Fitur opened its doors yesterday for its 38th edition. It is a key event of the tourism industry and the first big conference in 2018. TroopTravel was there and is sharing the first impressions today. Let’s talk about our Fitur Highlights 2018.

Fitur Highlights 2018

• Conector Travel Accelerator – interesting from a startup perspective and especially if you are based in Spain and working in the Travel Tech industry, Conector is launching its first Travel Tech accelerator. Conector is an accelerator program for startups in seed phase. It is the third vertical program they are launching. Preconditions for participation are: Startup in Seed phase with full-time team and with a launched product or MVP evaluated. The launch of this program is for us with no doubt part of the Fitur Highlights 2018.
• Expedia – Expedia is one of the leading Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) in the industry and an important partner for search and booking engines in the industry. Many startups which are offering hotel booking services are using Expedia as their data source. While Expedia is opening up markets in Central and Eastern Europe, there are rumors that access to the API will become more difficult for low-performing webpages and startups. New requirements will force startups to generate bookings from the first days. The burden to gain access to the Expedia API is already difficult for startups. This trend will just put more pressure on startups while they are still pivoting and not yet fully focus on revenue maximization.
• Group Travel – One of our Fitur Highlights 2018 is the trend of providing travel services to groups. Both, Booking.com which is another big player in the OTA sector, as well as Expedia confirmed their interest in proving solutions for group travel. This is a much needed move and will as well help TroopTravel in its mission to bring people together easier.
• Personalization – Not a big surprise but still a part of our Fitur Highlights 2018 is the trend of personalization for travel experiences. Great startups and some big players like Evaneos are exhibiting their solutions on how to personalize the travel experience. Big data and artificial intelligence are key mechanisms for personalization.
• Corporate Travel – Surprisingly the amount of exhibitors focusing on corporate travel are very little. From the big players, only HRS was seen. Maybe Fitur is not the right platform for corporate travel providers.
• Augmented Reality – Augmented reality was big announced as THE trend for 2018, however, the actual use cases we discovered were very limited. Companies are still trying to figure out on how to create a real value for users.
• Location marketing – Somehow a big surprise was to see Syria among the location marketeers promoting Aleppo and Krac de Chevalier as tourist locations. While tourist infrastructure in those locations is still very limited, maybe participating at Fitur is a first step for this culturally rich country back into normality and hopefully towards a brighter and safer future.

Lesson learned for a startup

Some interesting Fitur Highlights 2018 for us and some lessons learned especially in relation with big companies: being a startup is not always easy and we are small in comparison to many big companies but Hey! we are creating innovation, we are offering services and products that you offerings are lacking! So next time, a startup comes to your booth and politely asks to talk to someone for example about innovation, don’t send them away with the argument that innovation is not of your interest. Maybe innovation is actually what you would need, Renfe? Or as well don’t tell them, that you can’t enter their booth if you don’t have a pre-arranged appointment. Yes, we are talking to you Iberia? Just listen them out. You never know what opportunities may arise.

In any case a great first day yesterday and let’s see what else we can add to our Fitur Highlights 2018 today! Share your highlights with us!