This topic examined digital innovation as a structural driver of change in European tourism, focusing on how travel tech companies, platforms, and digital ecosystems shape value creation, market access, and competitiveness. Drawing on the monthly article “More Than Start-ups: Why Travel Tech Became Strategic for European Tourism”, the webinar “Innovate, Scale, Compete: Europe’s Travel Tech Momentum”, along with the online discussion “How Travel Tech Became Tourism’s Backbone – What’s Next for Europe?”, in March 2026,  the objective was to explore the evolution of travel technology from early booking tools to market‑making platforms, highlight the growing role of AI and scale‑ups, and understand how skills awareness, policy frameworks, and ecosystem support influence SMEs’ ability to engage with digitalization and compete in international markets.

Key themes included: 

• Skills awareness as the link between digital innovation and workforce readiness
• The growing skills implication of travel tech
• SME’s difficulty in translating strategic trends into concrete skills needs 
• Awareness-raising as a shared responsibility across policy, education and industry. 

The initiatives showcased illustrate how destinations and SMEs are applying travel tech and digital solutions to improve connectivity, interoperability, and market access including: 

• Turistec Cluster International: cluster which strengthens the ecosystem by acting as a collaborative bridge between technological supply and real-world demands of destinations. 
• Role as a B2B intermediary, Amadeus: enabling multimodal travel through digital innovation. Emphasis placed in its capacity to connect rail, air, bus, and tourist services across markets. 
• GetYourGuide: online marketplace for tour guides and travel-related activities that helped turn “things to do” into a globally tradable category. 
• BlaBlaCar: a community-based travel app enabling shared travel, combining carpooling with bus journeys for affordable and sustainable travel. 
• Omio: a multimodal platform connecting transport providers across Europe, revealing what enables travel companies to scale, involving also multimodal travel across borders by aggregating transport options into one decision interface
• Etheria Platform, TRAVEL2FIT: a best practice of how a niche enquiry management platform for hotels evolved into data-driven intelligence and R&I collaboration
• Startup Europe Initiative, European Commission: strengthens networking opportunities for deep tech scaleups and ecosystem builders to accelerate the growth of the European startup scene. 

Stakeholder stories highlight ongoing efforts to apply travel tech and digital solutions to improve connectivity, interoperability and market access. Key conclusions and emerging trends include: 

• Travel tech has become the backbone of modern tourism, shaping how destinations are discovered, services are bundled, and value is created across the tourism ecosystem, from inspiration to booking and delivery.
• Digital platforms and intermediaries increasingly define access to markets, with visibility, interoperability, and data connectivity now critical determinants of competitiveness, especially for SMEs and destinations.
• AI, data-driven tools, and automation are redefining tourism operations, supporting smarter demand management, personalised services, dynamic pricing, and more efficient use of infrastructure, while also raising new questions around trust, transparency, and governance.
• SMEs face a growing digital gap, not due to lack of solutions, but due to limited awareness, capacity, and time to identify, adopt, and integrate relevant travel tech tools into daily operations.
• Policy frameworks and EU initiatives play a pivotal role in shaping the digital travel ecosystem, ensuring fair access to platforms, supporting innovation-friendly regulation, and translating strategies such as the Transition Pathway for Tourism into tangible market outcomes.