In 2023, Palexpo Hotel Bookings took on a sizeable challenge: supporting the first edition of Airspace World, which previously used to be organised in Madrid, by taking in charge the entire hotel and room management for the event’s participants.

Sophia Gondim, head of the Palexpo Hotel Bookings service, looks back on this achievement..

“In March March 2023, Airspace World held its first-ever event in Geneva at Palexpo. It was a huge change for the world’s biggest and most influential event in airspace and near-space management. To ensure the success of this exceptional exhibition, we had to book the right number of rooms to facilitate the travel of all participants. Moving a trade show from Spain to Switzerland is by no means trivial: the differences in terms of economy and hotels are obviously reflected in the costs, accessibility, and availability of infrastructures.

We naturally had to deal with misconceptions regarding prices and services! Thanks to our solid accommodation network of 10,628 rooms and 126 hotels, and the close links we have forged with our partners over many years, we were able to offer rates very similar to those in Madrid, with, it should be emphasised, a very high quality of service and facilities not found in all major European cities.

We also noted that, since Covid-19, bookings are overall made at an increasingly later stage.. We therefore had to guarantee an availability of rooms up till the last minute! Here again, the relationships of trust that we maintain with establishments in Geneva enabled us to offer accommodation to each participant right up to the start of the trade show. Our agility and flexibility was a winning recipe – we recorded a margin of error of only 100 rooms!

As the first event of this scale that we had to steer from A to Z with our software B-com, Airspace World enabled us to clearly demonstrate the efficiency, flexibility, and adaptability of the Palexpo Hotel Bookings service. And while we have noted a definite increase in the number of room bookings in the course of 2023, we are also proud to be participating fully in the promotion of Geneva worldwide and to support the local economy.”