Travel
FITUR 2020 bets on sustainable tourism and technology
The fair celebrates its 40th anniversary
South Korea is the partner tis edition of FITUR (Source: Ifema)
Queen Letizia inaugurated the 40th Edition
(Source: Ifema)
(Source: Ifema)
Her visit began with the pavilion of tourism companies. Then she went to the autonomous communities and tourism agencies, and concluded in the Asia-Pacific pavilion, where the exhibitor of this year's partner country is located: South Korea. There, the Queen and the accompanying entourage greeted the Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism of the Asian country, Park Yang-woo. As for the pavilions with foreign countries, whose presence already accounts for 56% of the total quota of FITUR, the Queen of Spain also visited those of Africa and America, where she greeted the Secretary of Tourism of Mexico.
This year, 165 countries and regions participate in the International Tourism Fair. The fair expects to exceed 263,000 visitors from the previous edition. To do this, it brings together more than 10,000 companies and 142,000 professionals. More than 8,000 journalists from around the world are accredited to report on the fair.
Sustainable tourism and technology
The VIII edition of Fitur Know-How & Export, held until Friday, January 24, is committed to sustainable tourism and technology, according to the Secretary of State for Tourism, Isabel Oliver. During the opening of this forum, Oliver explained that Fitur Know-How & Export has become an essential event in Fitur, where to know the latest services and technological products available for tourism. But this year it has taken a step further, trying to give visibility to the technology that contributes to the development of a sustainable tourism model.
Fitur Know-How & Export, which is an initiative promoted by SEGITTUR and Fitur in collaboration with ICEX Spain Export and Investment, has an exhibition space of 1,600 square meters, in which about 40 exhibiting companies participate. With this initiative they want to support the internationalization of Spanish tourism companies, which have the opportunity to show their potential and publicize their services and innovative products to other international markets.
The CEO of ICEX, María Pena Mateos, explained that in this edition and thanks to the collaboration of ICEX, Fitur Know-How & Export receives the visit of international buyers interested in knowing the technological solutions developed by Spanish companies for their possible internationalization: two hotel chains in Puerto Rico, four tourism technology companies in Morocco and two companies in South Korea.
ICEX has also invited a representative of the World Bank to the seminar 'Tourism and Development: New Opportunities in the tourism sector at the hands of the World Bank', in which opportunities have been presented in countries such as Indonesia, Honduras, Gambia or Ghana. This representative has an agenda of B2B interviews with companies with experience in climate change, gender perspective, adventure tourism and big data.
Technology at the service of tourism occupies a very prominent space in this edition, in which the commitment to sustainable tourism becomes evident with the session of 'Tourism and SDG. A safe bet of Spanish companies for the transformation of the tourism sector,' which will be held this Friday in this space. During it, several of the main Spanish tourism companies will present how they are working to meet the Sustainable Development Goals.
Once again, Smart Tourist Destinations are present at Fitur Know-How & Export, where destinations are explained how to work to become a smart destination and how to comply with the UNE standard of smart destination, while at the same time know good practices in innovation, sustainability or technology carried out by destinations of the Smart Tourist Destinations Network.
Use of 5G in the tourism sector
One of the novelties of this edition is the presentation of 5G use cases in the tourism sector, the result of the European project EVE-5G, in which SEGITTUR, Ericsson Spain, Yerba Buena VR, Telefónica, 5TONIC and UC3M collaborate. In this sense, there was a demonstration of virtual reality applied to the tourism sector based on 5G, which offers immersive experiences of 360º video of high quality, which allow to develop an experiential tourism in the digital world.
These experiences show the possibilities of 5G through virtual reality to facilitate virtual assistance to live immersive events or access to a catalog of immersive experiences such as 'travel' virtually to unknown destinations, which could boost the tourism offer to certain places and / or events that many times due to ignorance are not demanded.
40th anniversary
FITUR, International Tourism Fair organized by IFEMA, is celebrating its 40th anniversary in this edition; four decades that have witnessed the development of the Spanish tourism industry, one of the most competitive in the world, as well as its main landmarks and events. Aligned with this expansion, FITUR has experienced extraordinary growth, has specialized, has professionalized and is more international. Today, it is the most complete reference for the connection of the Ibero-American market with the rest of the world and one of the leading fairs of the global tourism sector. During this time, Spain has become the second worldwide destination and by revenue, with 82.6 million international tourists in 2018, which was spent almost 90,000 million euros. Proof of the great jump in tourism in Spain is that the growth in the number of visitors has increased in recent years, increasing 43.7% since 2012.
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