Polish Tourism Organisation participated in the ITB ASIA trade show staged in Singapore on 17-19 October. The event showcases versatile offers prepared with the requirements of Asian travellers in mind.

Polish tourism businesses presented their offer as part of the national booth arranged by Polish Tourism Organisation (Polska Organizacja Turystyczna - POT). Their list included Mazurkas Travel, Almatour Opole, Hilton chain hotels in Poland, as well as PLL LOT, which in May launched direct flights between Singapore and nine Polish cities. The national airlines’ reputation is a guarantee of efficient air transport that constituted a strong argument in favour of Polish companies in B2B talks with their Asian business partners.

From an organizational viewpoint, the ITB ASIA trade show applies a well-proven exhibition model of its Berlin-set ITB counterpart, adapted to the criteria of the Asian market plus the expectations and requirements of customers representing the discussed region. This year’s edition was distinguished by a record-breaking number of more than 1,000 exhibitors and a similarly impressive group of buyers of products representing many fields of tourism, including the offer of cities, regions and countries, services of travel bureaus, hospitality sector, transport, healthcare tourism and meetings industry. Participants attended more than 25,000 prearranged business meetings and numerous thematic conferences, workshops and seminars.

The leading subject matter of ITB ASIA’s agenda focused on tourist market’s ongoing transformations resulting from the application of new technologies. Specialists analysing the trends of tourism economy, including speakers at ITB ASIA’s Marina Bay Sands convention centre, believe that tourism industry owes its recorded economic upturn of growth indicators to the increasingly widespread application of innovative technologies. The latter make travelling easier and facilitate customer services.  

Representatives of leading companies behind the technological solutions aimed at the travel sector, travel technology startups and key companies of the tourism services market were all involved in a discussion that, on the basis of a case study, made it possible to formulate a number of solutions intended to boost the profitability of many tourism industry fields. In the nearest future we should expect continued and rapid transformations affecting many areas, including management of recreational and business travel, hotel operations, gastronomy, relations between tourist brands and clients or even the methods of applying travel photos, sharing them with friends and documenting experiences, an important feature of the present-day travel style and sometimes even the main highlight of tourist trips.