Tourism innovation in action: Latin America and the Caribbean

By Maura Monaghan

2022 saw 1.5 billion more travelers around the world – encouraging proof of post-pandemic recovery, and a sure sign that now is a great time for the tourism sector to keep mapping its way forward.

?At the FITUR International Tourism Fair last week in Madrid, officials from countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean convened to reflect on their common desire to innovate and drive digital solutions to build a more sustainable, inclusive and resilient tourism sector – and on what the Mastercard Tourism Innovation Hub is helping them to achieve, both now and in the future.

“Travel is a key part of people’s lives,” said Monica Biagiotti , Mastercard’s executive vice president of consumer marketing and sponsorships. “It’s a way of discovering, of expanding horizons, of reconnecting with friends and family, and connecting more and more with local communities.”

Just as the pandemic changed our relationships with other areas of our lives – be it work, shopping, or time spent with family – it’s no surprise that the upheaval has also encouraged many people to take a different approach to the way they travel. The present moment is an opportunity for companies in the tourism industry to join travelers in that reassessment, particularly by thinking about the ripple effects that tourism can have within their communities.

One nation leading this charge is Chile. Verónica Kunze Neubauer , the country’s undersecretary of tourism, spoke about how locals are at the heart of Chile’s tourism strategy:

“We have to recognize that tourism is in the regions and local communities. It’s not at my desk in Santiago… we cannot think about tourism without thinking of the people in those destinations. Since they are the ones receiving us as tourists, they must in some way receive the benefits that tourism yields.”

This sentiment was echoed by others throughout the fair. Fernando Fondevila Leyton , CEO of Promtur Panama, said that Panama’s destination marketing organization was actually formed amid the adversity of 2020, with the goal of extending the social and economic benefits of tourism to other regions of the country beyond the capital. He later called his company’s partnership with Mastercard “crucial for us to continue to be at the leading edge” of tourism in the Americas.

Jamaican Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett noted that local businesses were hit hard by the pause on tourism in 2020. “Tourism before COVID employed some 10.5% of the global workforce,” he said, “70% of whom were women and 80% of whom were young people.”

Bartlett went on to emphasize the importance of young people, a group he described as having “the energy [necessary] for new ideas.” Young people have been one of the driving forces behind Jamaica’s Tourism Innovation Incubator, which encourages the kind of blue sky thinking that often leads to breakthroughs. “We say, ‘Yes, your ideas are your collateral, and we will invest in your ideas.’”

Natalia Bayona , director of innovation, education and investments at the UNWTO, described a similar shift toward innovation in her organization. As recently as five years ago, she said, innovation was not at the forefront of the UNWTO’s strategy. More recently, however, the group has aimed to work with governments, startups, entrepreneurs and “everyone who can help us make innovation rise.” This includes Mastercard, as Bayona recalled:

“Five years ago, the first corporate that I met when I was appointed Director of Innovation was Mastercard. And at that time, they told me about their objective to create a Tourism Innovation Hub… and I told [Mastercard] I wanted to figure out how to bring added value to the youth, to the sector and to the government.”

The importance of such public-private partnerships was a common theme of the week, with Kunze of Chile reflecting that “when [these partnerships] work well, you can really make a difference.” The Chilean government’s collaboration with Mastercard allowed the country to offer unique Priceless experiences – including a safari-esque trip to discover pumas in their natural habitat – that encourage people to go online “and start dreaming of what they can do in each destination.”

Specific destinations and attractions differ between countries, but everyone we heard from at FITUR shared a common desire to champion inclusion and innovation as key ingredients in the future of sustainable tourism.

The Tourism Innovation Hub has a special role to play in shaping that future – as Darren Ware , Mastercard’s Senior vice president of Government Engagement for Latin America and the Caribbean, put it: “The Hub helps governments and regions to take ideas around tourism, data and Priceless experiences and make them concrete solutions that service the world.”?