TlS 2020, the first Tourism Innovation Summit in Seville

For the first time took place in Seville the Tourism Innovation Summit, TIS, a new event with innovative topics being covered during the “Where Technology meets Tourism”, included discussions and presentations about how to transform the tourist sector through innovation, technology, and sustainability. Advances in technology has changed the way we travel, increasing customer experience. Besides, being up to date with the latest solutions and business models that rethink our industry. Everything with the hope to support the tourism industry in Spain, for many years after the pandemic. And it was a huge pleasure to be back to physical events, not only online. Since March 2020 I have been attending events online, webinars, conferences, and it is ok, it is what we have now.
To me online is to complement the physical event, what we want is to chat with partners and network with a coffee (or a beer). Actually I have a theory: online events is like sex online, once or twice is ok, fun, different, exciting, but at the end of the day, what we want is to touch, smell and interact with the person, to network and create synergies and of course make businesses.
I was lucky to have been invited to speak in one pannel and to moderate another one. I happily accepted, not only because the event was attractive enough, but also because it was my first visit ever to Seville. And I felt in love with the city.
See here my pictures of Seville
Read here my must-sees for first timers in Sevilla
Read here my suggestions for foodies in Sevilla
My hotels in the city have been: Hospes Casas del Rey de Baeza and during the event in NH Plaza de Armas.
Check #GraupixSevilla in my social media for updates and comments
Find here the official link of Sevilla Tourism
The event started with a private visit to the stunning Real Alcázar de Sevilla the evening before TIS started.Of course, during the pandemic time, no event took place, and the ones that dared to take place, like Termatalia in Ourense which I attended in September 2020, or TIS, needed to take extra measures to be sure that safety is first. Everybody attending or speaking in TIS Sevilla, had to show a negative Covid test made the last 48 hours.
A great solution offered in partnership with Quirón Prevención and the organisers of TIS: test has been done in advance in origine, or at official congress hotel NH Plaza de Armas, or at the entrace of the venue – FIBES– with a rapid test of 15 minutes. With the combination of an App, the facial recognition and our negative result, we were able to enter the venue.
A total of 1263 test were done, 457 in origine and 806 in situ.
Inside, comme il faut, everybody wearing masks and trying to maintain the social distance,And of course inside the conference rooms, also distance was assured:The event was opened by her Majesty Queen Letizia. A great support from her Majesty to the events industry, and specially to the tourism industry in these very hard moments for everybody working in them.
The figures:
. 1263 people attending physically
. 3891 unique connections by streaming (from 56 countries)
. 236 speakers
. 183 hours of conferences
. 59 exhibitors
. 16 event partners
. 1281 media impacts (til the end of the event 80 international and 1192 national)
. 177.987 Twitter impressions
. 83.567 Linkedin impressions
I spoke in the panel «Attracting Food Lovers to your Destination«, of course, this is one of my favorite topics and I explained about the importance of the communication, of the strategy, partnerships with local actors and of course of the good use of social media to inspire travellers:As a summary, my suggestions if you are a restaurant: participate in food tourism activities, attract tourists to the restaurant with influencers, use «zero-kilometer» ingredients and promote them, offer something more, be on international online platforms; or if you are a destination: use hunger-inducing language, get people inspired, find out what people like, benchmarking, ask your followers, design for mobile (forget about computers), use hashtags as strategy, generate User Generated Content (UGC), food tends to go viral, educate partners, oh yes! (usually around 65% of the brands/handles use social media very bad).In the panel I moderated about MICE, we discussed about the new model of events. And of course I attended different conferences with very interesting topics:Hope to attend TIS2021 continue sharing my knowledge and my experience with my readers.