This year, the second year tourism students from Haaga-Helia University of Applied

Sciences, Porvoo campus had the great opportunity to visit the ITB fair in Berlin. The ITB
fair is the biggest tourism fair worldwide and they celebrated their 50th anniversary this
year. The fair takes place every year in Berlin, Germany in March.
As a tourism student, this whole industry has always interested me by its global aspect but
also by its capacity to constantly innovate and by being a very promising industry to build
a career in. This visit to ITB has definitely confirmed my thoughts. I am also today
convinced I made the right choice by starting tourism studies.
As tourism students, we often here people ask whether we will be a tourist guide, a travel
agent or a flight attendant after we graduate. I would like to bring these people to ITB, they
would see that the Travel and Tourism industry is not just travel agencies and tourist
guides. It is also the whole hotel industry, the airline industry, the business travel industry,
receptive agencies, tour operators, IT programmes, global tourism organisations, cruise
lines and so much more. This year, over 100 000 exhibitors were present all of them being
a potential job opportunity for one of us.
This was a very rewarding experience and I am more than confident I will be able to build
a career in this industry that I am interested in. After ITB, the career opportunities now
seem endless and it is very motivating for the future!

Mlanie Oun

Our ITB experience began on Wednesday, our first day at the fair, with some of us
probably not knowing exactly what to expect. Even Berlin itself was all new to us; most of
us had just arrived the day before. The fair certainly did not let us down. I remember one
of us calling it a maze; the most impressive stands and halls one after another for as long
as you could walk! Thankfully, there was also a shuttle bus taking us from one hall to
another when our feet felt tired and achy from all the eager exploring.
The first day went pretty much by with getting to know the halls and the continent
sections. I personally was most fascinated by the huge Asian and Latin American stands.
Of course, as a big fan of Hispanic culture, strolling around in the hall of Spain and
Portugal was enjoyable as well. I even had an interesting conversation about Andalusia
with a few girls from Granada, even though I was too shy to speak Spanish with them.
Later on, after a delicious and refreshing smoothie from the Canary Islands stand, our
team got to do some interesting interviews on the bleisure phenomena. Funnily enough,
the German respondents said to very rarely mix business and leisure compared to for
example some Brazilian and Peruvian respondents, who said they often take their family
with them on business trips and engage in leisure activities during them. I'm sure all the
answers and conversations we had at the fair gave us useful and beneficial insight for
working on this investigative project.

All in all, Berlin was a great experience. After the days at the fair, it was nice to able to
enjoy some sights and to see a capital with a bit more edge than Paris or Rome, for
example. The programme was good, the company was good, the food as good - all was
good.

Pieta Salonen

On Thursday, we were at the fair once again. First, we looked at the program for the day
to find seminars that sounded interesting and could be useful in our project. We chose
one about social media trends that we thought might help us, but as we got to the right
hall, we found out that the speaker did not show up. Still determined to listen to the
professionals of the industry, we decided to go to the same convention hall that we were
in on Wednesday, to check what was going on there, and we were not disappointed! We
got to hear a seminar about digitalization and modern and future technology trends in the
hospitality industry. We were all amazed by how much the technology has advanced and
how much of it was already being incorporated into our everyday lives. For example, a lot
of countries were planning to introduce robots to replace workers in restaurants, hotels
and airports in the near future, and some were already trying out those ideas in practice. I
think all of us we really impressed by that lecture and it really made us think of what
comes along with that kind of global digitalization (unemployment? lack of human
contact?). It was nice to get a deeper view on at least one of the modern trends in our
industry.
The exhibition center is very big, so we only got to see a part of the fair the previous day,
and after the lecture we still had some time to explore different halls. We visited European
stands, Asian stands, stands from Latin America and some airlines. The ones that really
stood out, in my opinion, were VisitFinland and Brazil. When we were looking for Finland
stand, we expected to see something small but we were amazed by the large space our

countrys stand was taking, and you could see the name almost from the hall entrance,
which was very impressive.

Dariana Oleinik

Our third days agenda included a company visit at Scandic Hotel in the heart of Berlin,
which we all were excited about! After having a few cups of strong coffee and some
breakfast our group headed towards the hotel for a 10am meeting. As we arrived, it was
nice to notice the similar Scandinavian design that was already familiar to us from our
previous company visits at Finnish branches. The hotel looked fresh and stylish and the
atmosphere felt casual but still fancy.
At the hotel, we were given a tour around the building and shown a few guest rooms,
conference rooms and the restaurant. I thought that the third floor had especially a really
nice design! What also stood out for me in this hotel was the sustainability issues that
were well taken into consideration. For example, some of the flooring is made of recycled
material, which I think is quite admirable!
I can certainly say that one of the best things about Berlin was the variety of food available
everywhere. So just like on the previous days, we made sure we ate very well and so after
Scandics visit, our whole group headed to an Italian restaurant and had quite a tasty
lunch. It was great to have a meal together with the whole class and our teacher Leena.
To keep up the food theme, we also had booked a table for the evening at an authentic
German beer house. The food turned out to be amazing and the evening was very nice
indeed. I ordered typical German food, a knuckle of pork. It was huge in size but very
tasty! Of course we also did some beer tasting, as we were in Germany After that, it
was the time to head towards the night of Berlin.

Sofia Vanhatalo