The conference delivered valuable industry insights, while the inaugural Leadership Roundtable with Simon-Kucher brought senior leaders together to explore India’s evolving role in global tourism.
Shreya Shimpi
ITB India 2026 served as a global platform, bringing together representatives from government, tourism organisations, industry associations, and Messe Berlin, marking a significant milestone in India’s travel and tourism landscape. Running alongside the exhibition, the ITB India Conference 2026 complemented business activity on the show floor with insights into the developments influencing the future of travel across the Knowledge & MICE Theatre and Tech & Experience Theatre.
Across four curated tracks – Knowledge, MICE & Corporate, Travel Technology and Experiential Travel – the programme featured 40 sessions and 80 speakers across 1,440 minutes of content addressing developments across MICE, Corporate Travel, Hospitality, Travel Technology and evolving traveller expectations. A new addition to ITB India 2026 was the inaugural ITB India Leadership Roundtable, held in partnership with global strategy consultancy Simon-Kucher, creating a dedicated forum for strategic exchange among senior industry leaders. Networking continued beyond formal meetings at the ITB India Happy Hour.
Speakers and industry representatives included senior leaders from Accenture Technology, BCD Meetings & Events, Cipla, Deloitte India, Expedia Group, FCM Meetings & Events, IDECK Limited, MakeMyTrip, QuadLabs, Spotnana, Taj Hotels, Tripadvisor and Tripjack, among others.
“This is my third time at ITB India, and I feel that the show has evolved a lot over the last 2-3 years. Every year I find a few nuanced enhancements to the content and some new players who introduce new products and experiences to the trade. What I love about the show is that since it’s a boutique show it has a wonderful balance of content and discussion, and the pace of it allows one to peacefully sit and engage with the customers and helps in achieving the ROI despite the smaller size we are operating out of. At the end of the day, every trade show is about the ROI.” said Isha Goyal, CEO, STIC Travel Group.
Sharing his insights about meaningful tourism during the session on ‘Meaningful Tourism as a Tool for Developing Tourism in India and Beyond’, Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt, Executive Director, Meaningful Tourism Centre Ltd, said, “It is essential to focus on meaningful tourism since the evolving travel trends point out to a rise in demand from relaxation, sightseeing, experiential travel to customised transformational experiences. Meaningful tourism is not a nice-to-have idea but a set of tools necessary for the survival and future development of destinations, organisations and companies. Climate breakdown will dominate the development in the coming years, destroying once successful business models. New technologies provide new opportunities but also bring new challenges that need to be dealt with.”
Dipti Adhia, Country Director-India, Discover the World, shared her experience as a panellist at the ITB India 2026 conference. She said, “It was a wonderful experience to be part of the panel at ITB India – Cruise Capsule, discussing the ground realities and gaps of India’s outbound cruise market. For me, the gap is not demand—it is how confidently and creatively we sell cruises. Education is key to building confidence, but equally important is asking the right questions, understanding the traveller before selling, and having the courage to propose something new.
Setting the right expectations and matching the right cruise to the right audience is critical. I believe the opportunity is to move from being a cruise seller to a cruise consultant. What is selling today should not necessarily define what we sell tomorrow. As an industry, our role is also to create curiosity and introduce travellers to experiences they may not have known they wanted.”
The conference, co-located with MICE Show India and Travel Tech India, served as a unique platform for connecting authentic, high-quality buyers with trade partners. It highlighted the evolving travel landscape through meaningful tourism, technology, MICE and changing traveller expectations. The three-day conference strengthened industry connections while offering valuable insights into the future of India and South Asia’s travel markets.
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