Tourism sector will grow with Digital Transformation

HOMS Global A.Ş General Manager Gökhan Uçarkaya, who spoke at the panel called 'Burada Turizm Çok', which brought together the tourism sector, made a presentation titled “Digital Transformation in Tourism”.

Gökhan Uçarkaya emphasized that developing technology is now leading people to mobility and that digitalization is also important in the tourism sector.

Uçarkaya said, “As the Gonca group, we have been in the IT hotel and tourism sector for about 25 years.

We have experienced many different things in 25 years, innovations have come. 'Getir' appeared, channels such as booking.com and book engine appeared. It's been quick to get to where we are today. But it was also difficult to adapt. Every industry needs different technologies. The pandemic actually taught us something, now mobility has gained importance. For example, it is possible to order easily in restaurants with QR codes.

In the light of our experience, we have determined that there are basic things required for the technology to be established in Turkish tourism. It is possible to summarize these elements as loyalty, operations and income. We have seen that things do not work without loyalty, without proper management of the operation and without income. We have to integrate it into technology. The tourism industry is a 24-hour live business.

Think of hotels as a town with 3,000 customers and 1,000 employees. We invested in mobile to keep them together and operate the process. We moved this business out of the Gonca group and established a structure called HOMS Global (Hotel, Hospitality Management Solutions). We have determined our aim as making the product a brand in all destinations in the world and carrying this mobility abroad with Turkish initiative and intelligence.”

WE EXPORT TECHNOLOGY

Noting that as HOMS Global, they have become an R&D and P&D company by including the tourism sector components, Gökhan Uçarkaya gave the following information: “We have developed a cooperation with a Technopark and combined with those who receive training on tourism, we have become an R&D and P&D company. We have made it a new business model on exporting technology to the world. We wanted to create a technological pool and platform that would unite tourism professionals, academics and students who may be in the service sector. We developed new products by bringing together the spin off projects in Tourism Tech, which was made by Bilim University in Antalya. As you know, investment in tourism requires large sums of money. If tourism managers and academics can internalize the rapid cycle on the technology side, bringing beautiful and profitable models to life will be a big step for the sector.”