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🎮 FITURTECHY 2025, held on January 22-24 in Madrid, celebrates its 17th edition, inspired by "The Thousand and One Nights", featuring influential speakers like Jorge Marichal and Javier García Cuenca. Focused on technology and sustainability, the event includes four thematic forums and a futuristic hotel showcase, with over 40 partnering companies, discussing topics like digital transformation and AI. Notable events include the Sergestur awards on January 22 and the Hosteltur Personality of the Year award on January 23.

✈ Spanish tourism market travels for 2025 are selling well, with a return to early bookings and long-distance destinations like Japan, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Viajes El Corte Inglés (VECI), Nautalia Viajes, and Ávoris Corporación Empresarial highlight these trends, with Europe and national destinations maintaining high demand levels since 2024. Ávoris offers new direct routes from Spain to New Delhi, India, and additional destinations like Cuba and Mauritius. For 2025, Japón remains a top choice among Spanish tourists, with Tailandia, Uzbekistán, and Cabo Verde also showing strong sales, thanks to direct flights. Nautalia Viajes adds new flight options including India, Tailandia, Zanzíbar, Colombia, Orlando, and Cabo Verde. Early booking benefits lead to optimism for 2025.

🏨 Hotel prices in Barcelona are set to soar by November 2028 due to administrative measures limiting competition while demand continues to grow. The City Council will not grant new tourist housing licenses or renew existing ones, resulting in the disappearance of over 10,000 tourist apartments. Barcelona's hotel sector expects significant rate hikes, with hotel tariffs increasing in double digits over the past three years. Despite a 0.7% drop in tourists in 2024 to 15.5 million, spending per person per night rose by 8.7% to €99.71, contributing to a record economic impact surpassing €10 billion. Average stay duration remained at 4.7 nights.

🏖 Quintana Roo, Mexico, anticipates over 20 million visitors in 2024 despite global tourism challenges and elections in Mexico and the US. Key airports Cancún, Cozumel, Chetumal, and Tulum averaged 600 daily flights, with a peak of 765. Cancún Airport hit a record 691 operations on January 6, 676 on March 23, and 665 on December 28. Tulum Airport matched its highest one-day flight operations with 56 on December 21. In early December, the region received 38 flights from the US, 27 domestic, 18 from Canada, 17 from Europe, and 16 from Latin America. Hotel occupancy in mid-December was led by Costa Mujeres at 83.2%, Cancún at 78.6%, and Puerto Morelos at 78.5%, with Riviera Maya reaching 79.5%, Tulum 75%, Cozumel 65.8%, Isla Mujeres 64.2%, and Gran Costa Maya 56.7%.

🛫 Jon Arriaga, president of Dit Gestión, warns that travel campaigns for seniors like Imserso are impacting travel agency profitability. Senior programs, known as "multi Imsersos," are increasing in duration throughout the year, leading to lower travel prices and margins. Agencies earn minimal commissions, for instance, only €14.50 per Imserso booking in the 2022-2023 season, insufficient to cover operational costs. In Castilla y León, only 16 agencies manage 33,000 spots for the "Club de los 60" program, excluding 397 retailers from sales participation.

🏖 Destinia aims to open a new office in Turkey as part of its expansion plan, with 60% of its revenue coming from international sources. CEO Ricardo Fernández targets over €250 million in 2025, a 10% interannual growth. Despite breaking ties with Trivago, Destinia sees Turkey as a strategic location for growth. December sales hit record numbers, and a tourism rebound in Egypt and Morocco is expected.

🏨 On January 3rd, Dertour acquired two hotels for Club Aldiana in Andalusia, Spain and Calabria, Italy, with 280 and 290 rooms respectively, focusing on exclusive resort expansion. Spain shattered its international tourist record with 88.5 million arrivals by November 2024, a 10.7% increase from the previous year, and a 16.7% increase in tourist spending reaching €118.693 billion. Barcelona recorded 22 hotel transactions in 2024, a 5.5% investment decrease from 2023, amounting to €578 million, representing 17% of Spain's hotel investment.

📖 New In Revive Valencia, organized by Atlas Tecnológico at the Universidad de Valencia's Fundación Universidad-Empresa, featured over a dozen international reconstruction experts. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose from London School of Economics estimated a recovery timeline of 18 months through consensus. Adonai Herrera-Martínez of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) urged planning a sustainable city for 15 years ahead. Speakers highlighted the DANA as an opportunity for Valencia's development and emphasized coherent collaboration with civilians at the core. The need for a unified management model using data to turn crises into opportunities was discussed, with a focus on sustainable reconstruction and investment in tourism as a key economic driver.

📈 The MICE sector in Spain saw a business volume of €13.367 billion in 2023, anticipated to exceed €14.800 billion by end of 2024 and potentially reach €15.200-€15.600 billion in 2025. Global business travel spending is forecasted to grow by 10.4% in 2024, with Europe trailing Asia-Pacific. Challenges include sustainability, diversification of destinations, content-rich events, and the adoption of AI technologies.

📲 Two youngsters from the same neighborhood purchased the same hotel room for the same day using different phones; one with Android, the other with Apple. The Apple user was charged more, demonstrating "price discrimination" based on the assumption that iPhone users are willing to pay more. This practice is common in transport and tourism, leveraging algorithms to maximize profits from customers' willingness to pay, preferences, and habits. Large portals like Booking have an advantage by knowing customer profiles, unlike individual hotels, and can optimize prices for their benefit, often taking significant commissions. With new regulations, hoteliers will assess what Booking offers versus what they can achieve independently. This presents a challenge, especially for smaller hoteliers, in the competitive online bed-selling market.