The new all-in-one concept of Bit – the International Tourism Exchange – was revealed to trade professionals and private travelers.
The exhibition now has many new features which will make the fair being staged in the year of Expo Milano 2015, at Fieramilano in Rho from Thursday 12 to Saturday 14 February 2015, even more dynamic and business-oriented.
All the new features have a common thread: an innovative across-the-board approach to the market, based on business segments and no longer on geographical areas, combining the vertical nature of more specialized fairs with the broader, more complete vision of the markets which only a large fair like Bit in Italy can offer.
The new features of Bit begin in the Leisure zone where the demand and the offering of the tourism industry of Italy and the rest of the world will come together. Amongst other things, in the Italian section, a space has been set aside to encourage and promote the Art & Culture and Food & Wine segments. For the 2015 fair, a MICE segment has been added, to meet the requirements of people who organize conferences, meetings, incentives, and exhibitions. It will constitute a focus of commercial comparison in a highly professional setting, while ensuring the solidity of the contacts made and creating the potential for quality negotiations. MICE World means high-level contacts, networking, free matching and social media.
Luxury World will focus on the luxury segment: a club of excellence, with an interesting, pleasant layout, for exhibitors from Italy and abroad and travel buyers from all over the world. The exhibitors will represent 5-star hotels, elegant residences on lakes, spa resorts, iconic hotels which have become symbols of cities, luxurious historic residences, boutique hotels, charming mountain refuges, shopping malls, DMCs and luxury services.
Digital World will approach the fascinating world of innovative technologies developed for tourism. This area of the fair will bring together the business & networking services and exclusive digital and social content, for both physical and virtual applications, of the new Bit. At Digital World there will be two types of activities: an exhibition and matching area for OLTAs, Italian and foreign operators and multimedia and digital marketing services, and a program of networking and training events, with interesting new formats, a chance for professional operators to meet social influencers.
Bit2015 has also decided to represent Italian buyers from the foreign tourism offering, thus increasing the number of specialized hosted buyers from Italy and abroad to 1,500.
Another project being launched, Bit China, is aimed at entrepreneurs who want to propose their offering to the Chinese Outbound Market, using the GITF, the Chinese tourism fair held in Guangzhou, of which Fiera Milano is one of the organizers, as a springboard.
The last GITF fair attracted 750 exhibitors, 700 buyers and resulted in 21,000 business matches. Bit is offering Italian operators an all-inclusive package which will help them to optimize their investment in the Chinese market. The package is available to all exhibitors who confirm their participation in Bit2015 by 31 October 2014 and includes various services, such as training on the market and Chinese consumer habits, exhibition space in the Italy area, meetings with selected buyers and promotion and marketing activities.
“The new concept brings together a whole series of innovations which puts Bit back right in the center of the travel business. The basic philosophy is to take advantage of Bit and Fiera Milano’s longstanding expertise and to use it in a completely new way, getting away from the old geographically-based criteria to generate new opportunities from a unique combination of vertical meetings and the presence of the whole travel world in one place: it’s an unrivalled networking opportunity. At the same time, it’s a barometer that we can use to measure future trends, and provides an opportunity to meet the decision makers, experts on the sector, and buyers who have been carefully selected from various geographical areas and key product sectors,” says Cristina Tasselli, Bit’s new Exhibition Director.
