Automatic

📍 Amadeus, a travel technology company, reported at Fitur 2025 that long-distance flight bookings to Asia and the Middle East have surged by 290.37% from 2021 to 2024. In the past year alone, searches for flights to these regions increased by 20%. The most favored destinations among Spanish travelers included China, Japan, Thailand, Turkey, and Indonesia. Christian Boutin, Amadeus Spain and Portugal's General Manager, highlighted the personalized travel experiences enabled by AI, high-speed Wi-Fi, and 5G advancements. Popular destinations within Asia and the Middle East are attracting visitors through cultural, technological, and natural offerings, with improved accessibility and tourism-friendly policies contributing to this rise in 2025.

🏨 Port Hotels launches "Port Shapers," a loyalty club offering exclusive benefits to direct booking customers. The program stems from their "Shaped by you" philosophy and aims to provide a more personalized experience reflecting the desires of their clients. Three membership levels are available, determined by the number of accumulated nights. Benefits include guaranteed best prices, booking history access, early offers and discounts, welcome gifts, and stay giveaways. This initiative is part of Port Hotels' strategy to enhance direct sales and strengthen customer relationships, following a business model restructuring a year prior. Locations include Benidorm, Elche, Alicante, Calpe, Denia, and Valencia.

📖 Thinktur launched the 10th edition of its ebook at Fiturtechy, titled “Digital Transformation of the Destination: Digital Twins in the Tourism Sector,” featuring contributions from eight Tourism Technology Centers: ADA, Invattur, ITH, Eurecat, Tecnalia, Turistec, Vicomtech, and Segittur. ADA's Living Lab Cultural at the Alhambra in Granada uses big data for the digitalization of the site, allowing predictive analyses of tourist flows and improved conservation. Eurecat's 3D digital twin for Hotel Alimara and Chök stores in Barcelona visualizes water, energy, and mobility consumption data. Invattur and ITH showcased the ITH TechYroom 1.0 at RH Corona del Mar Hotel in Benidorm, involving over 25 companies. Tecnalia, with Inkolan, created Bilbao's digital twin infrastructure, capturing real-time data on water, gas, electricity, telecoms, and municipal networks, currently implemented in a district of Bilbao. Special collaborations included Libelium's Iris360 for sharing scenarios and Smart City Cluster's digital twin tourism projects in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, SUSTTWIN, Immersia Data Visualization, and an AI-powered digital guide of Salvador Dalí for Barcelona.

🏖️ Marian Rojas, psychiatrist and writer, along with her mother, economist and notary Isabel Estapé, discussed the connection between tourism and emotional well-being to over 200 professionals during Grupo Hotusa's "La industria de la felicidad" event. The talk, moderated by journalist and writer Màrius Carol, was held at the Eurostars Madrid Tower hotel under the title "La felicidad como destino: una charla sobre turismo y bienestar". Both speakers agreed that traveling is therapeutic, enhancing cultural and intellectual development, and argued that the preparation and memories from travel are significant sources of happiness.