From March 13 to 15, 2018, the exhibition was held in Moscow with great success. 25th Anniversary International Tourism Exhibition MITT. The event was organized by the ITE Group of Companies, which occupies a leading position in the Russian exhibition services market.
MITT exhibition is included in the top five largest tourism exhibitions in the world and is always highly appreciated by the international community. The 25th anniversary exhibition MITT 2018 was attended by 1,799 companies - participants from 239 countries and regions of the world. Over the three days of work, the exhibition was visited by 22,777 visitors from 80 regions of Russia and 90 foreign countries.
At MITT, both foreign tourist destinations and all possible vacation options within Russia were equally represented. The total area of the exposition exceeded 40 thousand square meters and occupied 7 pavilions and halls of the Expocentre Central Exhibition Complex.
The official opening ceremony of MITT 2018 was attended by the head of the Federal Agency for Tourism Oleg Safonov, State Duma deputy, deputy Chairman of the Committee on Physical Culture, Sports, Tourism and Youth Affairs, chairman of the subcommittee on tourism Sergey Krivonosov, president of the Russian Union of Travel Industry Sergey Shpilko, vice-president of the Russian Union of Travel Industry Yuri Barzykin, representative of the partner region of the MITT 2018 exhibition - Altai Krai - head of the Altai Krai Department for Tourism, Resort Business, Interregional and International Relations Yuri Zakharov and other honored guests.
Opening the exhibition, the head of the Federal Agency for Tourism Oleg Safonov noted that "the 25th anniversary MITT exhibition seems especially important, since here we can more fully reveal the tourism potential of the Russian Federation. In addition, it is extremely important, since in 2018 the FIFA World Cup is being held in Russia. We would like to invite tourists, fans from all over the world to come to us and take part in this wonderful sporting event."
As part of the exhibition, Rostourism and JSC National Company Kazakh Tourism signed a cooperation agreement. The parties "intend to develop and strengthen cooperation in the field of tourism in order to popularize tourist destinations and increase tourist exchange between the countries. Cooperation implies joint promotion of cross-border tourist routes in international tourism markets, conducting information and press tours, and participating in investment projects in both countries. In addition, it is planned to hold joint events aimed at promoting domestic and inbound tourism in Russia and the Republic of Kazakhstan among tourists," the statement says.
This year, the tourism business of many countries was widely represented at MITT: Italy, Spain, Portugal, Israel, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, Montenegro, Slovenia, Maldives, Egypt, Philippines, Thailand, Brazil, India, Tunisia, Morocco, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and many other countries. National groups from Dubai, South Africa, Slovakia, Karnataka, Goa and Sri Lanka, Sarajevo, and the Republic of San Marino returned to MITT. Turkey was the most widely represented of the foreign countries — the exposition occupied two pavilions, and the exhibition was attended by the Minister of Culture and Tourism of Turkey, Mr. Numan Kurtulmuş, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkey, Mr. Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu.
As part of the MITT 2018 exhibition, the head of the Federal Tourism Agency Oleg Safonov held a working meeting with the Minister of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey Numan Kurtulmuş. The parties discussed areas for developing cooperation between the two countries in the field of tourism, as well as key issues related to improving the quality and availability of services for tourists in the upcoming high summer season.
The partner of the MITT 2018 exhibition was Dubai, the most important trade and financial center of the UAE and the entire Middle East.
All Russian regions and resorts, the largest tour operators offering a variety of routes across Russia, the CIS countries, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, America and island states, luxury resorts and destinations traditionally took part in the 25th anniversary MITT exhibition.
Russian regions were represented on an extremely large scale at MITT - not only traditional routes (St. Petersburg, Moscow and the Moscow region, Sevastopol and Crimea, Sochi, Krasnodar Krai, the resorts of Krasnaya Polyana, Altai Krai, Baikal, the Far East and others), but also completely new destinations for tourists, presented for the first time this year: Magadan Region, Chukotka, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Altai Republic, Novosibirsk Region.
The largest Russian and international tour operators - Intourist, TUI, Anex, TezTour, Natalie Tours, Biblio Globus and many others - offered a wide range of diversified offers for outbound and domestic tourism.
Within the framework of the MITT exhibition, a special program was developed for large buyers of tourism services - VIP Buyers'Program, in which 265 representatives of large operator companies took part.
The completely updated one deserves special attention business program, designed for tourism professionals and including events in completely new formats - from interactive talk shows to practical sessions of the educational program "MITT Academy". The statistics of the business program events exceeded all expectations: 111 speakers offered the professional community 75 topics for discussion during 16 conference sessions. For this purpose, 2 separate arenas in a modern original design, equipped with the latest technology, were built right in the exhibition pavilions, which allowed visitors to be maximally involved in the content program, and, consequently, the return on such events increased. In preparing MITT 2018, the organizer of the MITT exhibition - ITE Group of Companies - made significant investments in the content program so that it would become as effective and practically useful for specialists as possible, give them new knowledge and improve their professional level. In total, 3951 people attended the business program, which is 17,34% of the total number of visitors.
This year, the organizers expanded the concept of the MITT exhibition, adding a new definition to it — "Tourism Business 365". This concept assumes that all tourist seasons are presented at the exhibition, and not just the summer mass one. The new concept was also reflected in the business program — for the first time, a session on ski tourism was held with the participation of the heads of leading companies in the direction, such as the Rosa Khutor resort, Club Med, TezTour, and the specialized tour operator JetTravel.
The conducted research clearly demonstrated that visitors assessed the exhibition from the ROT (Return on Time) position, which is why the share of repeat visits on the second and third days increased: this year it amounted to 30% (25% in 2017, 21% in 2016). The MITT exhibition was again held in the B2B format - only for professional visitors.
MITT exhibition director Artem Chernyshov comments on these positive changes: “The new strategy of the MITT organizer is that the exhibition can only be successful if there is a good and rich business program. We live in the digital age, but now personal contacts for acquiring new knowledge and skills are becoming even more important, remaining relevant for industry professionals as never before.”
This practical aspect was especially visible in the events."MITT Academy" — is a new format of practical seminars, first tested in 2017. This year, the MITT Academy lasted 3 days and consisted of more than 25 educational seminars, panel discussions and master classes from leading specialists and experts in the industry on the most relevant topics in the tourism business. All sessions were divided into thematic blocks: Digital — promotion of tourism products and brand reputation management of a travel company on the Internet, MICE master class from leading MICE agencies and corporate clients, a session on personnel, a separate session on ski tourism and sessions on effective marketing communications and legal and tax aspects of running a tourism business.
On the first day of the exhibition, March 13, for the first time at MITT, open blitz interview session under the title "Living history of the tourism business. MITT 25 years" with the participation of authoritative entrepreneurs, whose hands created the history of the tourism business in Russia. The heads of the companies Click Voyage, National Tour Operator ALEAN, Art Tour and Anex Tour, and Pink Elephant took part in the lively blitz-format discussion.
On the same day, a panel discussion "Tourism Business: Focus on Russia" was held, during which representatives of tour operators, regional administrations in the tourism sector and TIC employees discussed the prospects of the new season in the domestic tourism market. The discussion was attended by the President of the Russian Union of Travel Industry Sergey Shpilko, General Director of the tour operator "Dolphin" Sergey Romashkin and other authoritative heads of travel companies.
The second day of MITT was extremely eventful. On March 14, the exhibition hosted a press conference by Nikolay Gulyaev, Head of the Moscow Department of Sports and Tourism, dedicated to the capital's tourism potential. The issues of Moscow's preparation for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, increasing the number of certified hotels, increasing the number of trained guides, and developing urban infrastructure were discussed.
Conference"Trends of the new tourist season" / TravelTrends, during which market experts spoke about the development trends of the global tourism market and how they will influence the specifics of doing business in the very near future, became the most visited business event - out of a total of 3,951 visitors, 20% - 793 tourism industry specialists - visited it.
On the same day, a panel discussion on market shocks and their consequences was held with great success - Market Shocks.Top managers of leading tour operator companies in Russia analyzed serious tests in the tourism market in 2017, discussed changes that await the tourism industry in 2018 in tourism and tax legislation, the introduction of electronic vouchers, new mechanisms for regulating financial support for tour operators, and others. The discussion was attended by Deputy General Director of AnexTour Yana Muromova, General Director of NTK Intourist Viktor Topolkaraev, Director of Distribution and Sales, TUI Ali Mikailov and other market experts.
During the traditional business session for hoteliers "MITT Summit - Hotel", one of the most active discussions was the issue of registering foreign citizens during the World Cup in summer 2018. Ekaterina Railyan, adviser to the president of FRiO on migration and registration in hotels, gave an expert report on this topic. During the event, experts also presented practical cases on effective management, service and sales development in hotels.
On March 15, the third day of the exhibition, for the first time in MITT's 25-year history, an event of a completely new format took place: a talk show "Tourism as a family business", which was attended by the heads of Russian tourism companies who created and expanded their businesses with the help of their families. The partner of the event was the tourism holding UTS Group.
On March 13-14, the MITT Digital forum of high technologies in the tourism business was held within the framework of MITT. Its main topic this year was "Current digital and marketing technologies". The discussion of these topics was attended by the Director of Business Processes of Akademservice Vladimir Dolgov, Commercial Director of Biletix Igor Konstantinov, Commercial Manager for Russia of Skyscanner Igor Novikov, General Director of Mouzenidis Travel Alexander Tsandekidi, General Director of ClickVoyage Igor Kozlov, General Director of Onlinetours Konstantin Pobedkin, Head of Sales in Russia, CEE & NORDICS, Travel Audience GmbH — AnAmadeusCompany Ilya Bogachev and other speakers. This year, MITT launched an improved electronic appointment system MITT Meetings, which worked not only before and during the exhibition, but also continues to work after the event, becoming a real tool for the formation of the business social network of the MITT exhibition.
AnexTour became the official sponsor of MITT 2018.
The exhibition is sponsored by the Catalonia region.
The official insurance company of the exhibition is ERV.
In 2019, the 26th Moscow International Tourism Exhibition MITT will be held from March 12 to 14 at the Expocentre Fairgrounds.
Source: trn-news.ru
