FITUR, International Tourism Fair

Many may wonder why a blog related to the wine world, suddenly posts something about the most important tourism fair in Spain, and one of the largest in Europe: FITUR.

Visits to wineries have always existed, but until a few years ago it wasn´t really popular; after some years, wineries start to create activities to improve its offer, update and adapt it to the demands of tourists. The wine has become essential, a way of publicizing wines, promoting apellations of origin and promote tourism to these wine regions. All of this not only benefits winemakers; hotels, restaurants, souvenir shops and other complementary services are affected by this recent tour mode.

In February 2013 I was lucky to visit FITUR, the International Tourism Fair, takes place in Madrid and it is one of the most important tourism fairs in Europe.

This year will be held on 28th, 29th, 30th and 31st of January and ends on February 1st.

During the fair, there are meetings with travel agencies, tour operators, offices of national and international tourism; conferences are held, courses, competitions... contracts are closed, you meet a lot of people, you can enjoy the shows and the most important thing, you learn a lot. See what's abroad, how they are doing, how we can improve or what we actually do well.

The Wine Routes are also present in this fair, the ones I know more: The Wine Route of the Rioja Alta and The Wine Route of the Rioja Alavesa advertise routes in the stands of the autonomous communities to which they belong.

But to what extent is sufficient the presence of the routes?

It is true that they have information from the different establishments that are part of the routes, and give all the information available, it would be interesting that representatives of the wineries could be there, selling their products, but it also would be a chaos if every technician should go there.

In Fitur various conferences of different topics such as technology or environment are made. Why not trying a wine conference? It could take place on a particular day and it would bring together industry professionals, it would be interesting and a blow for this new form of tourism.

Soraya Meinema