Echoes of the FITUR 2004

The 2004 International Tourism Fair (FITUR), an event that just days ago came to a successful close in Madrid, opened up the gateways of a year already blessed with great expectations as far as strong growth numbers for the travel industry are concerned. These upbeat prospects are predicted amid a 1.7 percent slide endured by the leisure industry worldwide in 2003, the World Tourism Organization (WTO) reported.

This major tradeshow welcomed 11,000 companies from 170 countries, a bunch that highlighted the travel industry’s unstoppable pace toward to the future. Neither the problems triggered by recent war conflicts, the ill-famed SARS outbreak that hit South East Asia last year, nor the appalling memories of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. prevented attendants to the five-day event at the Juan Carlos I Fairgrounds in Madrid from pinning their best hopes on the years to come.

FITUR organizers are convinced the Madrid International Travel Fair has gotten a good name among the world’s finest tourist events, even rubbing elbows with the likes of the London and Berlin fairs. Besides –Spanish publication Hosteltur pointed out- FITUR is the year’s upper-opener of the travel industry on the face of the earth.

For the first time ever, the fairgrounds’ ten pavilions were in full swing as professionals from the sector swarmed in by the thousands. According to organizers, as many as 100,000 experts gathered in Madrid, up 5 percent from the 97,570 specialists that came last year.

The general public put similar good numbers on the board, though just a couple of days –Saturday Jan. 31 and Sunday Feb. 1- were reserved for visitors to take a look at the gigantic fair, take home a keepsake or get the right description of the travel package of their dreams.

In last year’s edition, some 113,000 people visited the fair premises in two days. This time around, and despite a 6 euro admission fee, the amount of visitors that walked past the turnstiles was way over the numbers posted in 2003.

Planners also underscored that the FITUR Fair has gone a long way since its first edition back in 1981, when only 1,500 exhibitors from 37 nations turned up in Madrid.