India is one of those countries where almost every tourism statistic becomes enormous very quickly. The population is enormous, the domestic tourism market is enormous and the potential for international travel is enormous. Yet perhaps the most interesting thing I took away from the ITB India Leadership Roundtable in Mumbai was that the numbers alone tell us surprisingly little about the opportunity. I had the opportunity to participate in the roundtable during ITB India 2026, discussing India’s changing position in global tourism from both sides of the equation. India is becoming an increasingly important outbound market for destinations around the world, while at the same time the country itself continues to work on converting its extraordinary tourism assets into stronger international inbound demand. These are two very different stories, but they are happening at the same time. A tourism giant that still has enormous room to grow The scale of domestic travel in India is difficu...

Artificial intelligence had its own place on the programme of the CityDNA Summer School in Dijon, particularly during Jonathan Easton’s session on the technology and AI revolution. What interested me more, however, was how often AI appeared elsewhere during the week. It came into discussions about bidding, corporate clients, destination discovery, sustainability, data, PCOs and the future role of convention bureaux. That probably says more about where we are with AI than any individual presentation could. AI is gradually becoming part of the normal operating environment of the business-events industry. We are moving beyond individual AI use Most destination organisations have already experimented with generative AI. Employees use it for writing, summarising documents, translating, researching, developing ideas and preparing presentations. These applications can save considerable time, although they rarely change the organisation itself. The more interesting development is what happen...

I spent this week in Dijon at the 40th City Destinations Alliance Summer School, surrounded by people working across convention bureaus, associations, PCOs, corporate meetings, sustainability, technology and destination development. The programme covered a lot of ground, from bidding and client expectations to inclusion, legacy, AI and the changing role of convention bureaux. Across these discussions, a fairly coherent picture of the business-events industry emerged. Convention bureaus are moving beyond selling destination product. Increasingly, our role is to understand what an organisation wants to achieve, determine whether our destination has something relevant to contribute, bring the right people together locally and demonstrate afterwards what the meeting actually achieved. The right meeting can be more valuable than the biggest meeting For years, much of the business-events discussion has been dominated by delegate numbers, hotel nights and economic impact. Those indicators...

​ Spent this afternoon with my team at Tiima, Oulu’s upcoming museum and science centre, and came away genuinely impressed. The Visio experience space is the part that will get most attention internationally, and rightly so. It is an 8K immersive environment built on ArsElectronica’s deep space technology — and apparently, until others catch up later this year, it will be the most advanced installation of its kind in the world. Interactive 3D, 7.1 sound, content running across both walls and floor, guided live by an infotrainer rather than played on loop. Standing in the middle of an aurora corona, looking down at your own feet on what feels like sea ice, is something I will not forget quickly. We also went to the moon and Mars! What got me thinking from a tourism perspective was a small remark during the visit. We have all had the conversation with international visitors who arrived in winter expecting northern lights and met cloud cover instead. A dedicated Visio production — combini...