After the official opening and warm welcome of all participants, guests, and speakers, as well our partners, the conference moved to the main conference activities. Part of every KreNI is KreNI Talks and Workshops, organized on the respective topics.
Through KreNI Talks, we want to hear as many interesting experiences from our speakers and on the workshops, we are developing a more deep understanding of this year’s topic, Smart Tourism. That being said, our 2 workshops were Branding and Communication, which will help the city promote itself as a desirable destination, and Smart City Transformation sharing the best practices of how to make the city become smart.
10 speakers, 15 minutes format, 2 days, and priceless information has been shared with conference participants on KreNI Talks #1 & #2.
Paolo Verri from Italy, Director of the Matera-Basilicata 2019 Foundation, has shared that comparing Nis & Venice, there are similar size cities, so therefore Nis could explore more opportunities as Venice.
It's important that the city is cool, not just beautiful. Every city has beauty but not every city is cool and interesting, Paolo said.
Maria Mansson from Sweden, professor of Strategic Communication, Lund University shared her knowledge about smart tourism from a destination marketing perspective
sharing a lot of platforms ideas and opportunities, as well valuable examples.
Itshe Petz and Io Tondolo, an interesting duo from Austria, founders of SelfSightSeeing Company shared great examples of the concept, marketing, and construction in developing and redesigning the city places
Roberto Antunes, from Tourism Innovation Center in Portugal, as well Thomas Silvie from France, owner of the Back of the house shared their organization's best practices, experiences, and good-to-know examples.
The second part of the conference was dedicated to two workshops: Smart city transformation and Brand & Communication, where our mentors started intensive and interesting preparation for our participants to develop great ideas.
When you have emotions, it sticks in your memories, said Thomas Silvie, who held a 2-day workshop on Branding & Communication and tried to express the importance of emotion-driven decision-making when it comes to touristic destinations.
Itshe Petz and Io Tondolo, artists, and performers from Vienna, thrilled the audience on 2 days of workshops, sharing the inspirative practices and events they organized in Austria. Presentations were mostly of practical examples and our participants could gather knowledge on how it can be funny, educative, and futuristic when organizing public performances.
Roberto Antunes, Executive Director of NEST – Tourism Innovation Center Portugal was working for 2 days with the team sharing the best practices from sunny Portugal.
Urska Starc Peceny, CEO and Lead of Tourism 4.0 Department, from Slovenia talked about how we need smart access and tools to help us in strategic planning for better tourism. She joined for both KreNI Talks and the Smart City Innovation workshop, sharing various ideas with the team.
Fredrik Nilsson, the CTO of Visit Dalarna, a destination development company located in central Sweden joined for 2 days by video link. The key segments of his workshop were digitization and transformation, which helped our participants get a better understanding of how smart tourism is functioning in Sweden.
Vladimir Trkulja, Founder of Sanatec7, showed the participants how the monuments can be digitalized and how the new technology can bring value to the historic monuments.
Marina Mansson organized an interesting workshop on Branding & Communication, where teams were working on mapping Nis as a tourist destination and analyzing the city’s marketing activities.
Participants had a chance to listen and join 2 online events: Smart City Presentations, and Panel Discussion Future of Tourism.
We talked about smart innovative city solutions for a sustainable world and what could we learn from Sweden, Slovenia, and Austria on our Smart City Presentations.
Urska, who is leading this department focused on spreading the technologies from Industry 4.0 into tourism to create a future, in which we all want to live in. She is also leading the NASA Space Apps Challenge in Austria.
Ljubica Knezevic-Cvelbar, professor at the School of Business and Economics, University of Ljubljana spoke about tourism in Europe and statistics that show us downs of tourism and then its rebounding on 2021.
Tourism is something that's always growing, and during the pandemic, we should ask ourselves how can we handle over-tourism and over-crowding, Ljubica said.
Ann-Louise Larsson joined us from Sweden on the video link, sharing her knowledge as Communication Manager at Dalarna Science Park in Sweden, project leader on the topic of smart innovative city solutions from Sweden.
What is the future of tourism and where do we see the touristic sector in a couple of years was an interesting discussion in which participated Milica Raskovic, Head of Program Development at Novi Sad 2022, Serbia, Annalisa Contini, Social economy expert at COSV and CO-Profit Benefit company, Italy Igor Kovacevic, Pavilion Director, the Republic of Serbia Pavilion at EXPO 2020 Dubai, UAE, and Assistant professor, Faculty of Economics, Belgrade. The Moderator of the panel was Nenad Rokvic, President of the Association of Tourist Guides Nis, Serbia, and the whole event is available on our Facebook page.