbruck. Although many of these videos have been out for a while, I wanted to address each one and discuss them in the context of travel & tourism. The first technology that Eric presented is the Windows Mobile Tellme application. The most obvious travel & tourism use of this technology is for the booking of destination products that are signed up for the service. For example, making a restaurant reservation or booking tickets for a local attraction. The example presented... Read more »

Eric Basha Keynote Presentation at ENTER 2008, Innsbruck

The following seven videos are 8-10 minute segments of the keynote presentation by Eric Basha at the Enter 2008 Conference in Innsbruck, Austria. The presentation was excellent and provides some extremely valuable insight into the technological opportunities and challenges facing the industry. The thing that I found most relevant to small travel suppliers was Eric’s statement that we, as an industry, must engage and encourage SME travel suppliers to adopt on-line technologies and embrace single inventory source systems. The challenge is converting a group of companies (and individuals)... Read more »

UNWTO & Microsoft to Keynote at Enter 2008 in Innsbruck

2008 looks like it is going to be a very exciting year for travel & tourism technology. I’m really happy to be able to go to Innsbruck this month to represent the fledgling North American Chapter of IFITT. Jens Thraenhart from TourismInternetMarketing.com, who is also on the Board of Directors of IFITT North America will be coming to Innsbruck as well. The theme of this year’s conference is “eTourism:The View from the Future”. The keynote speakers are Geoffrey Lipman from the UNWTO and Eric Basha, Industry Managing Director with Microsoft. I had the opportunity... Read more »

Academic Research Supports Industry Trends

As an IFITT member, I’ve had an opportunity to review the materials presented at the Enter 2007 Conference, which took place in Ljubljana. Much of the focus of IFITT is on the research and academic side and I must admit, the quality of the presentations is very impressive. The presentations, which are produced by academics from around the World, reflect research into a wide variety of tourism related areas. One paper I found particularly interesting and relevant to the upcoming Canada-e-connect conference is titled “Assessing eBusiness Models of U.S. Destination Marketing Organizations”.... Read more »

Bringing IFITT to Canada

This year has been a real revelation of sorts for me. I’ve seen a real turnaround in how technology in travel and tourism is recognized both locally and Internationally. For many years Europe has been at the forefront of embracing new technologies that promote travel and tourism and recognizing and supporting the travel technology industry. This year, for example, is the first Canada-e-connect conference which will be focusing on online marketing and use of new technologies to promote tourism from a strategic point of view. As a technologist, I have worked with many traditional travel... Read more »