Tourism Innovation Summit 2021 Returns to Seville to Restart New Ways of Travel

Seville, Spain, April 27, 2021 / TRAVELINDEX / Tourism Innovation Summit 2021 (TIS) has announced the dates of its second edition from November 10 to 12, 2021 in Seville, Spain. The global summit of innovation and technology for the tourism sector has the mission of promoting the competitiveness of the tourism industry. An event focused on travel professional needs where technology and sustainability become key tools to boost the reactivation of the sector.

The digital acceleration we have lived in 2020 has also been experienced in the tourism sector. 83% of hotel chains are currently more likely to increase spending on technology. In a year where travel and mobility have been suspended because of Covid-19, the tourism industry is being prepared to start its activity again adapted to a new normal. In this context, TIS2021 will present new trends related to emerging technologies such as the Internet of Behavior, cloud, cybersecurity, big data, robotics, smart business models, or hyperautomatization, among others that are transforming competitiveness on travel. The event will also showcase disruptive solutions such as artificial intelligence, machine learning or predictive analytics.

News such as the health passport, or growing trends such as individual travel, LGTBI + tourism, smart destinations or sustainable tourism, will also be topics that will be discussed and analysed in the second edition of the Tourism Innovation Global Summit 2021. More than 300 international experts and world leaders of the tourism sector will discuss the challenges that their companies face nowadays and how to prepare for them. All this through different agendas specifically designed for each professional profile and 8 vertical forums for each segment of the industry – destinations, hospitality, travel & mobility, distribution channels, activities & attractions, MICE, business travel, leisure & culture travel-.

Tourism Innovation Summit has the support of the Seville City Council, the Junta de Andalucía, and the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism of Spain, as well as international tourism organizations such as the WTTC, UNWTO, ETOA, Skal International, European Cities Marketing (ECM), NECSTouR, MPI or PATA.

Tourism Innovation Summit responds to the challenges of the tourism industry

The tourism industry faces one of the most difficult moments in the last decades after the health crisis. It is estimated that there are between 100 and 120 million direct jobs at risk in the tourism sector worldwide, most of them in SMEs. The collapse in international travel represents a loss of 1.3 trillion dollars in revenue.

Covid-19 has impacted the economy of the tourism sector around the world; but despite these figures, it is estimated that the recovery will be around 79% in 2021 and that business travel spending will exceed 1.36 trillion dollars in 2022. TIS2021 is the forum in which strategies will be defined, solutions and new business models to make these forecasts come true, accelerating the reactivation of the industry’s competitiveness and creating safe destinations that restore confidence to tourists and professional travellers.

TIS2020: a success story of the first in-person tourism event

The first edition of the Tourism Innovation Summit counted even with the support of Her Majesty Queen Leticia, who highlighted the role of TIS2020 as “a summit that will provide more elements of analysis to continue expanding the value chain of the tourism industry and its undeniable capacity to generate employment and revalue local socioeconomic ecosystems”. The first edition counted with the participation of CEOs and Presidents of companies such as City Sightseeing Worldwide, Amadeus, TUI, American Airlines, among others, and tourism board representatives from destinations such as Ile de France Region, Regional Government of Tuscany or Lapland Regional Council. Together with them, more than 1,200 representatives and industry leaders from 16 countries attended the event in person and more than 3,800 people from 56 countries connected by streaming to the different conferences, showing a high interest of the sector in this summit.

TIS2020 also became the first professional event in the tourism sector held in person in Spain last November, with a strict and extensive safety and hygiene measures to guarantee a safe business environment for all attendees.