He is renowned in the industry for having helped Portugal's National Tourism Organisation to apply innovation and adopt a data-driven approach.
Sergio starts out by talking about Tourism de Portugal's business units focusing on investors, consultants, academia, media, strategy, marketing, investment and regulation. He explains, that the approach of Turismo de Portugal is to invite these different industries to partner with the NTO for a better and stronger relationship.
Sergio starts out by talking about Tourism de Portugal's business units focusing on investors, consultants, academia, media, strategy, marketing, investment and regulation. He explains, that the approach of Turismo de Portugal is to invite these different industries to partner with the NTO for a better and stronger relationship.
Sergio Guerreiro is the Senior Director for Knowledge Management and Innovation at Turismo de Portugal. He is renowned in the industry for having helped Portugal's National Tourism Organisation to apply innovation and adopt a data-driven approach to succeeding in the digitalisation of the sector.
Sergio starts out by talking about Tourism de Portugal's business units focusing on investors, consultants, academia, media, strategy, marketing, investment and regulation. He explains, that the approach of Turismo de Portugal is to invite these different industries to partner with the NTO for a better and stronger relationship.
The journey for Turismo de Portugal has been quite intense and reminds a bit of starting off as a startup: they gradually learn about new opportunities and identify where they should invest and evolve to successfully grow.
Looking at crisis management, Turismo de Portugal extensively integrates data across different sectors and uses business intelligence dashboards to monitor what is happening. The whole world has become much more data proficient and as the national tourism organisation, they have to be the experts in this and lead the way for the whole industry.
Sergio talks about 'Tourism 4.0' in four pillars. He explains that facilitating innovation in the tourism sector is not easy. You need to provide specialised services to startups, advise them on financial investments, support them to compete in opportunities and help them to get access to national and international mentorships.
He also talks about the alignment of funding to support and invest in startups and the key role that NEST, the Tourism Innovation Center, plays in doing this. It has a mission to promote innovation in technology adoption in the tourism value chain. The aim has been to put together startups, mentors and investors all under one roof and work together for a more innovative and data-driven visitor economy.
NEST offers a unique centre of innovation focused on culture, gaps and insights, pilots, adoption and benchmarking. Bringing all of these things together in one place is going to be key to solving the challenges of tomorrow.
1. To facilitate innovation in the tourism sector you need to provide specialised services to startups, advise on financial investments, participate in marketing campaigns and trade marketing initiatives, involve national and international mentors.
2. To stimulate the entrepreneurial ecosystem you can promote the coordination of the entrepreneurial ecosystem management, partner up with accelerators and incubators through programmes and events.
3. To stimulate an entrepreneurial culture you can develop entrepreneurship programmes in hotel schools and promote sharing of Universities best practices in creating entrepreneurship initiatives in tourism.
4. To promote access to fundings you can develop specific financial instruments dedicated to entrepreneurship and mobilise national and international investors.
Sergio has more than 20 years of experience in the field of tourism, working as a policy analyst and Director at Turismo de Portugal.
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