ITB Berlin Convention to Discuss Travel Trends, Issues
This year’s ITB Berlin Convention, March 10 to 12, is presenting a program with more than 200 speakers from science, politics and the travel industry. At the Africa Forum, at a discussion round with Najib Mohamed Balala, minister of tourism of Kenya, and Martina Kohl of the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF), Chief Mukuni of Zambia will be discussing how important tourism is among the measures for combating poverty, as well as the role of development aid.
At the ITB CSR Day, oceanographer and environmental activist Fabien Cousteau will be raising some fundamental issues. In the second keynote speech, he will be examining whether ocean protection and tourism are friends or foes. Along with other participants from the travel industry, Dr. Volker Böttcher, CEO, TUI Deutschland GmbH, will examine the topic of customer experiences as regards sales, and whether CSR is simply a fake concept.
Dr. Temel Kotil, CEO, Turkish Airlines, will present a keynote speech. At the global CEO Panel, discussion on the future of the world’s aviation industry will include Joachim Hunold, CEO, Air Berlin; Stefan Pichler, CEO, Jazeera Airways; and Emirsyah Satar, president and CEO, Garuda Indonesia. Mauro Oretti, vice president of sales and marketing, SkyTeam, will examine the future of strategic alliances in aviation.
Dr. Claudia Kemfert, head of the Energy, Transport and Environment Department at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), will open the ITB Global Future Summit at the ITB Future Day. Along with other experts, she will be discussing the main trends as regards demographics, climate change, natural resources, technology and consumer behavior. In a discussion round with other high-ranking participants, Peter Hill, CEO, Oman Air, will be analyzing whether luxury tourism is still a viable market.
Finally, the search engine giant Google will be represented at the Global Future Summit with Patrick Schönemann, geo sales manager, DACH & Nordics, Google Enterprise, as well as at the PhoCusWright@ITB Berlin Technology Convention with Javier González-Soria. The paper due to be held by the CEO of Google Travel Spain, entitled “What’s New With Google,” promises fascinating insights and a look ahead regarding the latest developments of the enterprise heading the World Wide Web.
