At BIT, too, it’s time for changes

We are nearing the time of the annual appointment with BIT, the International Tourism Exchange, which will be held in Milan from the 20th to the 24th of February, and the atmosphere is high strung with expectation. In all likelihood, the days of the event could never be long enough to allow us to meet all the people we would like to meet coming to Milan, or to develop the plans that are crammed in this period of time. This year, BIT has developed a programme of events, conferences, workshops and meetings which marks a turning point in its well-tested formula. An international forum on the tourist system will open an intense agenda of events. A valuable idea has been that of subdividing days based on specific targets, which will avoid unnecessary waste of time by distributing visitors over different days; the segments concerned will be as follows: top clients on the 20th, national trade on the 21st, international trade on the 22nd, and travellers on the 25th and 26th; the operators’ agenda will be completed by the traditional Buy Italy on the 21st and 22nd. As is in the spirit of these times, BIT is thus revising its approach. I had an informal chat with Mario Fumi, marketing and planning director for Expocts, which among other things organises BIT, and appreciated his enthusiasm in illustrating the objectives of the event and the efforts made to transform BIT into a dynamic experience, and a cultural point of reference for tourism. Visions and Master Class are new names which we are soon going to get accustomed to, when thinking of informative and educational events, in the same way as we will get accustomed to Bit Neway and Bit Virtual – neologisms which, after the necessary running-in period, will become as familiar to us as BIT has, having been born from intuition, and having grown up to becoming one of the most important world events in the sector.