Bit2015 will be held in the period running up to Expo at Fieramilano in Rho from Thursday 12 to Saturday 14 February. Through the Bit in the World project, in 2015, Bit is launching its internationalization strategy by stepping into one of the areas that has developed most rapidly in the last decade: China.
MILAN – According to the great masters of design, ‘Form follows function’. The maxim is very appropriate in the case of Bit2015. In fact, the completely new brand image that the International Tourism Exchange presented in these days is not just a superficial layer of make-up: it’s the visual synthesis of a strategy that focuses on an “all-in-one” format and international development so that Italian trade professionals and players from the rest of the world can expand together onto global markets. Bit2015 will also be able to take advantage of the timing and synergies from the event that Milan and the whole of Italy is working towards, EXPO 2015, focusing on another area of Italian excellence connected with tourism, food. Bit2015 will be held in the period running up to Expo at Fieramilano in Rho from Thursday 12 to Saturday 14 February.
“With the revolution that has been taking place in the formula of Bit, one of the Fair’s key events,” commented Managing Director of Fiera Milano S.p.A., Enrico Pazzali, “Fiera Milano has reached a new milestone in the task of renewing its strategy, proposing itself more and more as an all-round partner for promoting business in a process of internationalization which highlights the excellence of Italian products. We have already completed numerous projects which have successfully promoted the best of Italian products abroad, for example, fashion, professional hospitality and food. But the finest Italian product is Italy itself, and tourism is the economic and cultural dimension which expresses it best of all. In this context, with its new look and new content, Bit is once again the unrivalled benchmark for tourism.”
The sovereign event of tourism, staged for the last 35 years by Fiera Milano, is the only one in Italy that can bring together the demand and the offering of all the business sectors of tourism in one place. Bit2015 will be an unforgettable event for all the trade professionals of the sector and for people who love travel and new trends, because it will be adding three new segments to its classic Leisure sector: MICE, Luxury and Digital World; as well as the Annual Tourism Congress. And, through the Bit in the World project, in 2015, Bit is launching its internationalization strategy by stepping into one of the areas that has developed most rapidly in the last decade: China.
With this new concept, Bit2015 will be the first to get away from the old geographical style of tourism events. It will establish a new standard based on the across-the-board relevance of the product sectors involved. At Bit2015, various vertical events will take place at the exhibition at the same time, under one roof, offer the depth of niche events, with the unique added value that only Italy can offer of productive contamination between categories which are different but similar, as part of a complete scenario, in a sector which only a truly great event like Bit can achieve.
The renewal in progress is also symbolized graphically in its new brand image, a new, fresh dynamic logo, and its new corporate image. The logo has been conceived as a circle formed of intersecting parts, representing the fact that each individual component contributes to the experience of people who participate in Bit. The range of colors in the new logo, on the other hand, expresses the three themes that will be part of the new fair: Leisure, Luxury and MICE. The corporate image will feature in all the marketing and communication tools and in all the offline and online media viewed by the Bit public.
Bit2015 invites all the leading trade professionals in the national and international sectors to the fair scheduled at Fieramilano from Thursday 12 to Saturday 14 February 2015.
A Diamond to Support Business: Here are the New Featuires of the Bit2015 Concept
One and unique. It also has many facets and is a valuable resource, like the iconic diamond that represents it in the new brand image. The new all-in-one concept of Bit – the International Tourism Exchange – was revealed to trade professionals and private travelers. The exhibition now has many new features which will make the fair being staged in the year of Expo Milano 2015, at Fieramilano in Rho from Thursday 12 to Saturday 14 February 2015, even more dynamic and business-oriented. All the new features have a common thread: an innovative across-the-board approach to the market, based on business segments and no longer on geographical areas, combining the vertical nature of more specialized fairs with the broader, more complete vision of the markets which only a large fair like Bit in Italy can offer.
Here are the most important new features of Bit2015.
The new features of Bit begin in the Leisure zone where the demand and the offering of the tourism industry of Italy and the rest of the world will come together. Amongst other things, in the Italian section, a space has been set aside to encourage and promote the Art & Culture and Food & Wine segments. In fact, Bit, wants to support trade professionals by helping them to expand their range of tourism destinations and to sell the countries for what they are, leading to new trips and new activities. With this in mind, for the 2015 fair, a MICE segment has been added, to meet the requirements of people who organize conferences, meetings, incentives, and exhibitions. It will constitute a focus of commercial comparison in a highly professional setting, while ensuring the solidity of the contacts made and creating the potential for quality negotiations. MICE World means high-level contacts, networking, free matching and social media.
As its name suggests, Luxury World will focus on the luxury segment: a club of excellence, with an interesting, pleasant layout, for exhibitors from Italy and abroad and travel buyers from all over the world. The exhibitors will represent 5-star hotels, elegant residences on lakes, spa resorts, iconic hotels which have become symbols of cities, luxurious historic residences, boutique hotels, charming mountain refuges, shopping malls, DMCs and luxury services. The players of luxury travel will be able to meet in a refined, exclusive ambience with comfortable timescales and ambiences, thanks partly to the facilities provided: a Luxury Buyer Lounge and a Luxury Restaurant for informal get-togethers. Participating in Luxury World involves pre-arranged appointments, customized, all-inclusive exhibitions, precise organization and time spent in good company that can be shared by all the participants.
Digital World, on the other hand, will approach the fascinating world of innovative technologies developed for tourism. This area of the fair will bring together the business & networking services and exclusive digital and social content, for both physical and virtual applications, of the new Bit. At Digital World there will be two types of activities: an exhibition and matching area for OLTAs, Italian and foreign operators and multimedia and digital marketing services, and a program of networking and training events, with interesting new formats, a chance for professional operators to meet social influencers.
Bit2015 will be hosting profiled buyers from all over the world who are interested in meeting the sellers of Leisure, MICE, Luxury and the Digital World.
The meetings will be arranged in the exhibitor’s booth and the meeting schedule will be included in the exhibition package. Bit2015 has also decided to represent Italian buyers from the foreign tourism offering, thus increasing the number of specialized hosted buyers from Italy and abroad to 1,500.
The initiatives being planned to give even greater support to Italian companies operating in the Incoming sector to increase their level of internationalization are being given top priority. One of them, the Bit in the World project, aims to help Italian operators to develop new business opportunities in emerging markets. Another project being launched, Bit China, is aimed at entrepreneurs who want to propose their offering to the Chinese Outbound Market, using the GITF, the Chinese tourism fair held in Guangzhou, of which Fiera Milano is one of the organizers, as a springboard.
The last GITF fair attracted 750 exhibitors, 700 buyers and resulted in 21,000 business matches. Bit is offering Italian operators an all-inclusive package which will help them to optimize their investment in the Chinese market. The package is available to all exhibitors who confirm their participation in Bit2015 by 31 October 2014 and includes various services, such as training on the market and Chinese consumer habits, exhibition space in the Italy area, meetings with selected buyers and promotion and marketing activities.
Another part of the internationalization process is the Annual Tourism Congress being staged by Bit, a chance for international professionals to meet, with speakers from large companies, consultancy companies and the academic world talking about topical issues, development prospects and successful business models. A high-profile experience which will present trends, innovative research and case histories, and take a look at the future of technology and emerging countries.
Completing the picture of the new Bit 2015 is the rich offering of marketing & communication services: for example, the new, attractive Bit website and the Smart Catalogue which gives exhibitors immediate visibility; and the Best Promotion promotional package, which involves on- and offline activities and special sponsorships to ensure that people’s presence at the fair is as effective as it can be.
What’s more, the webitmag.it portal provides a constant flow of continuously updated information about tourism trends, market research and other news of a more general nature, backed up and enhanced by data and research.
“The new concept,” says Cristina Tasselli, Bit’s new Exhibition Director, who came up with the idea of relaunching the exhibition, “brings together a whole series of innovations which puts Bit back right in the center of the travel business. The basic philosophy is to take advantage of Bit and Fiera Milano’s longstanding expertise and to use it in a completely new way, getting away from the old geographically-based criteria to generate new opportunities from a unique combination of vertical meetings and the presence of the whole travel world in one place: it’s an unrivalled networking opportunity. At the same time, it’s a barometer that we can use to measure future trends, and provides an opportunity to meet the decision makers, experts on the sector, and buyers who have been carefully selected from various geographical areas and key product sectors.”
Tatiana is the news coordinator for TravelDailyNews Media Network (traveldailynews.gr, traveldailynews.com and traveldailynews.asia). Her role includes monitoring the hundreds of news sources of TravelDailyNews Media Network and skimming the most important according to our strategy.
She holds a Bachelor's degree in Communication & Mass Media from Panteion University of Political & Social Studies of Athens and she has been editor and editor-in-chief in various economic magazines and newspapers.
