THURSDAY 5 th MARCH 2015 ITB QUICKFINDER INSIDE DAY 2 NEWS ITB BERLIN CONVENTION LUXURY TRAVEL REGION: AMERICAS Taleb Rifai UNWTO Secretary-General Olivier Grémillon Managing Director EMEA, Airbnb Thibault Ruffat Head of European Tourism –Global Marketing for Value Retail David Goldstein President and CEO, Canadian Tourism Commission “Promoting sustainable tourism is UNWTO’s principal mandate as the United Nations Specialised Agency for tourism.” Read page 7 “The sharing economy isn’t only a niche phenomenon. It is already part of our daily life.” Read page 15 “ITBBerlin is the perfect platform from which to start – as well as be a part of – conversations that are prevalent to our industry” Read page 25 “Canada’s 150th birthday is just around the corner in 2017 and there’s going to be tremendous opportunity for all of us to drive visitation” Read page 35 Hall 22A Stand 104 Growing Pie, Growing Appetite ITBBerlin: increasingly at the heart of market dynamics Hall 17 Stand 108 Destinations are multiplying their efforts to snatch a bigger slice of the global tourism pie, which is itself growing incessantly. The thought leadership and business catalyzing factors at ITBBerlin all augur to foster this growth even further, and to allow the most dynamic players to communicate their offerings to a market hungry for new ideas and concepts. The arm-wrestle between Europe and the USA for the lion’s share of “western” tourism, via their marketing organisations – Brand USA and the European Travel Commission – is an interesting example. And the ambitious declarations of the Chinese vice-premier, Wang Yang at the last WTTC Global Summit in Hainan demonstrate that the game is far from being limited to these two players. This is also true for the different tourism sectors such as cruising, golf tourism or luxury travel – three sectors that are booming – featured in today’s edition. Much comes down to the success of channel strategy, and the presence of Priceline CEO Darren Huston at ITBBerlin highlights the importance of this. See our exclusive interview – page 16 Darren Huston President & CEO, The Priceline Group DESTINATION SPOTLIGHT: AMERICAS Seattle, Washington, USA In today’s edition our spotlight turns to the Americas – according to the UNWTO the world’s best performing region in relative terms with growth of 7%, welcoming an additional 13 million international tourists and raising the total to 181 million. Growth was driven by North America (+8%), where Mexico posted a double-digit increase, and the Caribbean (+7%). Arrivals to Central America and South America (both +6%) grew at double the rate recorded in 2013 and well above the world average – From page 31.
