Visit NC’s Heidi Walters participated in FITUR 2023 in Madrid, Spain, with Travel South USA earlier this month. FITUR is the largest travel and tourism trade show in Spain, with more than 8,300 exhibiting companies, 82,000 trade participants and 30,000 general public visitors.
This was Visit NC’s first year marketing in Spain with Travel South. In 2019, Spanish visitors spent $11.5 million in the state.
In Barcelona, Walters completed sales trainings with Hotelbeds and did a media activation. In the past two years, Visit NC has completed two very successful campaigns with Hotelbeds, resulting in the 46 percent increase in hotel rooms booked statewide.
Walters completed the trip by attending Icelandair’s Mid-Atlantic tradeshow in Reykjavik, Iceland. This was an appointment-based show with travel professionals from Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Germany.
Visit NC had its own booth to promote the new flight to RDU from Iceland.
For more information on Visit NC’s international marketing efforts, contact Heidi Walters.
Story courtesy Visit NC NewsLink, a weekly e-newsletter from the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina. NewsLink provides information to nearly 4,800 tourism industry leaders, media and government representatives across the state. It distributes valuable information on Visit NC’s marketing and promotional efforts, tourism-related research, state, national and international trends, media leads, updates on conferences and events, and more.