As some of you may heard we had the opportunity (as an award we got from Ministry of Sport & Torusim) to go to international tourism fairs ITB Berlin that took place in 9-13 april 2016.
First of all I just wanted to say, that those were the bast fairs i have seen so far. I don't know whether this is due to poor organisation of IT fairs (which I habe attended so far) or just because German way of doing things.
First 3 days of the event were for business only - it meant that the grounds were accessible for people from tourism industry. So if anybody went there (as we) to create lasting business relationships - he could not be in a better place.
The organisation of the fairs itself was perfect. Clearly marked venues, every space had a number that allowed finding the right region quickly and easily attend arranged meetings.
In every hall we found few country-spaces that consisted of booths (a table and few chairs). It created a perfect opportunity to connect to specific companies.
I have no idea how many people attended ITB everyday, but total number of 120 000 was not overwhelming - probably because of the vast amounts of space ITB offered:)
When we took a closer look at the exhibitors - we were very happy - we found a lot of partners. Many of them have already started our free trial. Besides them we found also some IT startups - mostly Hotel software, but few consumer apps were visible as well.
A perfect addition to whole event were lectures organised every day in few large halls. Those which i have attended were extremely interesting. The best one i have seen was a discussion during which a member of Iceland Ministry of Tourism was telling about the value of reccomendations coming from local citizens - whole strategy of their identity was based on this rule. I totally recommend watching the video below.
Other lectures very often showed the importance of making every offer in a way to fit some specific needs (take LGBT travel for instance). A lot of people spoke about emotions in the process of purchasing trips - this is the mechanism we are showing to our clients and allowing this to happen in our system.
To sum up - ITB Torusim Fais are an absolute must-see for everyone that works in this industry. Their perfect organisation will make you remember them for a long time, similar to the people you meet there:)
