MADRID — IFEMA, the Institución Ferial de Madrid, which is charged with the organization of fairs, halls and congresses in the city, has received a significant boost from the Spanish government with the designation of its International Tourism Fair, FITUR, as an Event of Exceptional Public Interest for 2021. Not only does this move acknowledge the importance of FITUR in reinvigorating Spain’s tourism industry and image as a tourist destination, but it also injects funding into the event, to be held May 19-23 at Feria de Madrid, for the next three years.
The legal designation of Event of Exceptional Public Interest — also known as the AEIP Award — draws funding directly from the country’s national budget from January of 2021 until December of 2023. The May event, being billed as the FITUR Tourism Recovery Special Edition, will relaunch tourism with a focus on safe travel and showcase initiatives such as health passports, tourist corridors and destination testing while at the same time promoting Spain’s tourism industry and initiatives around innovation and sustainability.
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“IFEMA, and the tourism industry’s different actors and businesses, are living through a crucial moment,” said IFEMA Managing Director Eduardo López-Puertas during a March 3 ceremony marking one such initiative, a partnership with SEGITTUR to organize the special interest section at the FITUR Know-How & Export. “We are looking to a future full of opportunities, one in which innovation and digital transformation are going to be essential for success. A future in which an innovative and increasingly smart tourism industry can play a leading role, with accessible and sustainable destinations, by leveraging the solutions that technologies bring to tourism development. This is even more so in the present context, one in which this edition of FITUR will be strategic for the sector’s long-awaited recovery.”
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In January of 2020, FITUR broke all previous participation records with 11,040 companies from 165 countries and regions, 150,089 trade visitors and 111,089 visitors from the general public. The 2021 exhibition was moved in late 2020 from January 2021 to the new May dates to allow participation from all the major tourism players.
Reach Eduardo Lopez-Puertas at (902) 22 15 15.
