Smart cities are a "good bet" for the future of the hotel industry and are capable of enriching consumers' travel experiences, a Spanish tourism expert says.
"Given the fact that we are invaded by technology, it would be a serious strategic error not to continue the trend toward upgrading smart cities," Augusto Huescar, a speaker at the 60th Congress of the Hotel and Tourism Association of Colombia, told EFE.
Huescar, former head of the World Tourism Organisation's Market Intelligence and Promotion Section, said the chief barrier to this kind of development lies in the difficulties of providing wireless internet access in every corner of the world.
During his presentation, Huescar revealed a number of technological and social media strategies the tourism sector should to adopt to integrate itself as a way of grabbing travellers' attention and boosting sales.
Among them he noted the use of apps that allow the use of virtual reality goggles like Google's, reserving free places in car parks, saving energy on street LED lighting and the monitoring of potentially unsafe areas.
The cities leading in these technological developments are Barcelona, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and London," Heuscar said, adding that Colombian cities currently lack "the training, the raising of awareness and the funding" needed to reach that level.
Spanish cities he identified as smart besides Barcelona were Madrid, A Coruna, Malaga, Zaragoza, Vigo and Bilbao.
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