The Brazilian Tourist Board announces the creation of the 1st Embratur Lab unit in Rio de Janeiro, an innovation development center for tourism. It aims to promote the competitiveness and environmental sustainability of services in this sector. The innovation lab was launched in partnership with Turistech Hub Brasil, a center with similar objectives based in São Paulo.
“The city of Rio de Janeiro was chosen to launch this project because it offers a wide variety of tourism-related services, ranging from hosting major urban events to ecotourism in our mountains and forests, from religious tourism to festive tourism. This will be our first large laboratory to test innovations used in tourist destinations throughout Brazil”, underlined the president of Embratur, Marcelo Freixo.
According to Marcelo Freixo, after the laboratory in Rio, new centers will be set up in other cities of the country in partnership with the private sector.
Roberto Gevaerd, Director of Management and Innovation of the Brazilian Tourism Board will be in charge of Embratur Lab: “Our goal is to use technology to improve the experience of international tourists in Brazil. Embratur will invite and will support start-ups to use Rio de Janeiro as a space to experiment with new solutions and technologies. We want to transform Rio into a great technological laboratory for tourism”, he said.
The new center aims, among other things, to organize ‘Big Data’ so that companies in the tourism sector can identify trends and consumer behavior and personalize their offers according to public demand. Developing green technology solutions will be a priority to help reduce the carbon footprint of tourism, including the use of renewable energy, the implementation of sustainable practices in hotels, and the promotion of responsible tourism practices.