TIS – Tourism Innovation Summit 2022 kicks off today in Seville

Tuesday, November 1, 2022

TIS – Tourism Innovation Summit 2022 kicks off today in Seville (Spain) as the world’s leading event for tourism innovation. The third edition of TIS will generate an economic impact of 18 million euros in the city of Seville and will bring together more than 6,000 national and international congress participants who will be able to learn how digitalisation, sustainability, diversity and new traveller behaviours are transforming and setting the roadmap for the sector for the next decade.

For three days more than 150 companies such as Accenture, Amadeus, CaixaBank, City Sightseeing Worldwide, The Data Appeal Company, EY, Mabrian, MasterCard, Telefónica Empresas, Convertix, Keytel, PastView and Turijobs, among others, will showcase their latest solutions in Artificial Intelligence, Cloud, Cybersecurity, Big Data & Analytics, Marketing Automation, Contactless technology and Predictive Analytics, among others, for the tourism sector.

In addition, more than 400 international experts will share experiences, success stories and strategies to improve the competitiveness of the sector: Gerd Leonhard, keynote speaker and CEO of The Futures Agency; Ada Xu, EMEA regional director of Fliggy – Alibaba Group; Cristina Polo, EMEA market analyst at Phocuswright; Bas Lemmens, CEO of Meetings. com and President of Hotelplanner EMEA; Sergio Oslé, CEO of Telefónica; Eleni Skarveli, Director of Visit Greece, UK and Ireland; Wouter Geerts, Research Director of Skift; Deepak Ohri, CEO of Lebua Hotels and Resorts; Jelka Tepsic, Deputy Mayor of Dubrovnik; Emily Weiss, Global Travel Industry Lead at Accenture; and Eduardo Santander, CEO of the European Travel Commission; among many others.

TIS brings together experts to define what tourism will look like in 2030

The Tourism Innovation Global Summit will gather tourism industry leaders from all around the world to address the challenges facing national and international tourism businesses and the trends that will shape tourism in the coming years. The pandemic has reinvented the way we travel, generating new experiences that the sector is promoting in its strategies. Within this framework, Claudio Bellinzona, Co-Founder & COO at Tui Musement, Emily Weiss, Senior Managing Director, Global Travel Industry Lead at Accenture, and Deepak Ohri, CEO at Lebua Hotels and Resorts, will explain how travel is being redefined in a constantly changing world and how the sector is moving forward with innovative projects that, at the same time, are committed to protecting the health of travellers, preserving the environment and responding to a volatile panorama.

Anko van der Werff, CEO at SAS Scandinavian Airlines, Rafael Schvartzman, IATA Regional Vice President for Europe, Mansour Alarafi, Founder and Chairman at DimenionsElite, David Evans, CEO at Collison Group, and Luuc Elzinga, President at Tiqets, will analyse and discuss how industry leaders have reacted during the pandemic and how they have been implementing successful measures of action.

Towards a more sustainable and inclusive tourism

Sustainability will continue to shape the future of tourism. A session featuring Kees Jan Boonen, Global Head of Travel Sustainable Program at Booking.com, Carolina Mendoça, DMO Coordinator at Azores Destination Management Organization, Patrick Richards, Director at TerraVerde Sustainability, and Paloma Zapata, Chief Executive Officer at Sustainable Travel International,will offer a 360º vision of how territories are working to be unique in their respect for the environment.

Along the same lines, Cynthia Ontiveros, Special Segments Manager at Los Cabos Tourism Board, will detail the strategies that the main destinations are implementing, aligned with the SDGs set out in the 2030 Agenda, to ensure that queer travellers have a safe and satisfactory experience. In addition, Carol Hay, CEO at McKenzie Gayle Limited, Justin Purves, Senior Account Director UK & Northern Europe at Belmond (LVHM Group) and Philip Ibrahim, General Manager at The Social Hub Berlin will discuss best practices and provide advice on how to build a corporate culture that welcomes real diversity and eliminates discrimination.

Another key element of this edition will be inclusive tourism. Marina Diotallevi, Head of Ethics, Culture and Social Responsibility Department of UNWTO, the United Nations World Tourism Organization, will highlight practical tools to improve the level of accessibility of tourism infrastructures, products and services. Together with Natalia Ortiz de Zarate, Manager of the International Committee ISO /TC 228 Tourism and related services and Responsible for Tourism at UNE (Spanish Association for Standardisation) and Jesús Hernández, Accessibility and Innovation Director at the ONCE Foundation, who will discuss how the arrival of the new accessible tourism standard contributes to carrying out specific actions to achieve greater opportunities for standardisation and to advocate for the enjoyment of travel and stays under equal conditions.

Another important element in terms of inclusion is the commitment to diversity and the LGTBQ+ segment, which has become the cornerstone of the tourism recovery. César Álvarez, Strategic Projects Director at Meliá Hotels International, Sergio Zertuche Valdés, Chief Sales & Marketing Officer at Palladium Hotel Group and Oriol Pàmies, President & Founder of Queer Destinations, will explain how the LGTBQ+ group has been one of the first to return to travel after the pandemic and what actions are being taken by the industry’s leading companies to welcome them in the best possible way.

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