#9: 'MICE Conversations' - FITUR Madrid, May 2021. In this episode I attend FITUR Madrid, the first major travel trade event to place in Europe since the pandemic. FITUR 2021 took place at IFEMA Madrid, May 19-23rd 2021. Interviewed are IFEMA's Director General Eduardo Lopez Puertas and Juan Daniel Nunez, Editor of Smart Travel News.

Useful links for FITUR and Smart Travel News.
https://www.ifema.es/en/fitur
https://www.ifema.es/portal-transparencia/informacion-institucional-organizativa/eduardo-lopez-puertas-bitaube
https://www.smarttravel.news

This vidoe and podcast was recorded May 19th 2021, at FITUR in Madrid.

This pocast is also available as a video, on the TravelMedia.ie YouTube channel.
https://youtu.be/rnvnhOL4UtQ

Topics and questions, timeline or video chapters.
00:00 - Intro and welcome, Michael Collins, MD TravelMedia.ie
01:09 - IFEMA Director General Eduardo Lopez Puertas.
05:28 - Juan Daniel Nunez, Editor of Smart Travel News

Transcript:
- Hello and welcome. This is Michael Collins here from TravelMedia.ie and MICE Conversations. Today we are doing things a little bit differently, instead of a Zoom recording. I am coming to you from FITUR in Madrid. FITUR is the first major travel conference to take place here in Europe since the start of the pandemic. So during the course of FITUR I will talk to the Director General of IFEMA who are the hosts of FITUR, and also to Smart Travel News, a travel trade publication here at Madrid. What's important as you see images of FITUR taking place is not numbers but the fact that the FITUR is actually taking place. This is the first event as I said earlier to take place again in the travel industry. The first major event. The fact that it is open it is running and it is successful. And the fact that they have tested everybody who has come into the exhibition grounds is crucially important. Others will be following this. Others will watch and learn from it. ITB, IBTM, World Travel Market, ITB Asia, will all be watching to see how successful FITUR Madrid 2021 is.

- We are in a venue called IFEMA which re-opens after almost one year of having it closed. And we're celebrating the most important tourism fair in Spain, which is FITUR. This is the first international fair that it's made in Europe. And we are very happy as far as you know, we have lots of international guests coming. We have almost 43% of our exhibitors are international. And we feel that we have really re-opened our venue and that this we would like to be the first upon a lot of fairs to be done within this year. After the first day, we've seen that we had 15,000 people that came yesterday essentially. but also we have 25,000 people that digitally were connected. So, we're very happy. We see that there's a very good atmosphere within the venue. We see people that are making business and we see that we have started. Everybody getting into our venue need to pass COVID test. We have launched a special app for them to be able to do it here, if necessary or if they can with it, that will be valid as well. But, we're very happy. It has worked very well and we've had no complaints which is a very good point, you know because everybody's very aware that with these new normality that is needed. The measures we have applied for making this fair has been very strict. So we don't have lanyards on paper every everything is digital. So once you get here, you need to pass through the gates and that's connected to your PCR test. So if that's okay, you can get in. If not, you're not allowed to. Then the special measures, we have 50% of the total capacity and we have restricted that to that. We are measuring also when people just conglomerate in certain areas. We also have a special a measure, of course you know wearing face masks and the liquids are necessary to be here. And then, especially for food they must be carried.....................