The eighth InteriHotel event in Barcelona closed its doors last Friday with 3,874 attendees and 1,250 hotel renovation or new construction projects identified. Interior design and decoration professionals have enjoyed discovering the latest trends in interior design for hotels. With the fairs held this year in Mallorca and Madrid, as well as in Barcelona, the event added up to the participation of more than 200 brands, 6,000 professionals and an exhibition area of almost 10,000 sq. metres, making it the most productive year since it opened in 2011.
InteriHotel is an event with a distinctive value proposal for the habitat sector: It is an occasion, unique in Spain, which is highly specialised in hotel interior design, combining a showroom of products with the participation of brands specialising in contract hospitality, networking activities, conferences and debates with leading figures from the sector. The arrangement of the 7,500 sq. metres in the Barcelona International Convention Centre into a carefully structured and sophisticated area in which everything oozes interior decoration and design, helps create a welcoming and supportive environment for generating business. In addition, the event is different in that it hosts a highly selective profile of visitors (hotel owners, those responsible for design and for projects for hotel groups, consumer motivation studios, architects, interior designers, decorators and dealers), ensuring a meeting place that is focused one hundred percent on business.
This year’s InteriHotel has aroused great interest among those attending the event: many of the professionals surveyed have defined the event as unmissable for those looking for inspiring ideas and direct contact with the supplier brands. Others have enthused about the unique areas presented this time, such as the Interior Designers Area, which this year has been designed by Egue and Seta studios, Ilmio Design and Morph Studio, or about the Experience Area, a space committed to people with developmental diversity. The lectures and debates at the 2018 event have also raised passions and filled the Knowledge Area to hear the latest talks from speakers such as Tomás Alía, Loli Pinkerton, Gilly Craft, Manuel Torres and Natali Canas.
InteriHotel aims to be a place where the latest trends from renowned experts are presented, but also a hotbed of new ideas on interior decoration and design, which in this event have found a place in the Fresh Talks. On this occasion a total of 75 speakers from 10 countries they participated in talks dynamically presented in as many as 3 languages by Marisa Santamaría, a journalist specialising in design and architecture, and director of the IED’s international trends area.
By means of this full conference programme, the event has also stimulated reflection, the exchange of ideas and the analysis of the present and the future of hotels from different perspectives: architects, designers, investors, developers, consultants and forecasters - specialists in trends - have been able to formulate their opinions, their visions and their experiences working around the world. Of special interest has been the participation of experts from three areas undergoing active development such as the Middle East, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Doha; Central America with Panama, Costa Rica and Mexico; and North Africa with Morocco.
The topics treated at the InteriHotel talks only confirm the fact that we are faced with a sector that is in constant growth and one that is undergoing complete transformation. These changes are being propelled by the evolution in our lifestyles and the changes in travel and stay customs all over the world. As a response, the redesign of customer service systems and processes is being observed, as well as the gradual transformation of the both interior and exterior spaces.
InteriHotel has called for three categories in awards at this year’s edition: for the best interior hotel design blog post, the best interior design stand and for the most innovative product. The panel of judges was made up of representatives from designer and interior designer associations and professional institutes: IED, Elisava, CODIC and ADP. In the best blog post category, the work of the Dröm Living studio was distinguished for its work “Lobby design for travellers of the future”. The jury highly valued the in-depth and up-to-date presentation of the topic, as well as being well-written, using quality images. In the best stand category, the company Simon won for the versatility of the modular elements they used which allowed them to, in addition to the originality in the display of the product, creating a space that defines the limits of the stand making circulation easier. Finally, the prize for the most innovative product was awarded to Fenix Nanotech Alloy, part of the Arpa company, an innovative version of Fenix which allows the recovering of aluminium surfaces with a material that regenerates in the event of damage to the surface.
In addition, a European Networking Event has also been held within the framework of InteriHotel. This is the SENTINEL project (Cluster Network for Hospitality Sustainable Development and Internationalization), whose main objective is to develop a framework of long-term collaboration that allows SMEs to acquire the necessary skills to start an internationalization process outside the EU and enter into better conditions within emerging markets. In these markets, tourism is expected to have a strong impact in the coming years. The project, funded by the COSME Go International program of the European Union, is developed by a consortium of clusters of Spain, Austria and Italy with members which provide products and solutions for the entire value chain of the contract-hospitality sector: construction, equipment and hotel maintenance services.
