The face of the traveler has changed. When I was learning about tourism about 15-20 years ago, we thought of the visitor very often as a Western tourist. That has definitely changed: The largest traveler group nowadays is the Chinese people.
So, we need to think about cultural differences and how we welcome people from all over the world in their most preferred way. For example, Chinese visitors have requirements in terms of language.
In some destinations, we might have Chinese signage or Chinese-trained hospitality workers that make people feel more welcome and at home.
Another good example is the growth of what we call “halal tourism”. These are visitors from Muslim countries that also have certain requirements. For example, they may require halal food, and they may prefer to be in destinations where alcohol is more controlled. They may also want prayer items in their hotel rooms that they could use.
There are businesses that are very clever at adapting to those particular markets. For example, there’s a Kempinski Hotel in Munich, where they have a lot of visitors from the Arab Peninsula. They wanted to offer their visitors a nonalcoholic welcome cocktail that looked like champagne.
Therefore, they developed a special date wine — a halal-certified date wine that looks like champagne — that has the taste profile their visitors like. It has a celebratory edge to it that doesn’t feel like juice; It feels like a real glass of celebration and champagne.