In this context, Travel2latam spoke with Gilberto Salcedo, Vice President of Tourism at ProColombia.
What are your impressions about participating in the Forum?
It is a discussion that must always be put on the table, how to accompany technology, emerging technologies and those that have exponential reach at the service of tourism and meetings in particular, where it not only refers to an issue of accessibility or commercial intelligence, information, processing of this type of data, but also allows the sector to bring the points between supply and demand closer together. Furthermore, I believe that the heart of this discussion, to give it much more focus, should be focused on how we put technology and particularly artificial intelligence at the service of sustainability. It is about how this artificial intelligence helps us distribute and use resources much more intelligently, to achieve that new standard in the industry.
I would like you to give us a review of what is currently happening in the MICE segment in Colombia.
The MICE segment in Colombia is going through a very good moment. What we are seeing is not only recovery, but significant growth above pre-pandemic levels. We hope that this year it will be May, as is happening globally with the significant accumulation of demand and price competition. I believe that Colombia has a very important space there, not only because we are very competitive in this matter, but because of the offer that there is in general in terms of destinations, regions, venues, non-traditional venues and great air connectivity that it has today. the country with 29 airlines connecting with 29 countries, and more than 52 cities connecting with 11 destinations in Colombia. Then we are also approaching markets even in the Middle East, which did not seem so close and which today are not only very interesting, but also with very high spending, where we see impressive potential for, for example, the incentives market.
You were talking about destinations, everyone knows the most important ones, but which ones would you like to highlight in the country where holding an event would be an innovative proposal?
The difference is not so much in the destinations, but in what each of them offers. Today we work hand in hand with 12 bureaus and representatives of the six major tourist regions that the country has. But the advantage is that if you are in Cartagena, which can be considered a traditional destination, the nice thing is the number of non-traditional venues or the number of places that you can find in a place like this, just like in Medellín, Bogotá, Cali or Barranquilla, which has an offer for this spectacular segment. And we don't say it ourselves, but they also appear in the ICCA Ranking, for example. Of course, the numbers support this growth many times over.