Bright Ideas in Travel 2023

KINO Italy | 👨‍👨‍👧‍

The idea: KINO Italy creates coworking experiences that lure remote workers from crowded digital nomad hot spots and welcome them into fading towns in Italy, where they can positively impact local communities.
Why it matters: For small towns and villages with declining populations, taking advantage of the work-from-anywhere revolution presents opportunities to revitalize their ailing economies.
How it works: As the pandemic thrust remote work into the mainstream, Serena Chironna and Andrea Mammoliti saw an opportunity to shift the narrative in their home country by partnering with local communities to create monthlong coworking retreats in lesser-known locales. The pair, who themselves had spent time in popular remote work destinations like Portugal, could see firsthand that any such arrangement needed to take a more participatory approach—one that included, and could benefit, locals. The walled Tuscan village of Pitigliano is one participating destination, where KINO works directly with the local municipality to arrange short-term accommodation for workers, who get access to a coworking space and social events with locals. The company, which hosted several pilot retreats in 2022, followed by its first retreats in 2023, has cumulatively welcomed nomads from more than 18 different countries on six different retreats, and they have plans to expand in 2024.

Expedia Group | 🚀

The idea: Expedia Group’s Open World Accelerator is designed to help start-ups in the tech industry fast-track their growth and make travel more accessible.
Why it matters: At the beginning of 2023, Expedia Group announced the first cohort of its Open World Accelerator program—an initiative designed to boost start-ups in the travel tech industry, in the hope that these companies would grow and serve as a model for other small businesses. The theme of the inaugural program was “accessibility and inclusion,” with selected start-ups, including Green Book Global, a review website for Black travelers, and Becoming RentABLE, a short-term rental platform that features 36 filters for different disabilities.
How it works: For roughly six months, the cohort received technology and business mentorship from industry experts, a nonequity grant, and access to Expedia Group’s online platform. The program ended in June with a “Demo Day” at Expedia Group’s HQ in Seattle, where start-up investors and Expedia Group personnel gathered to discuss partnerships with the first group of start-ups—and some pilot programs are already being tested to improve Expedia Group’s accessibility features. The company will unveil the theme for its subsequent programs in the near future.

Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada (ITAC) | 🌱 👨‍👨‍👧‍

The idea: Through its national guidelines and brand, the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada (ITAC) helps Canadian-wide businesses affirm their quality and authenticity.
Details: Around the world, national associations such as NZ Māori Tourism support and promote Indigenous tourism. There are also quality assurance marks, such as New Zealand Tourism’s Qualmark, that identify high-quality travel experiences, including those run by Indigenous people. In 2021, ITAC combined both concepts by launching The Original Original label to highlight the quality and authenticity of Indigenous-run companies in Canada; it’s awarded only to companies at least 51 percent Indigenous owned. Since then, the initiative has resonated worldwide. In Finland, researchers have invited ITAC to present to help inform their own criteria for a Sámi tourism label.
Why it matters: Appropriation of Indigenous culture by non-Indigenous tourism operators has long been a problem. Certification labels allow travelers to better identify Indigenous-owned tourism businesses.