Turespaña Is Proud to Have Contributed to the Return of In-Person FITUR
Blanca Pérez Sauquillo, Deputy Director-General for External Tourism Marketing at Turespaña, affirms that they are “proud to have contributed to the return of in-person FITUR.” FITUR was the first fair in 2021 to showcase Turespaña’s new worldwide advertising campaign. Eleven new members signed up to “The Most Beautiful Villages in Spain” at its stand, there was the presentation of Spain’s new capital of gastronomy, there were panel discussions and forums, and regional tourism ministers held 294 professional meetings at the stand, and the President of the Government of Spain presented the Digital Green Certificate.
“At Turespaña, we’re proud to have contributed to the return of in-person FITUR,” said Blanca Pérez Sauquillo, Deputy General Manager of Tourism Marketing for Turespaña. She explained that “the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism explicitly committed to holding it in 2021, and Turespaña participated without scaling back its stand at all, and programming lots of business activity there. It’s been a unique challenge because no one knew how the industry would respond and because we had to adapt to strict health and safety conditions. But we made it a success, and we invested extra effort in ensuring that our staff and their visitors could hold meetings, gatherings, presentations and events with complete confidence.”
Pérez Sauquillo pointed out that “for us, FITUR is always eminently about business, and this year it has been even more so, and we focused most of our activity on the 19th to the 21st. The Turespaña stand didn’t stop for a moment: we had twelve events of our own and for our tourism promotion partners in the stand’s own auditorium and a busy programme of B2B and bilateral meetings. We were the first to demonstrate, with facts, that travelling to Spain is safe, as 31 advisors came to FITUR from our worldwide Turespaña bureau network.”
As she pointed out, “the theme of our stand was twofold: on the one hand Travel Safe, and on the other hand, You Deserve Spain. These two combined the twin messages about safe travel to Spain with the reward of visiting this country again. In addition, we went further with the smart stand concept with all kinds of touchless dynamic features and services for visitors to gauge their reactions. It was a responsible stand, too, with a reversible environmental impact action to offset any adverse impacts of our activity at FITUR.”
New International Campaign
The Turespaña director stresses that “FITUR was the first fair of 2021 to showcase Turespaña’s new You Deserve Spain worldwide advertising campaign. Eleven new members signed up for our Most Beautiful Villages in Spain programme, and we presented the new Spanish capital of gastronomy. There were panel discussions and forums on post-Covid marketing, market intelligence, music and tourism, digitalisation. And regional tourism ministers held 294 business meetings at the stand.”
“But, undoubtedly,” she adds, “the most important event was when the President of the Government of Spain and the Ministers of Health and Industry, Trade and Tourism presented the Digital Green Certificate, which since 7th June allows EU travellers to visit Spain simply by showing this European certificate. It was the starting signal for the new tourist mobility, and we’re delighted that it took place at FITUR and at our stand.”