It's a big week in the world of travel tourism; not only is Berlin hosting the world's largest travel trade show (9-11 March), but also celebrating 50 years of travel tourism history. The very first ITB Berlin show opened in 1966 — pre internet, pre Expedia, pre keyless entry and pre Kim Kardashian.
It was a simpler time
It was also a time before ChihiraKanae, Toshiba's humanoid robot, who will make her first trip to Europe to attend ITB Berlin. Accompanying her will be Dr. Cal Benedikt Frey, who'll speak about how the future of the international tourism industry might look and how artificial intelligence and humanoid robots might be a part of it.
Other topics of particular interest to hoteliers will include responsible tourism, adventure travel, business travel, eTravel, gay and lesbian travel, cultural tourism, social responsibility, and the biggie — technology.
After the recent whirlwind of technological development and industry shake-ups, technology has become a sizzling topic for 2016. Everyone wants to know what the future will hold and what will be needed to thrive in this brave new techie world. To that end, ITB Berlin is gathering the brightest technological minds under one roof. They'll be there to identify problems and offer solutions, introduce new products and technological innovation and offer insight into hot topics like big data, analytics and travel search and booking processes on Google (including what to expect from the company's new Destination Mobile Interface).
This is one party hetras would certainly never miss
Under the helm of fearless leader CEO Martin Reents, the team — including CTO Dr. Stephan Wiesener, Uli Pillau, Tanja Baier and Astrid Neumann —will be in among the fray in hall 8.1, booth 114-117, to answer questions and have a chat. If you're in the area, pop by, we'd love to meet you!
...
