tourism

Canary Islands awarded best European stand at the ITB in Berlin

The award, issued by the CBS International Business School, recognises the innovative design, the great efforts made to reduce carbon emissions, the presentation of the archipelago's gastronomy and the great business atmosphere at the Canary Islands' stand at the ITB in Berlin.

Canary Islands won the CBS International Business School award for the best stand in Europe at ITB Berlin for its innovative design, efforts to reduce carbon emissions, display of the archipelago’s gastronomy and business atmosphere.


Since 2000, CBS International Business School has been presenting the Best Exhibitor Awards (BEA) at ITB Berlin. Since then, the BEA has become one of the most prestigious awards at the world’s most important tourism fair and has established itself as a firm benchmark in the industry.

The Minister of Tourism, Yaiza Castilla, explained the shift towards sustainability in the islands’ participation in tourism fairs. “We always work to achieve the highest quality of our stand and, in addition to seeking the greatest possible visual impact so as not to go unnoticed, we set ourselves the goal of progressively reducing our carbon footprint, always in line with our strategy focused on achieving climate neutrality,” said Castilla.

CANARY ISLANDS’ STAND: HIGH-IMPACT VISUAL EFFECT

Canary Islands Tourism deployed in Berlin a space of 750 square meters that stood out for its striking design and its 16 large aerial cubes of strong visual impact, which functioned as huge showcases of the Canary Islands tourism offer and where audiovisual images of the eight islands were projected.

In addition to this, there were four hanging showcases with Canarian-inspired gardens and native flora, which had already been used at WTM and Fitur, as well as a high-resolution LED portico that led to the main area of the stand and which, together with the 18 large-format projection screens, managed to create a high-impact visual effect that captured the attention of visitors and the CBS International Business School evaluators.

Another aspect that was taken into consideration for the award was the reduction of the carbon footprint, which was achieved thanks to the installation of equipment, electronic devices and lighting with LED technology, which achieves greater luminosity with less electrical power consumption. With regard to the ITB 2019 installation, Islas Canarias achieved a reduction in total electricity consumption of 30%.

In addition, new furniture was used to reduce the volume of material to be transported, thus reducing the carbon footprint of the stand. By using easily disassembled and stackable pieces, the amount of space and weight was greatly reduced, leading to a 20% reduction in transport volume. Finally, the stand used the digital application created by the public company of the Regional Ministry to replace paper.

With regard to the great business atmosphere achieved by Canary Islands Tourism, the design of the stand took into account the optimisation of the public’s routes, avoiding any obstacle that could interfere with the transparency of the space, with a distribution that delimited the public areas from the private ones. Thus, apart from the counters, the professionals had 24 boxes available for individual meetings.

Finally, the presence of Canarian gastronomy was boosted thanks to the successful juice shop and the area for tasting products from the archipelago and the wine tasting sessions, with the participation of Hotels School of the Canary Islands (Hecansa) and GMR Canarias.

SELECTION CRITERIA

To award the prize, CBS International Business School follows a meticulous process. The thousands of exhibitors who attend ITB Berlin each year are evaluated in a total of 11 categories based on a detailed catalogue of criteria that has been constantly optimised over the past two decades to minimise the subjective influence of the evaluators in the assessment.

The decisive criterion for the evaluation of the stands is not the financial strength of the exhibitor, but quality features such as design, service competence, information transfer and authenticity. Since ITB Berlin has for the first time this year become a 100 per cent trade fair, the focus of the evaluation was on the attractiveness and benefits for trade visitors.

In terms of design, the focus was on content presentation, accessibility and stand design. In terms of staff and service, considered by the award’s creators as ‘the heart of the stand’, the uniform appearance, the optimal number of staff in relation to the size of the space and the friendliness and competence of the advice provided were taken into account.

To ensure the greatest possible transparency and objectivity, CBS International Business School conducted two rounds of judging. In the first, all stands were first reviewed according to three basic criteria (first impression, classification of the business area and stand design). Those that met these criteria were further evaluated for their purely professional stand performance and overall impression.

Subsequently, the top 10 in each category were reviewed by a different team of evaluators. In this final race, additional criteria were added, such as sustainability of construction and trade fair events.


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