Welcome remarks: Mr. Ion Vilcu, Director, Affiliate Members Department

Presentations by UNWTO Affiliate Members

The travel come back: Tripadvisor – A look back to 2022

A focus on the major trends we saw in 2022 within the travel industry, including the great recovery we witnessed and the new metrics destinations and businesses can adopt to track success.

Fabrizio Orlando, Global Director, Industry Affairs

Public-private cooperation: Quintana Roo Tourism Promotion Council - Public-Private Alliance for the prosperity of Mexican Caribbean destinations.

The presentation focused on the actions implemented as a result of the Master Plan for Sustainable Tourism and the New Agreement for the Development and Well-being of Quintana Roo, with the objective of transitioning towards a more competitive and sustainable model with greater well-being for the local population.

Bernardo Cueto Riestra, Secretary of Tourism, Quintana Roo

Sustainable transformation: JTB Corp - JTB’s sustainable journey to the 2030 through business

JTB’s upcoming business solutions and actions in line with sustainability in the filed of tourism products, corporate business and destination management.

Jack Kumada, Senior advisor to CEO and Chairperson

Digital nomads: Croatian National Tourist Board - Remote work – combining work and long-stay travel; year-round tourism and off-season guests

The presentation will focus on promoting Croatia as a digital nomad destination. The changes to the legal requirements for third-country (non-EU/EEA nationals) to be able to live and work in Croatia without tax obligations for up to 1-year. What have we learned over the past two years? What do we anticipate in the upcoming period? Development of year-round tourism in connection to remote work and a case study of the non-coastal region working on this (Central Istria).

Lucijana (Luci) Natalija Jerković, Head of Global PR

Aviation rebound: ICF - How tourism and aviation are changing each other, and the 2023 outlook

ICF will present the evolving status of the global airline industry and its relation to the tourism sector, with a 2023 outlook. The audience will understand airline business models relevant to tourism, their fleet and network strategies and the changing profile of leisure markets being served.

Jared Harckham, Managing Director, Aviation, Travel & Tourism

Travel insurance: Allianz Partners – Travel Insurance Evolution after COVID19

Different trends on the Travel Insurance industry and the growing demand for insurance products will be presented, along with new travelers profiles linked to the different generations.

Andrés Sánchez-Cid, Product Management & Innovation – Travel

Tech-empowered travel: GIATA - Content Parity to Empower more online Bookings for hotels

The hotel bookable data (pricing, inventory) is very well addressed in the industry, with hundreds of revenue management and channel managers for hotels. However, GIATA's data shows a lack of data consistency in basic information of the hotels across websites and distribution channels - this refers to visuals (images) and text (hotel amenities). Due to this situation, that is not addressed in the industry, hotels become dependent on a very small number of OTAs - which, in the end, affects all travellers - both in leisure and business. 

Rainer Schafer, Vice President, GIATA

Cultural Urban Destinations: Universidad de Nebrija - Opportunities of Geographical Intelligence to Improve Tourism Perfomance

Geospatial knowledge of tourism activities in a territory is beginning to be recognized as a key asset for tourism organizations around the world. Through geospatial analytics and intelligence, tourism organizations have the opportunity to design new and more competitive products that better respond to consumer preferences and at the same time ensure the sustainability of tourist spaces. In this presentation we will deliver key ideas about the opportunities that exist for companies and tourist destinations that we will illustrate with some relevant examples from real life.

Francisco J Navarro-Meneses, Professor and Researcher, Department of Tourism

Gastronomy tourism: Turisme de Barcelona - Barcelona as a destination of reference in gastronomic excellence

At the beginning of the year 2000, Barcelona and Catalonia were the epicenter of the explosion of Catalan cuisine in the world. It was the beginning of a unique and unrepeatable gastronomic movement, by a few visionary chefs. Two decades later, the spores of that revolution in haute cuisine have spread and multiplied throughout the world, contributing to keeping Catalan cuisine at its highest level. Now, they have been joined by chefs, committed and brave professionals, with personal, unique and solid restaurant projects in the city, and who continue with the DNA of Barcelona's cuisine.

Alexandra Marcó, Marketing Director

Experience tourism: World Leisure Organization - The concept of “bleisure”

For digital nomads, combining work, travel and leisure appears to be more popular than ever. Through their “new style of travel” they promote “bleisure”, a concept that implies enjoying leisure time as tourist while taking advantage of business opportunities and destinations. This phenomenon could be considered as a new form of slow and creative tourism and a new trend for tourist destinations to pay attention to.

Dr. Cristina Ortega Nuere, WLO Chief Operating Officer