Amazing...

A few weeks ago, the 2nd European Consulting Committee of EUREKATourism has been organized in Nice, France. Amazing, it was just amazing…

The first evening, we were invited to a gala dinner organized by “Rendez-vous en France”. This year, the biggest trade fair in France counted on more than 800 tour-operators from all around the world. The cocktail and dinner at the Acropolis were impressive from the beginning to the end, with two huge articulated dragons at the entrance door, dancers, tambours and musicians everywhere. Arriving in front of the Acropolis was as astonishing as being suddenly in a Carnival.
Then we got in and managed (I don’t really know how) to find all the Members of the Committee in this big crowd. Cocktail, classy dinner, animations, dancing, everything was ready for more than 1000 attendants.

And then the next day we had the Committee. We had the opportunity to listen to presentations from Team Côte d’Azur (they help people invest in the region) – Amadeus (did you know that originally Amadeus is a EUREKA project? Impressive, no?), and many potential Projects Looking for Partners. All decisions taken regarding the Committee will be published at a later stage.

We also went to Sophia Antipolis (exactly to SKEMA Business School), for the Bilateral Meetings (we’ve established more than 40 meetings involving French companies and the Members of our Committee)… Again, next Post will provide official information regarding this.

But what really impressed me was the infrastructure of Sophia-Antipolis. I really did not expect the place to be like this. I thought it would look like a typical business city, but not at all… Did you know that from one building to the other you can hardly see anything but trees. It’s literally full of trees, hills, woods, people jogging at lunch time. The main problems I can see here, is the traffic jam at rush hours; and above all the real challenge is not to get lost: it can take you ages to find where to go with no GPS. And I’ve been told that there’s a website called whereinsophia.com. It’s a search and localization engine of the 1450 companies located in Sophia-Antipolis, this site is obviously very useful. And do you know who launched the website? Our French Member of the Consulting Committee from Dev-Help… it’s a small world…

Now that I’m talking about Dev-Help, I have to admit that Jean-Bernard Titz kindly arranged everything during these 3 days in Nice. I would like to personally thank him very much for all the efforts and for the fantastic organization. Apart from the Committee itself which is always very interesting and productive to me professionally, everything around the Committee has been very remarkable. In terms of economic and touristic impact of the region, I feel that my experience in Nice has been very fruitful and I went back to Madrid with an image of Nice much more dynamic and technologically at the top than I could imagine.

Hopefully I will soon be able to tell you more about a new EUREKATourism project involving France!

New Project Search Page

Due to heavy demand from the EUREKA visitors, a more complete project search page has been created on the EUREKA public website under "Projects".
You can find it on www.eurekanetwork.org/project-search

This new tool provides the visitors with direct links to complete lists of Running, Finished and Looking for Partners projects and an advanced project search with filters for countries involved and project statuses.

The Cluster TurisTec participated in the EUREKATourism Consultive Committee

News in Spanish:

Nota de Prensa remitida por Turistec

El clúster balear de tecnologías aplicadas al sector turístico, turisTEC ha sido invitado a formar parte del Comité Consultivo EUREKATourism. Uno de los principales objetivos de la iniciativa EUREKATourism es fomentar y facilitar la alianza entre las empresas y organizaciones, para colaborar en proyectos innovadores de tecnología y turismo a nivel europeo.

El gerente de turisTEC, Miguel Piñol ha valorado como "muy positivo" el encuentro que se llevó a cabo recientemente en Niza (Francia).

"Participar en este Comité le da la posibilidad al clúster de estar en primera línea de un órgano consultivo de uno de los principales programas europeos que promueve e impulsa proyectos específicos para el sector turístico dentro y fuera de sus Estados. Las emrpesas que forman parte de turisTEC podrán estar en contacto directo con entidades de primer orden en innovación y tecnología para el turismo a anivel mundial" ha manifestado Piñol.

El Comité Consultivo ha estado formado por entidades provenientes de Francia, Portugal, Suiza, Austria, entre otros países. Representando a España asistieron la Sociedad Estatal para la Gestión de la Innovación y las Tecnologías Turísticas (Segittur), el Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico Industrial (CDTI), Andalucía Lab y turisTEC.

EUREKA es una iniciativa intergubernamental de apoyo a la I+D+i cooperativa en el ámbito europeo, que tiene como objeto impulsar al competitividad de las empresas europeas.

Link to Hosteltur