Introduction
Vacation packages proposed by large travel agents and tour operators usually include flights, accommodation, and rent-a-car or bus tour services. On the other hand, many micro and small tourism operators offering sustainable tourism experiences only explore B2C channels. Resetting’s Sustainable B2B Marketplace aims to promote the approach between the large operators and the sustainable SMEs, to build innovative packages where the formers incorporate sustainable experiences offered by the latter. This platform increases the competitiveness and provides access to new business opportunities and new markets, especially for micro and small tourism operators offering sustainable tourism experiences, by taking advantage of opportunities provided by digital markets. The marketplace is composed by a best-of-breed Content Management System that presents each of the sustainable tourism SME offers, complemented by a multi-disciplinary analysis by experts in sustainable tourism that is represented in a dashboard of indicators that help business customers differentiate each offer by their environmental sustainability.
Primary Goals
The primary goals of the Resetting Sustainable B2B Marketplace are to promote the offerings of sustainable tourism SME, providing a vehicle for the large tourism operators to get more information about the experiences provided, hoping that they will access and incorporate these STEPs (Sustainable Tourism Experiences or Products) in their tours and large tourism bundles. This shall encourage the financing of STEPs by tourism enterprises and its inclusion into their business model. It also aims to give visibility to STEPs at a local level, promoting and facilitating their integration into broader offers resulting from cooperation between the various actors in the tourism industry, including global tour operators and agents with an impact on international markets, and raise awareness among tourism operators and foreign tourists about the importance of sustainable tourism.
Key Features
The key features of the Resetting Sustainable B2B Marketplace are a web-based portal that shows the portfolio of each STEP provider, and where each showcase of a STEP is complemented by an analysis of the experience, which includes the analysis of three sustainability pillars, an environmental sustainability indicator, a social sustainability indicator and a destination quality indicator. These indicators are then aggregated into a single indicator that summarises the experience’s sustainability analysis, that can result in a quality labelling of the STEP.
Who can use and benefit from this tool?
The target audience that benefits from the Resetting Sustainable B2B Marketplace is, from one side, the large tourism operators such as travel agencies, hotel operators, on the other side the very SME businesses that provide sustainable experiences, that are able to compare their own offer with the ones presented in the marketplace and hence improve their experience. Not only they will all benefit from the marketplace but also be able to evolve their offerings from the knowledge from other similar businesses. The marketplace is also able to present the final customers’ experience feedback to allow all stakeholders to enhance their offer to meet their expectations.
How Can I use it?
The various stakeholders interested can use this tool by applying to the Resetting team using an application page in the portal itself. The project team shall then contact the application owner which can fulfil different roles such as the tourism operator (e.g., accommodation, tour operators, travel agencies and entertainment companies) which is interested in knowing more information about the experiences, or the STEP provider, which will want to expose its experience in the marketplace. After the contact, the team shall process the request of the STEP provider by analysing the business (which may include interviews and other activities) and inserting the experience in the marketplace.