Conférences et Salons

🍺 Ink & Beer Chartres: First tattoo and craft beer event in Chartres from April 11-13, 2025, at Collégiale Saint-André. The festival offers a mix of tattoo artistry, brewing craft, and music in a historic venue. Features include a participative giant fresco for visitors' messages and art. Notable participants include MAB, a tattooist and painter exhibited at the Louvre, and Brasserie L'Amik'Ale providing specially brewed beers. Independent bookstore BD Flash will offer reading space and exclusive collections.

🏖 Destination Canada introduces a Tourism Prosperity and Well-being Index, analyzing the sector’s benefits beyond traditional metrics. This tool incorporates data from over 100 sources and 30 indicators across 6 categories to demonstrate how tourism supports communities, preserves culture, protects natural resources, and drives economic growth, aiming to enhance local economies and Canada’s global competitiveness.

🏖️ Exclusive hotels from Vietnam to Panama, including Italy and Portugal, offer villas with private beaches, renovated historic homes, and country houses among vineyards, promising simple pleasures and authentic experiences. The Zannier group's latest resort, Bãi San Hô, is in a non-touristy Vietnamese province, emphasizing local culture immersion. SOWK Resort in Thailand, an all-inclusive with numerous immersive activities, keeps its exact location on Koh Phangan secret while being close to well-known resorts and beaches.

🏕 Gîtes de France reports a +1% increase in winter holiday bookings compared to 2024, with a 62% average occupancy rate for mountain destinations. Last-minute bookings surged by +4 points in one week. Peak occupancy rates were observed as follows: 67% in Zone B (8-15 Feb), 68% in Zones B+C (15-22 Feb), 62% in Zones C+A (22 Feb - 1 Mar), and 52% in Zone A (1-8 Mar). The top 5 mountain destinations were Savoie (86%), Haute-Savoie (80%), Hautes-Alpes (69%), Lozère (68%), and Alpes-Maritimes (66%).

📊 Understanding your market, which involves analyzing both direct and indirect competitors, is key to maintaining a competitive edge and catering to customer needs. Direct competitors offer similar products or services targeting the same customer base, while indirect competitors meet the same customer needs with different offerings. For effective competitive analysis, it is crucial to identify competitors, select comparison criteria, collect data, analyze findings, and interpret results. This process helps refine strategies and ensure your business proposition evolves with market trends. Guest Suite offers specialized tools for competitive analysis, focusing on local visibility and customer satisfaction, aiding businesses to stay ahead in their respective markets.

🌈 In December, the French hotel industry's Revenue per Available Room (RevPAR) increased by 6.4%, surpassing €66. This boost is attributed to the high-end Parisian leisure clientele, who sought to re-experience the Olympic spirit, countering the underperformance of budget hotels.

🍺 Degré Zéro’s 2025 edition is fully booked, highlighting the no/low alcohol beverage sector's growth. In December 2024, a national barometer showed that 40% of alcohol consumers also drink no/low beverages, which have seen a 42% consumption increase and a 33% decrease in alcohol consumption. The event has 100% more exhibitors than the previous year, now totaling 70, with over 800 expected visitors, doubling its size and confirming its status as the sector's key professional event.

🏘 WiT Africa, initially launched as a virtual event in 2021 to bridge Africa and Asia, held a physical event in partnership with Innovation City and Travelstart in 2024. The conference, aimed at highlighting travel tech innovations and trends, convened in Cape Town at Innovation City. The 2024 event included a WiT Bootcamp on March 14 to support startups and micro-enterprises. Africa's population is projected to reach 1.72 billion by 2023 with 477 million youths aged 15-35.

💸 In France, retail sales (excluding automobiles) rose by 3.3% from November 1 to December 24, 2024, compared to the same period in 2023. Notable sectors that experienced growth were electronics at 4.1%, clothing at 3.2%, and jewelry and accessories at 3.4%. The strongest growth was in restaurant spending, which increased by 6%, and food-related goods, up by 3.1%. The Mastercard SpendingPulse report indicates healthy consumer spending during the holiday season.