ITB Berlin, day 2

Early morning yesterday at the ITB, starting the day with a press conference of Albania, characterized by the country's ambassador as the 'sleeping beauty' of Europe. Under the logo 'The new Mediterranean love', the country has beaches, mountains, nature, heritage and UNESCO sites and hospitality, 'as part of the identity', the panel speakers were saying. Time to check all this by myself soon.

Nothing brings more sweetness to an early morning than chocolate. Especially if you can see it prepared in the front of you.

The next main stop of the day: the Cultural Lounge, at Sydney Hall, for a presentation about how culture can create a new beginning for the Dutch Wadden Sea Coast. The Center of Expertise, Leisure, Tourism and Hospitality (CELTH) is currently working on a study in this respect, but the future looks much better than now. 

As the next week I plan to visit Leipzig Book Fair, I paid a short visit to some of the Saxony representatives for a better planning of my trip. Worth also a visit the Chic Outlets offices, for affordable luxury shopping trips, in several locations in Europe. My first experience with the concept, last year in Bicester Village, will not be the last, I am sure. 

At the Middle East pavilion, incenses and old handworks are tempting the visitors. 

But nothing is more tempting than the luxurious spa from Emirates, who created a big spaceship lounge where most business meetings in the area are taking place.

For the lunch, I enjoyed an interesting discussion about Groupon plans for the next year, especially in the domain of travel and tourism. In the German-speaking realm, there are around 3,5 million registered users, out of 200 million worldwide. As a regular user from the very beginning, I am pleased to notice the diversification of the portfolio, and the inclusion of 'wellness' and 'luxury' categories as part of the offer. 

With a short break in between meetings, I made another stop at the Asian section, for some meetings. Indonesia is tempting the visitors with '30 culinary icons', a free dish mixing various traditional meals.

As I was not hungry, I rather watched the puppet player, together with other curious guests.

In the front of the Thai Spa, too many people in line for massage and a bit of professional wellness. 

But there are always second chances, and mine was to observe how the Indonesian coffee is made.

With almost a double rate of increase of the tourist rate since 2010 (the first year of peace), Sri Lanka has ambitious plans for this year: 2,5 million tourists and Germany is an important market. At the press conference, the country was presented to the German public as 'one of the finest destination in the world since Marco Polo', outlining the interest of German scientists for the area, since Alexander von Humboldt. 

It is unfair, but as I don't have serious plans for Latin America this year, I didn't visit the dedicated section too often. I wanted to correct this situation, and went for a couple of minutes around, being welcomed with colours and beautiful people.

Yesterday afternoon, Paraguay held a food tasting, that included cheese with manioca pancakes and some corn cakes. 

California means a lot of leisure and pleasure if you visit, but if you work to #dreambig, there is a lot of effort and energy spent convincing people to visit and share the dream. As usual, I love the American work culture and cannot but appreciate the busy bees promoting various US states at the ITB.

Last but not least stop of the day: the champagne bar at Rotana Hotels, a luxury network of hotels spread all over the Middle East. The most recent event, the opening of a new hotel in Oman. 

With most of my schedule done, and even some extra things solved, I will return to the ITB the next Sunday, for the closing session and more happenings. 

ITB 2013 - the last day

Honestly, I was a bit more than tired today, but I covered all I wanted and needed to cover in order to have a full image of the countries and companies participating at ITB Berlin 2013. I even had the chance to stumble upon some nice companies offering various IT and technology services tailored for the tourism industry. 

My plan for today was: Central America - amazing and full of life; some Golf countries - colourful, with a lot of Henna painting, and many airline companies offering virtual tours to the visitors. 

In the afternoon, the ambiance was quite relaxed, with not so many visitors and journalists around. Many Pavilions were already closed or about to close. All the PR companies were gone, some of the Spanish tour operators were probably afraid to go out by the sudden winter returning seriously to the city in the last 24 hours. I did not see anyone at Lebanon as well, the white chairs being used for temporary stops of exhausted visitors.

A couple of 'entrepreneurs' were trying to sell tickets in the U-Bahn/S-Bahn area, for 10 Euro, even though after 2pm, the price went to 8 Euro. I am not sure either if the tickets were available. Anyway, it was no reason to buy 'black' tickets when the maximum waiting time at the cashier was around 3 minutes! 

I made a tour of the food counters, and was unpleasantly surprised to see that an usual bowl of noodles, sold for around 3.50 Euro, was evaluated at the ITB for...10 Euro. The food was not looking as almost perfect samples of exquisite Asian cuisine. Better waiting two more hours and eating some fresh food at home! 

Dances and joy from Nicaragua

This time Israel had a big nice Pavilion.  Today, was a busy day

Adventure parks, German version

Egypt is trying to get more tourists, with various cultural offers

What happened in Thailand stays in Thailand

The henna experience

The optical illusion of the dunes of sand?

An exquisite art of filling the glasses, Andalusian way

Day 2 at ITB

It was another busy day for me at the ITB, when I had to run a lot, discovering many interesting Pavilions. I dedicated today to the European side, with some Latin American flavors. I will keep the Asia for tomorrow, with some drops of Central America. 

An excellent design of the Hungarians, with many offers and nice people.

The famous Cransmontana is ready to seduce the German public - not only the VIPs

Live painting at the Polish Pavilion

Live music at the lively and colourful Indian Pavilion

Wine bottles growing on the shelves

Who does not need Spain, after all?

A welcoming Iraqi corner

In a break of law-and-order

Arts-in-process at the Turkish Pavilion

Ukrainian popular artists

The Latin American section is the best looking and interesting by now. I have not been in the Asian section yet...

The Cold War is over and dead for ever. Otherwise you would not have seen such a neighborhood.

An example of how the famous Panama is made

The colours of lively Mexico

Berlin Brands

Berlin is poor and tourism is its main source of revenue. No wonder that a big Hall at the ITB was dedicated to the wonder city of Central Europe. There are a lot of reasons to love the city and many other reasons to can't wait to leave it. However, there it is a high concentration of bright mind and wonderful expats ready to use their energies to live here, even underemployed and underpaid. Their ideas help to build up the city and attract more and more talented brains from all over the world and Germany.

I loved the Pavilion of Berlin because it looks as Berlin: dynamic, cool, with many ideas and projects, that even if not achieved - think about the Airport - no one will get angry on him for that. The main companies, shops - Kaufhof Alexanderplatz among them - and cultural institutions were represented, with possibilities to book tickets on the spot. 

Dreaming hard about the airport

This look like Berlin on a busy summer day

The room of peace

With so many nations and ethnic groups and religions, it makes sense such a room of silence, that is situated very close to the Media Center. It is a clean space and when I visited it, yesterday, around 12 pm, it was no one there, only some candles burning in a corner. 

It has a special place for the Muslim prayer, with an arrow indicating the direction to Mecca and a small prayer carpet. 

Short orientation guide at the ITB Berlin

The International Tourism Fair is considered the biggest tourism events in the world. It takes place from 6 to 10 March, but only the last 2 days are officially open to the public, the majority of the time being dedicated to discussions and networking between tour operators and other stakeholders from the industry. 

This year, 10,000 exhibitors from over 180 lands are getting ready to present their offer, apps, and interesting classes. The overall area occupied by the exhibition is of 160,000sqm. 

The official app of the fair is offered by GIATA and TOURIAS, and it will be very useful for the busy visitor in the week-end. 

Till I will go to pay a visit myself, a couple of words about the map of the fair. As there are many tourist agencies represented, many will offer significant discounts to the trips booked on the place.

In Halle 2.2, there will be a presentation of the Lisboa Story Centre, an interactive project aimed to help the visitor go through the history and present of the Portuguese capital city. Halle 2.1 is dedicated to the LGBT sector - Pink Pavilion, an area that according to officials present at the press conference yesterday is developing permanently. There could be find out more about the OUT NYC, the trend resort in NY opened in 2012 as an island of restaurants, bars and other lifestyle temptations. 

Halle 3.1 is dedicated to South-America with special attention dedicated to Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama. In Halle 3.2, you can visit Albania, Armenia, Bulgaria, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia. In Halle 4.2, Irak - who has a bigger pavilion compared with the previous year - is neighbouring Spain and various tourist companies. In Halle 1.2. you can see not only the ITB Kino, but also Malta - where I am invited tomorrow - Montenegro, Moldova, Kosovo, Croatia, Italy and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Halle 23 is hosting Egypt - who registered a 17% decrease of tourists following the 'revolution', Bahrain, Israel, Jordan and Lebanon. 

Halle 4.1b will be dedicated to the challenges of responsible tourism, including Corporate Social Responsibility and many discussions will take place in the next days about the ways in which tourism can contribute to the sustainability of the local communities. Another interesting things to see at Halle 4.1: economy accommodation, youth travel, adventure tourism.

Those interested about the German Laender, can have a look at what is offered and displayed at Halle 6.2. Many of the natural treasures of Germany will be presented at large. In Halle 8.2 Germany will be presented again with an offer to discover Saarland, on bike. Other places where one can find out more about the offer of German tourism are: Halle 11.2 for Sachsen, Thueringen, Sachsen-Anhalt; Halle 12 for Berlin and Brandenburg, and Halle 13, 14.1 - for hotels. 

Halle 20 and 21 are dedicated to Africa, with South Sudan the newest guest. Libya and Yemen - a country where many Germans are visiting, despite the complicated security situation - are back in the business after a year of break.  

Halle 10.2 - that I will visit in a couple of hours - is hosting the Culture Lounge, where the visitor can find out about the cultural capitals of Europe, but also about the cultural offer of the world cities. Worth to mention and to find out more about: Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Art and Design Museum Basel, the opening of the first world ABBA Museum in Stockholm. 

In Halle 20, the visitor can see the art of South Africa, and in Halle 26, China will show its different faces, with many cultural happenings offered to the public during the week-end. 

Indonesia, the official partner of the ITB, whose pavilion will be officially inaugurated today, promise to keep the visitors entertained and tempted to book the first flight to Jakarta. The Pavilion will have the shape of an old boat, traditionally used by fishermen.

The tickets can be purchased from the BVG kiosks at a better price - 12 Euro - than if bought from the fair. This purchase can be made till the 8th of March. The tickets can also be booked online. Between 2 and 4pm, on Sunday, there it is a special price of 8 Euro. Each ticket is qualified to enter a Tombola for a trip around the world. ITB will be open to the public from 10am to 6pm, Saturday and Sunday.

ITB Berlin, here I am!

I celebrate my 4-year anniversary since moving to the city of Berlin, with a little treat: this week I will be busy covering the most interesting news from the Tourism Fair. This is part of my larger professional project to dedicate more time to travel and travel writing in general. The good news, besides the lot of work that I will have to deal with in the next 5 days, is that I will be more than a crazy visitor running to gather leaflets: I am covering the seminaries, press conferences and news from the world of tourism as a journalist.Was so proud to wave my accreditation around!

Today was the day of the official press conference, and a lot of work of preparations of the pavilions. There were a couple of media events, among others an excellent presentation of the Hungarian Tourism Board, that I will extensively present on my dedicated travel blog: http://ilanaontheroad.wordpress.com. Tomorrow, will run to cover some nice events that most likely will be presented also on the wordpress blog.

Working hard to finish the work

For now, a couple of snapshots of the day, in a simpler way, just to be sure that my readers will return when my posts will be more developed.

- The word of the day was: 'sun', as everyone was surprised that after so many days and months of darkness, some wonders are still possible, also in Berlin.

- The site of the fair is still in construction and moving from a part to another is difficult, if not dangerous, as there are many trucks and hard work in process. Today, everything was fully experimental, with a lot of work and rock music to keep the right pace.

A short break of the Indonesian representatives

- The accreditation of bloggers was possible only online. The print and video media can do it still on the spot. Maybe there were not too many journalists yet, but everything was extremely fast. The media center is clean, with many facilities - wifi, computers, cloakroom, various publications and updates to be delivered soon. The transportation from the media center to the location of the press conferences is made with a special media shuttle bus, operating almost every 10 minutes. 

- Everyone is nice, talking English and ready to help the journalists. Quite a normal attitude, isn't it?

- The special guest this year is Indonesia. The video clip outlines the wonders that the visitor can encounter in such a diverse country that does not mean only 'Bali'. Personally, I was not impressed by the clip and found it quite common for many Asian countries. However, the minister for Tourism and Creativity, Dr. Mari Elka Pangestu, was very spontaneous and created the impression of hospitality and friendliness. More about Indonesia, later, when I will see the Pavilion and, eventually, I will benefit of the feet massage promised to the exhausted visitors. Politically speaking, there may be a new stage in the relations between Germany and Indonesia, a high level delegation visiting Berlin those days. 

Keep in touch!!