NAITM’s Marketplace event with focus on Sustainable Tourism
For the fourth time in a row National Association for Incoming Tourism of Macedonia organized their annual corner stone event – the Marketplace. Renowned international tourism professionals addressed the audience participating in the Marketplace which, this year, was particularly international with several tour operators from abroad participating in the B2B sessions
Sustainable Tourism was the flagship topic of this year’s Marketplace event held at the Hilton Double Tree Hotel in Skopje, which took place on 12th and 13th of December 2019. For two days, participants had the great opportunity to hear relevant lectures, expand their business network, participate in the international marketplace and enjoy the panel discussion on the very relevant topic in an ever more fast paced world: What is the future of tourism?
SIPPO Advisor Board member and Special Advisor to the Management Board of Der Touristik Schweiz Mr. Andreas Zgraggen addressed the audience on the first day of the event, talking about sustainable tourism and how to create authentic tourist products and services while having in mind sustainability features. Afterwards, Mr. Zgraggen joined the panel discussion alongside with Mr. Robert Dee, past Chairman of Associate Members of the European Tourism Association and nowadays Director at Robert Dee Associates and Co-Founder of New Deal Europe, Ms. Dina Mucunska – General Manager of H. Manastir in Berovo and Dejan Metodijeski from the Faculty for Touirsm and Business Logistics at the University “Goce Delcev” in Shtip. Throughout the panel discussion many interesting topics were discussed: how the sustainable tourism features influent the digital tourism offers and promotional approaches, how does responsibility and sustainability towards the community contributes towards the competitive advantage. The audience was actively engaged in the discussion, asking questions and sharing experiences with the panelists which contributed to raising awareness on sustainable tourism topic, its understanding and implementation of sustainable and responsible aspects when conducting tourism related activities.
The second day of the event was dedicated to B2B meetings. In the first part of the Marketplace the meetings between domestic tour operators and service providers took place while in the afternoon meetings between domestic tour operators and their international counterparts took place, as such giving the marketplace truly international component. On this occasion, Italian and Slovenian tour operators met their Macedonian colleagues. Mr. Zgraggen was also actively involved and participated in speed dating process actively exploring the Macedonian tourism offer.
The fourth Marketplace brought into the spotlight the important topic of sustainable tourism and introduced for the first-time the international component of the Marketplace. These aspects will inevitably initiate further positive developments in NAITM with even greater support towards the members and development of association’s services that will extensively address the members’ needs.