About a hundred well-known faces from the travel industry attended the third edition of Travel Hashtag, the conference event created to promote networking, business matching and exchange of ideas on the future of tourism.
An innovative format, the one staged in Milan at the Bleisure IVH Group, expanded for the occasion to a wider audience thanks to live streaming provided by the talk “20:21 Tourism in the evening”.
Nicola Romanelli, founder and president of Travel Hashtag, and Andrea Chiappini, managing partner of IVH Group opened the conference, which, with the video message of Alessandra Priante, Unwto Europe director, immediately focused on the state of health of tourism in the world, explaining how “we need a strong coordination between States to make a difference and restart tourism”.
Enit president Giorgio Palmucci, connected from Doha, took the floor to share Enit’s strategies for capturing the high-end market: “Intercepting tourist flows linked to major sporting events such as the Ryder Cup is one of the levers for promoting Italy as a destination to a high-level target“.
Luca Martinazzoli, General Manager Milano & Partners, opened the section dedicated to Milan. The Milan hosting this edition is the most innovative Italian city, projected into the future and a reference point for the restart of business and leisure tourism.
“We are very positive,” he said, “we are seeing a change in the behaviour of those who visit the city, and this is also leading us to change the strategy with which we communicate. We are adopting a younger language to intercept the new traveller, speaking not only about the new skyline, but giving voice to the soul of the city“.
Armando Brunini, ceo of Sea Milan Airports, shared a visionary and imaginative speech with the hashtag #aeroportidelfuturo. A journey that winds its way through digital applications, contactless routes, digitisation and continuous innovation.
“We are building the journey of the future,” he explained, “which will see connections with vertical take-off vehicles and a network of verti-ports between the city and the airport, a security system based on biometrics and a speeding up of processes thanks to digitalisation and technologies such as face boarding. Everything is not ready today, but it will be ready tomorrow”.
Sustainability and local tourism were at the centre of the speech by Leonardo Cesarini, ceo of Trenord, who presented the “Gite in Treno” project, which also includes a guide to rediscover Lombardy by train, produced in collaboration with Lonely Planet, as a virtuous example of how to support and develop this segment of tourism, which responds to a rapidly growing demand in our region, but more generally in Italy and Europe.
“We are only at the beginning,” he said, “of a process that we intend to develop over the next few years and that will lead us to the 2026 Olympics. The arrival of the new trains that will renew our fleet will improve our customers’ travel experience and will certainly add value to their choice of train over other means of transport”.
And in a Milan that is the capital of fashion, Daniele Rutigliano, Business Development and Tourism Director of Scalo Milano Outlet & More, could not fail to speak about incoming and shopping tourism.
“Our communication is based on the storytelling of being ‘Milanese‘: a style that embraces all our activities, made of fashion, design and experiences also in food,” he said.
