“Be Water, My Friend: Digital Reality and Adaptation,”

MADRİD-. FITUR 2021, the Tourism Is Back special edition, organised by IFEMA, will take place next 19th to 23rd May. And to reflect the importance of innovation and technology advances, sustainability, and the environment, its FITURTECHY special interest section is back stronger than ever for the tourism industry’s recovery.

This section is organised in collaboration with the Hotel Technology Institute (ITH). It will have a space of 2000 square metres in Hall 10 of Feria de Madrid, where it will offer an innovative approach for a time of global and social change, under the slogan “BE WATER MY FRIEND: DIGITAL REALITY AND ADAPTATION.”

The FITURTECHY’s contents will focus on Bruce Lee’s famous expression, which refers to the importance of knowing how to adapt, anticipate, to use forces correctly, both your own and your opponent’s, as his philosophy of life within the martial art he practised. And Charles Darwin in “The Origin of Species” referred to adaptation as critical for a species’ survival.

Both these ideas emphasise the importance of adaptation, which today is essential whatever context you’re involved in. In today’s digital reality of constant transformation, it’s imperative, and together with innovation and a strategic view of the future, it allows you to respond to events quickly. Just as water takes the shape of the vessel holding it, technology adapts to the travel industry’s needs, providing safer working conditions and environments to win back travellers’ trust.

FITURTECHY 2021’s Proposal

Focusing on this reality, and with ITH’s experience and know-how, FITURTECHY will run four separate forums focusing on business, destinations, sustainability, and future trends during FITUR’s trade visitor days. This programme’s main value is that it enables you to find out about the innovation projects presented and how it can show you new approaches for the changes ahead and how you should consider these recent trends as part of the change process.

#techYnegocio

The Technology and Business Forum, #techYnegocio, is the space for discussing how we can use technology for hotel business management. As we search for new ways for improving customer experience, there will be a discussion about strategies based on smart data and neuromarketing, focusing on product, design and sale.

#techYfuturo

Throughout history, each new technological disruption has pushed a sector in new directions, transforming countries and even the whole world. For example, the Internet is a technology born in the sixties as a military communications system, but in recent decades it’s changed the whole of society, globalising and democratising entire sectors, including tourism. It has enabled the application of numerous other technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robotics and automation, advanced transportation and even the hybridisation between the physical and digital worlds. These disruptions will undoubtedly transform not only travel and tourism but society as a whole. All of this will be discussed at the #techYfuturo forum, sponsored by Mastercard.

#techYdestino

On the theme of digital reality and adaptation, the #techYdestino forum will focus on how the tourism sector and all the agents involved can reinvent themselves to survive and thrive in the face of the bumps in the road ahead, making innovation and technology their travelling companions. At #techYdestino we’ll be analysing the relationship between the new digital tourist profiles and how tourism companies adapt to their needs, how technology can be a tourist destination’s best ally for self-transformation and adapting to the new safety and health requirements, and how tourism promotion initiatives are shaped to get closer to the public and engage them more than ever.

#techYsostenibilidad

This forum is sponsored by Cajamar cooperative bank. It will focus on how the different tourism sector actors, such as accommodation, destinations, and transport, are leading the process of adapting to new business patterns in a world transformed by the Covid-19 health crisis. This transformation has increased the importance of integrating strategies for sustainability and applying Circular Economy criteria to its business more than ever. In this context, there’s a new and growing movement called Regenerative Tourism. It aims to leave a better world for future generations, based on the relationships between people, themselves, and their environment.

FITURTECHY will also have a Welcome & VIP Area sponsored by the Cajamar cooperative bank. This is a common area for welcoming visitors to the four forums, a large space that will also serve as a showroom for the Future Hotel. It will be a space where you can see and experience ways of using and implementing new technologies and innovative tools in a hotel environment.

About ITH

ITH is the hotel sector’s response to the challenges that technological advances pose for tourism industry entrepreneurs. ITH is an innovation centre attached to the Spanish Confederation of Hotels and Tourist Accommodation (CEHAT), with sixteen years of history behind it. Its mission is to promote the use of new technologies and management systems to improve the competitiveness, profitability, quality, efficiency and sustainability of companies involved in the hotel and tourism industry.