September 7, 2023: Five tourism project leaders unveiled their digital initiatives to key stakeholders of the canton, including the Service de la promotion de l'économie et de l'innovation (SPEI), Vaud Promotion, and the EHL Hospitality Business School.
Presented at the EHL Lausanne Campus a few weeks ago, five projects promise to reshape the landscape of the Vaud travel sector. These initiatives were selected from a pool of 13 applicants six months ago to accelerate the digital transformation of tourism in the region, and they have received guidance from our EHL team, with the support from the Service de la promotion de l'économie et de l'innovation (SPEI) and Vaud Promotion.
Over the past half-year, we closely monitored and assisted these project leaders in shaping their concepts. Let's delve into the five projects:
- Smart Region - Nyon Pilot Project: Nyon Région Tourisme (NRT) partnered with BLENT to harness real-time tourism data to gain deeper insights into customer behavior and tourist flows within the region. This initiative aims to transform the Nyon area into a Smart Tourism Region, bolstering the local industry, fostering tourism development, sharing best practices, and promoting socio-economic growth. Over the past 6 months, Nyon destination organization and BLENT have worked together to develop a regional platform for displaying anonymized data from hotels, hostels, campsites and other accommodation, as well as data generated by the transport card - recently launched in June 2023 - and data from tourist offices. EHL Hospitality Business School played a specialist role in advising BLENT and Nyon, resulting in a successful project set to launch in autumn 2023.
- For a new immersion in Lavaux (Association Lavaux Patrimoine mondial): To ensure the preservation of the Lavaux UNESCO World Heritage Site, the association in charge of managing the site is carrying out a project to support local wine makers. The aim of the project is to encourage visitors to buy more wine from Lavaux winemakers, while monitoring on-site visitors and raising their awareness about the heritage preservation. Counting systems and informative signage will be installed along a designated route, providing visitors access to educational and promotional content, linked to the www.vaudvins.ch shopping platform. The Lavaux World Heritage Association benefited from Mayko's consultancy services to carry out a feasibility study for this project. In parallel, EHL Hospitality Business School also contributed to this study by carrying out an analysis of the digital environment of the Lavaux region, more specifically online searches and the digital lexical field associated with Lavaux, with the aim of reinforcing the need to deploy this project.
- An innovative digital marketing strategy (Heima): To streamline their resource-intensive sales strategy, Heima has developed a structured digital marketing strategy based on the Tabula21 methodology. This strategy involves redefining their target audience and crafting a detailed action plan, equipping Heima with the tools to create tailored content for their specific audience.
- A tool to analyze event performance (Simoïs): Simoïs has set out to create an online platform (Helvent) for analyzing event performance. This tool will cater to a diverse range of stakeholders with varying needs, providing a comprehensive analysis of event impact. Collaborating with EHL, Simoïs developed a business model, assessed competitors, and determined technical feasibility, resulting in a project ready for submission to public and private funding sources to bring Helvent to life.
- An interactive and immersive 360° streaming service (Mayko): Mayko aims to bolster Switzerland's digital tourism by launching a streaming platform reminiscent of a Netflix catalog. [Visi°n] will offer immersive 360° videos and reservation-based immersive experiences, serving as both a communication tool and a source of economic benefits for partners. Mayko worked alongside EHL Hospitality Business School to design a business model and conduct a feasibility study to initiate this project's first phase.
These projects mark a significant stride toward a digitally transformed future for tourism in Canton Vaud, showcasing the power of innovation and collaboration.
Heads up! We are launching the same call for projects in October again, so we are waiting now for YOUR projects.