ITB Virtual Convention to Focus on Hospitality and Covid-19 Crisis

ITB Berlin on Tuesday on August 11 will launch its next round of online sessions as part of its virtual ITB Berlin Convention.

Under the heading ITB Virtual Convention Hospitality Update – Trends & Cases, the three-part session series will focus on the hotel industry and current coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis. The events will be streamed live in English and available shortly afterwards to anyone interested as videos on demand.

Kicking off the three-part series will be the session Smart Hotel – Future Scenarios and Current Practice in the Crisis at 2 pm CET, in which Prof. Dr. Ing. Vanessa Borkmann of the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO will provide valuable insights into technological scenarios and cognitive environments. She will highlight ways in which digitalisation can help the hotel industry in these challenging times and provide examples of how hotels are integrating smart solutions and new technologies to overcome the crisis.

This will be followed at 2.30 pm by Ready, Set, Listen: Staying Fit in a Hotelier’s Race to Recovery, an exclusive interview with Ben Jost, the CEO of TrustYou. In conversation with Iris Steinmetz, Senior Director of Operations EMEA, HRS International, he will discuss how hoteliers can maximise the potential of the Travel Health Index and why listening to guest and staff feedback will be the key to success during and after the pandemic.

Rounding off the series on 11 August at 3.15 pm will be a discussion round titled How to Create a Comeback – Practical Learnings from the Crisis Period, also moderated by Iris Steinmetz, Senior Director of Operations EMEA, HRS International. Together with other panel members, Andreas Westerburg, Head of Development, BWH Hotel Group; Stefan Matthiessen, Chief Brand Officer, Koncept Hotels; and Julie White, VP Commercial EMEA Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, will outline the thorny road to recovery for all the various types of hotels around the world.

The ITB Virtual Convention can be accessed on ITB’s global platform www.itb.com/VirtualConvention.

The travel trade show ITB Berlin 2021 will take place March 10-14 at Messe Berlin.