This week I had the great pleasure of interviewing Mr Barry Rogers from Ireland. Barry is the Head of Dublin City Tourism Unit at the Dublin City Council Culture Company.

In this far ranging and Deep Dive chat, we explore all the aspects of being the winner of this year's European Capital for Smart Tourism. Dublin worked hard to get this title against really tough competition across the European Union and its associated member States (EMEA).

As Barry explains in detail, it takes a lot of Strategic Thinking, collaborative preparation across 4 different city councils, their associated units, departments and tourism orgs, as well as close knit relationships with Dubliner businesses in the tourism and leisure industry. Above all, they are all about a concerted, "joined up dots" approach and collective effort to attract you, the visitor, to Dublin.

Be impressed at how the formidably high-tech Irish capital is seizing the power of AI innovations to make their wondrous city more sustainable, more accessible, greener with New Tech and legacy ways of travelling, absorbing its cultural heritage and doing business creatively and memorably.

My personal takeaway from our enriching discussion about how Dublin stood out from its rivals is that to satisfy the Smart Green Tourist, you need to have a citywide framework and interconnected programmes in place. It is not just up to the individual traveller to figure out which hotel or tourist operator has the greenest offerings or lowest carbon footprint. Local government, non-profits and business need to pull together to "make things happen".

Sit back and watch - for the first time we have video on my podcast "AI Innovations Solving the Climate Crisis". Or listen to Barry Rogers explain his and his colleagues' vision of Smart Tourism for Dublin. What they have already cleverly implemented and what is yet to come. Above all, start planning your next trip to Ireland, I know I am!

As an AI technologist, I professionally recommend the Dublin Tech Summit at the end of May 2025. Might see you there and if so, let's go for an afternoon pint, a few songs and a lot of dancing as I did on my last tour of Dublin (of course I did a guided literary history walk and visited all the museums as well...).