José Luis Cordoba, Managing Director of Andalucia Lab, joined us during the theme of The Future of Urban Tourism.
José introduces us to the work they do with a vision to positively contribute to the Andalucian community.
The Andalucia Lab is a specialised department within the Andalucia Tourism Board, located in Marbella. They are focused on helping SMEs within the tourism industry in Andalucia.
José introduces us to the work they do with a vision to positively contribute to the Andalucian community.
The Andalucia Lab is a specialised department within the Andalucia Tourism Board, located in Marbella. They are focused on helping SMEs within the tourism industry in Andalucia.
José Luis Cordoba, Managing Director of Andalucia Lab, joined us during the theme of The Future of Urban Tourism to introduce us to the work they do with a vision to positively contribute to the Andalucian community.
The Andalucia Lab is a specialised department within the Andalucia Tourism Board, located in Marbella. They are focused on helping SMEs within the tourism industry in Andalucia.
José explained that their strategy consists of three phases:
Phase 1: Since 2007, they have worked on building a base of small travel companies. At the time their target was to provide workshops on the digital economy, optimisation, content marketing. They also provided consultations for solving SME issues. As a result, they engaged more than 5000 active companies and established permanent contact with the industry.
Phase 2: Since 2012, they tried to incorporate travel tech companies into the ecosystem. The Demo Lab is an example of when travel tech companies approached Andalucia Lab to reach travel companies. At the same time, travel companies did not easily understand digital solutions. In short, Demo Lab is a showroom and a programme of events to solve problems of approaching technology and the travel industry. In their Coworking Lab, they focused on attracting digital marketing professionals, developers and freelances to Andalucia Lab.
Phase 3: In 2018 they entered the 3rd phase through which they aim to achieve internationalisation. In 2019, tech travel European companies approached the Andalucia Lab to market their services in Andalucia. This allowed them to learn that the lack of talent is one of the biggest issues for scaling.
During the pandemic, they developed the Technological Talent Attraction programme for the Tourism Industry in Andalucía. The programme looked for programmers from all over the world who wanted to grow professionally and live in Andalucía with a fully funded 9-month programme. The programme taught the participants about some of the most important digital topics, such as big data.
Through the talk, Nick highlighted the importance of continuously updating the company’s approach to digitalisation to keep up with the advances to stay relevant and strong within the market.
1. Establishing comprehensive strategies that involve multiple stakeholders from tourism to tech companies allows identifying industry needs and involve talents from various backgrounds in tourism.
Business Administration at Universidad de Navarra and Advanced Management Program at IE, Managing Director at AndaluciaLab and Project Manager of ToT Lab, Lecturer at Malaga University, expert in tourism and oriented to help Destinations and SMEs to thrive in the digital & tech scenario since 2007.
After a MBA in international tourism at Montpellier Business School, he worked as a tourist guide, then as a travel agent at Via Voyages, then as a press office at Atout France in Italy, then as a consultant in marketing and tourism development at Setel France agency, then as the manager of the 2000/2010 Tourism Strategy at the Paris Region tourism board.
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