· Top-quality offers across the exhibition’s three areas, Leisure, BeTech and MICE Village, where operators will meet profiled top buyers from all over the globe

· An unmissable opportunity to find your way at a time when the industry is being redefined, with dozens of events within the conference programme’s four themed areas: Food Travel, Travel Lab, Hot Topics and Travel Tech

Milan, December 15th, 2021 - A unique multi-target approach with the capacity to combine an effective international supply and demand matching platform with opportunities for discussion, key to appreciating emerging trends. All this, and much more, is BIT - The International Tourism Exchange, taking place face-to-face once again at fieramilanocity from Sunday the 13th to Tuesday the 15th of February.

Plus, during this time of ongoing uncertainty, this ability to foresee trends and translate them into business terms, both in what exhibitors' offer and what is offered by the extensive conference programme, will provide BIT 2022 with even greater added value.

Areas and hosted buyer programme

In order to meet operators’ diverse needs, the exhibition is divided into three areas defined by key tourism issues: Leisure, MICE and BeTech.

Leisure brings all forms of Italian and international tourism supply and demand together, from food and drink tourism to slow and sustainable tourism, featuring a range of offers from across the globe.

BeTech brings together companies that offer business & networking services and exclusive digital and social media content, both physical as well as virtual. It represents the true spirit of BIT, featuring the technological avant-garde in the industry and making it more visible than ever before.

MICE Village is an area entirely focused on industry events, meetings and conferences, reserved exclusively for MICE operators and top buyers. It will include everything from business travel to corporate offers.

As usual, thanks scouting carried out by Fiera Milano, BIT 2022 can rely on a hosting programme that will attract high profile buyers from Europe (41%), Russia and CIS countries (20%) and North America (15%), as well as from Central and South America, the Middle East and Africa to Milan, representing all major categories.

To date, there has been particular interest from the United States , Russia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Canada.

An extensive programme of events

Capitalising on the positive knowledge sharing experience in the 2021 digital edition, as well as the well-established tradition of in-person events, the exhibition area at BIT 2022 will be supplemented with an extensive programme of conferences, conventions and in-depth seminars. This year the four traditional macro-areas, Food Travel, Travel Lab, Hot Topics and Travel Tech, will be joined by the Sustainability area, which will cut across all areas along with innovation and the new “duty of care” towards the traveller.

An abundance of interconnected themes feature in the Food Travel area, centred on food and wine tourism. The ‘The perfect combination of digital solutions and local experience’ event will discuss how food and drink tourism is increasingly evolving into a state of mind, an experience enabled by a fusion of innovation, tradition and localness.

Meanwhile, the ‘Food and drink tourism: greener, more inclusive and more social’ event will illustrate how, in this segment, the traveller feels a growing desire to take part in experiences characterised by a green approach.

Equally extensive and diverse are the outlooks presented in the Hot Topics area.

‘The metamorphosis of business travel: strategies that are dictating recovery’ will help operators prepare for a decisive relaunch in business tourism using hybrid approaches to safely manage all stages of travel, while ‘Risk manager: the profession of the future’ will outline factors that will make this role which, until now, has been more common in other industries, a vital one.

An opportunity to look toward the medium-term future alongside major supply chain players is presented by ‘Travel towards 2025 with top players in the Italian travel industry’, with the participation of institutions, tourism bodies, tour operators and travel agencies, MICE and hospitality operators, as well as carriers.

An outlook that also features innovation as a cross-cutting theme is ‘Technology and partnerships: how tour operators are planning their own future’, which will explore how the growing role of technology can be combined with travel agencies’ consultancy value. Also featuring the digital ecosystem, as well as sustainability and best practices, is ‘High-performance technology for climate-protecting travel: some practical cases’.

‘Who will win the organised tourism e-commerce challenge?’ will explore the boom in travellers use of more direct digital contacts over the past two years, such as WhatsApp, calling for them to be featured at all touchpoints.

One key to relaunching will definitely be greater professionalism from operators, who are the focus of BIT Milan’s entire macro-area, Travel Lab.

The many events aimed at promoting professional growth include ‘Technology beneficial to the circular user experience’, focusing on how to improve the user experience using accessible and sustainable innovations, and ‘The future of hospitality learning’, exploring the theme of enabling young talent in the industry with innovative training tools.

There will even be a focus on next-generation topics, such as ‘Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Predictive Marketing in the Food and Beverage Business’, discussing, among other things, using algorithms to optimise resources in this segment closely linked to hospitality.

Technology is now an established fact in tourism and can help support its relaunch during this peculiar historical phase, as highlighted by events in Travel Tech.

In ‘Hospitality and security: innovation will dictate new guidelines’ the speakers illustrate how new tools will support operators in guaranteeing maximum security for guests, as well as safeguarding economic sustainability.

Another much debated topic at the moment takes on a leading role in ‘Why big data is vital in the tourism industry and how to turn it into a key tool', while ‘Biometrics in aviation’ opens up a dialogue on an issue made highly topical with the pandemic.

And, speaking of current concepts, ‘The impact of the arrival of the metaverse in the travel industry’ will look at the impact this new immersive means will have on the industry.

Finally, there are events that feature Sustainability as a macro-theme, as well as a cross-cutting one.

For instance, recovery plans are talked about in relation to sustainability, but how is this achieved? This will be discussed in ‘NRRPs and local business networks: a major opportunity for circular development’, with insights into staycationing, granting funds and synergies between public and private actors. Sustainability as a social as well as environmental issue is addressed in ‘Travel as an ethical approach to the local area and its resources’.

One trend that has strongly emerged in recent months, that of the “digital nomads”, will be explored as an opportunity to relaunch business travel in ‘Bleisure and the new dimensions of travel with an approach that respects biodiversity’. Last but not least, 'Space Travel Enterprise: Players, First Departures and Expanding the Customer Experience’ addresses the adventurous conquest of additional layers of the atmosphere.

The BIT 2022 exhibition is taking place at fieramilanocity from February 13th to 15th, 2022.

For details: www.bit.fieramilano.it;  @bitmilano