FITUR 2016: Technology Is Here to Stay in the Travel Industry

FiturTech held its tenth edition in FITUR with a clear-cut motto: “Ten Years Advancing the Future of Tourism”. Therefore, this forum organized by the Hotel Technological Institute (ITH is the Spanish acronym) set out to celebrate this decade with flying colors: a recreation of a hotel guests will be staying in a few years from now.

This is a joint project pieced together by ITH and Emotion Experience, a company devoted to sensorial marketing, that also counted on the help provided by such heavyweights as Cisco, Cosentino, Domesticoshop, Fibratel, Gennion, HP, Oracle, Pikolin, Roca, Desso (Tarkett), POK Hotel, Inseltrade, Linguaserve and Bassols.

According to Jose Maria Pantoja, marketing manager at Consentino, said the hotel of the future will be marked by the integration of new technologies when it comes to managing the whole process of staying in a hotel, ranging from the check-in to the stay in the guestroom. At the same time, new technologies will be pivotal in room decoration and energy saving.

Tecnicalia, another company attending FITUR, showcased a few examples of the kind of new technologies that will be making the rounds in the near future, including hotel wearables, the chance to pay all charges and bills from the comfort of the guestroom, plus smart info desks fitted out with both virtual and immersive reality.

Imageen, another participating company in FiturTech, has a luring proposal in the works: the opportunity to travel back to the past. Through this project, visitors will get a chance to scour ancient ruins aided by his own gadgets, such as smartphones, tablets or goggles, to peek into what used to happen there.

This new edition of FITUR has let attendees take a closer look at the new technologies that will dominate the future of travel and tourism, stressing on artificial intelligence, robots, holograms, the Internet of things and Big Data.