Transport for tourists and travellers: Improving the user experience | Division for Inclusive Social Development (DISD)

On 27 May, a panel was held at the IFT Summit session called "transport for tourists and travelers- improving the user experience." This panel focused on discussing the development of transport for people with disabilities; transport for handicapped travelers should be a necessity and not an additional cost. This focus on transportation would be a smart investment for community development.

The city of Helsinki is currently dealing with tackling these issues of transportation. Since the number of visitors is increasing, the city needs to be more user friendly and improve the all around experience of it. To meet the growing needs of the city, Helsinki is making investments in public transportation systems and installing a rail based network. The city has designed a concept known as "Mobility as a Service" or MaaS; the concept of MaaS is to create a platform for various companies that offer transportation services.

The discussion also focused on traveling for older generations because the number of older healthy people is growing. The age of the average traveler is getting older and because of this transportation needs to be adjust accordingly. The three pillars of active ageing that were discussed are health, participation, and security which are the elements that travel should be built on for older generations. Many industries view older people as a hindrance, but this is not the case anymore. Older generations have a strong capacity for decision making and traveling, and should be treated as such.

Understanding population movement is crucial to understand the development of transportation. Over half of the world lives in urban centers and this number is continually increasing. To understand the transportation and tourism needs of these cities, governments are tapping into Big Data and the Internet of Things to create systems for cities that are able to address the individual, economic, and environmental challenges of urbanization.

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