ROME – Buy Tourism Online (BTO) is an event in Italy dedicated to the combination of tourism and innovation, and will take place on Feb 12 and Feb 13 at the Leopolda Railway Station in Florence. The event was introduced at a press conference in Rome. In attendance were the councillor for Tourism of the Tuscany Region, Stefano Ciuoffo; a member of the Board of the Chamber of Commerce, Claudio Bianchi; the director of Toscana Promozione Turistica, Francesco Palumbo; and the director of BTO 2020, Francesco Tapinassi.

  Following on from the great success of BTO 2019, BTO 2020 has confirmed that it will focus its attention on businesses, universities and training schools in the tourism sector. Two days of information and training will be dedicated to tourism professionals, and the focus will be on a preview of new trendsand updated content on the subject of scientific research and technological innovation applied to travel. The BTO 2020 will have a ‘Human’ theme, which has been addressed in the past but will this time have a less emotional key and will be projected more towards the present, in the search for the "centre of gravity" in a travel market characterised by deep transformations.

  “This year, along with the BTO Advisory Board, to which the best Italian and foreign professionals belong, we have decided to adopt professor Luciano Floridi's Onlife Manifesto in order to try to understand the right path to take in the continuously changing market and world. We believe that we need to work on ourselves, on our ability to make a synthesis of the huge amount of information with which we are bombarded every day, focusing on the most important things and eliminating ‘noise’, in order to construct a solid strategy projected towards the future,” Tapinassi explained.

  Drawing inspiration from the Online Manifesto, the common thread of BTO2020 will be an analysis of the connection between Online and Onlife, between machines and humans. It will therefore look into the changes that the new technologies have introduced into our lifestyles, making us increasingly connected, fast and smart but, at the same time, reliant upon the digital world.

  BTO2020 will have four thematic paths. ‘Hospitality’ is dedicated to the hotel industry, both independent hotels and chains, which has always represented an important slice of BTO’s audience, with several specific moments dedicated to managers of small-capacity accommodation, like apartments, holiday homes and B&Bs; ‘Destination’ is reflective of the importance of governance and territorial marketing; ‘Food & Wine’is for new arrivals over the past two years who operate in the catering and agri-food industry, and who are investing in the promotion, distribution and digital communication of tourism products; ‘Digital Strategy & Innovation’ is a cross-sectional path of support for tourism managers, consultants and web agencies, allowing them to understand how to construct their own digital strategies and keep up with the changes taking place in the market.

  All the new additions are on the BTO2020 official website, which has also been revisited and updated, in line with the themes of the next edition.

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