Tourism is a uniquely complex industry for so many reasons, not least of which being the incredibly broad, almost all-encompassing range of stakeholders and players that make it up. Tourism is a melting pot of the interests of public and private sectors, politics and profit, voters and visitors, society and sustainability. And technology is defining the present and deciding the future of each stakeholder in different ways at a different rates.

In this session, Chris Pomeroy, a seasoned tourism marketing expert who has worked for over 50 public sector destination marketing organisations (DMOs) as well as many private sector travel brands during his 30-year career, will focus on how technology is changing and will continue to change the way the public sector works in its support for the private sector.  He will first look briefly but candidly at how and why many DMOs have seen their contribution to the tourism value chain questioned over recent years as technology has moved the dial from offline towards online and from b2b towards b2c. He will then review some of the new challenges and opportunities faced by destinations, policy makers and DMOs in the current context of post pandemic tourism recovery. Finally, Chris will introduce Tourism Exchange, an innovative technological platform that he believes will define the DMOs of the future and digitally enable them to assume the leadership expected of them by the private sector and most particularly by the small and medium-sized enterprises that make up the vast majority of the global tourism industry and are key to the digital transformation needed in the immediate future.