As we talked about in the previous post “the hotel factory Vision Tour III – Madrid 2019“, the hotel factory team travelled to Madrid for the celebration of the most important tourism fair in Spain, FITUR 2019. Our attendance at the event symbolised something very important for our company since it was the first time that all the hotel factory’s team attended FITUR. The fair gave us the opportunity to meet the latest worldwide tourism trends and to improve our business relationships.

On this occasion, FITUR celebrated its 39th edition from the 23th to the 27th of January, and obtained a new record of participation in its most international edition. The fair had an 8,9% increase compared to the last edition, with the participation of 886 regular exhibitors and 10.487 companies from 165 countries and regions.

Sustainability, specialisation and technological progress were the main aspects which set the tone of this edition, and which will become the guidelines to design development strategies for the tourism sector.

A sample of sustainability was the Iberostar stand, where plastic containers were conspicuous by their absence and even the uniforms of staff were made from recycled plastic materials. Thus, the company has been positioned in 2018 as the first hotel chain in Spain with plastic-free rooms and plans to remove single use plastics in all its hotels by 2020.

In terms of specialisation, FITUR 2019 focuses on several segments of cultural tourism such as Cinema and Festivals. In this aspect, screen tourism has brought a chilling figure of 80 million international travelers who choose their destination based on movies and television series they have seen. There are more and more tourists who want to recreate themselves in the scenes by traveling to the destinations where their favorite series or movies have been recorded. Thanks to The Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, destinations as New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Croatia or Ireland experienced this record.

On the other hand, music tourism is also a powerful driver of tourism and this is supported by almost 2 million people who travelled to attend to 10 of the Spanish music festivals. For this reason, FITUR has launched its own festival, FITUR ES MÚSICA, with the aim of adding value to the cultural scene in Madrid.

LGTB tourism has boosted its presence at FITUR due to the increasing number of tourists it moves, who nowadays represent 10% of tourists worldwide. As a result, one more time FITUR has a section dedicated to this group. This year, FITUR Gay was one of the sections with greater consolidation and representation due to the increase in the internationalisation of the main destinations and companies, as well as the large number of speeches and presentations that took place during the day.

Equally, technology has also been present at the fair, revealing some spoilers of the new hotel concepts that will take place in the future and showing us the latest advances which make guest experience better. Some samples of what is yet to come are the interactive mirrors that detect emotions of the client and thus offer personalised services; the domotisation of the rooms to personalise them through music, aromas and lighting; the intelligent mattresses that analyse the quality of sleep and offer recommendations on how to improve rest; and even televisions that go above and beyond and allow the customer to interact with the hotel. A good example of this was Meliá Hotels, who presented the tech room, a 100% technological room that allows guests to customise their elements according to their preferences.

In short, FITUR 2019 has allowed the hotel factory’s team to experience first-hand the latest tourism trends, which will serve us as a source of inspiration for future projects and, of course, has given us the opportunity to improve the relationship with both old and new customers.