Fairs

The delegation promoted by the Galician Tourism Cluster in collaboration with the Tourism Agency of Galicia moves to one of the most important professional fairs for the tourism sector

Hotels and hotel chains, travel agencies, tour guides and entities will meet today and until next Friday in the fourth trade mission promoted by the Galician Tourism Cluster to the International Tourism Fair of Berlin ITB Berlin, which hosts the German capital from now until next Sunday, March 11 in which it remains the great professional fair for the tourism sector. In this 52nd edition, the Galician trade mission travels again with the Galician Tourism Agency in order to manage a workspace for its associates in the space that has Galicia within the stand of Turespaña. Over the next three days, more than fifty meetings with tour operators from the German market will take place there.

In addition to these meetings, which have been managed over the past few weeks, there will also be those planned by each of the companies participating in the mission, which will have the opportunity to hold meetings among the more than 100,000 professionals from 186 countries taking part in this international fair, an essential event for the internationalisation of the Galician tourist offer, which in this edition will focus on innovative and far-reaching trends in the tourism industry, such as over tourism.

German market, the second most important market after Portuguese
It should be remembered that the German is the second largest issuing market for Galicia in terms of the number of tourists that our community receives, after Portugal. In 2017 there were around 250,000 overnight stays from this country, a figure that represents 2.4% of the total number of overnight stays by foreign tourists during the past year, which increased again last year, reaching 23% of the total weight of the regulated demand. In addition, the German market continues to be one of the main originators of pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago. ç

If we add to these figures, 77% of the German population made at least one 5-day trip a year and 33 million Germans made 30.5 million short trips, that is to say, two to four days of duration (FUR 2017), all of them indicate that the German market “is a market of great interest for our offer, since we are looking for seasonalization and internationalization, we must continue to grow in occupation especially in the middle and low season, which will allow us to improve competitiveness and profitability”, explains the president of the Galician Tourism Cluster, Francisco González, who also travels in the commercial mission.

“According to the data we manage, the German market has increased its travel budget by 3% during 2017 and they preferably seek to travel in autumn with a packaged offer, which is usually purchased through travel agencies which fits very well with the Galician tourist offer,”says González.

A complete and quality tourist offer
The businessmen who travel in this trade mission will participate in meetings with both tour operators and travel agencies that work the Galician destination. All of them will be presented with the quality offer of Galicia as a quiet and sustainable tourist destination, both for those who already work it and among those who plan to include the community in their offer, presenting tourism products adapted to this market.

The mission involves representatives of the different associations and provincial federations of hotels and restaurants in the four provinces, travel and accommodation agencies, hotel complexes, tourist guides and intermediation companies specializing in active tourism or Camino de Santiago, among others