Interview with Juan Maqueda

What do you think are the main items that should be taken into consideration to position a tourist destination at this time?

  • BE GLOBAL, because our market objective must be global and we must focus on the visitor outside our area of proximity, because firstly it will lead us to seek a wider and more demanding public; and secondly it will strengthen us as a destination because it will force us to compete internationally with other similar destinations.

  • BE STRATEGIC and connect all the offer we provide, we can not take the agenda independently because everything is connected and feeds back and enhances us, and at this point we talk about culture, entertainment, education, sporting events, gastronomy and an agenda of international events. We must have as detailed a picture as possible of the year, in order to be able to draw up a total master plan.

  • IDENTIFY STRENGTHS to position what makes us unique, taking into account current and future capabilities. This will allow us to use these strengths as starting points to build, create and produce a storytelling, the story that the audience wants to see before making their next travel decision.

  • BRAND-IDENTITY We are in a visual world, we must have a strong brand, taking into account its visual and aesthetic aspects, such as its design, and the morphology of all the elements with which we communicate with the public and the market. The language, colours, image styles will be part of the construction of the brand.

  • PURPOSE We must have a purpose, beyond an economic purpose, we must know what our contribution is going to be, both to our collaborators and to society. The contribution must be social, human, environmental, heritage and history, which we are generating. People look for and identify with these messages.

  • COMMUNICATE We must be able to communicate quickly and creatively on all channels (Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Twitter) because if we do not do so, we will not reach, firstly, the target audience and secondly, we will not be able to transform that audience into visitors.

What trends can you foresee with respect to the "normality" of the tourism industry?

The public is increasingly diversifying its motivations for travel, seeking to explore more culture, gastronomy, lifestyles and new experiences. There is a content revolution on the part of visitors that we as an industry must drive, recognise and amplify.

Presentacion Queretaro_Juan Maqueda_LatamOne Abr2022.pdf

How has digitalisation and the use of technology helped the tourism industry?

It democratised and expanded the market, brought opportunities and allowed us to improve services, and expand the offer and commercial channels from. New challenges in communication and services, which involve talking to 4 generations with very different behaviours and habits.

The language, forces us to speak in several languages, and the faster we react to this the more prepared we will be to receive visitors from other markets, and also to think in audiences and not in clients, because that is where the great digital conversion funnel is born, where we identify the opportunities and the potential market, there are our potential clients, the bigger and more diverse the more results it will give us, this is one of the current keys.

Do you think that tourism authorities in general are acting differently after the pandemic or is everything pretty much the same?

I sincerely believe that the market tends to normalise and in the medium term the activity will have stabilised at 2019 levels, if it is important to be aware of the good practices that are being carried out and I mention the case of LA FLORIDA, where they managed totally differently to the majority of the USA, with more freedom of activity and the results were very positive for the whole industry.

What do you think will be the global trend in tourism behaviour?

The new modality of home office or telework brought many opportunities, and nowadays many people travel all year round working under this modality and even more so when we are close to large urban centres, people are looking to go out to more open spaces, away from the large urban agglomerations.

We have the great challenge of selling to 4 different generations, who are informed, behave and buy in a very different way and digital tools such as Live Shopping, as a tool for selling tourism services, a modality that was born in Asia more than 10 years ago and arrived in America with force last year; where LatamOne we have already started to work with tourism agencies to offer destinations; and Whatsapp and the revolution of its applications to communicate, sell and promote services and to improve the user's experience with the destination.

The authors are responsible for the choice and presentation of the facts contained in this document and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of Tourism and Society Think Tank and do not commit the Organization, and should not be attributed to TSTT or its members.

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