The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), in association with Globalia, the leading tourism group in Spain and Latin America, has selected the finalists of the 2nd Global Tourism Startup Competition, an initiative that the two entities have been working on since 2018 when its first edition was held. The countries with the highest number of projects submitted have been Spain, followed by India, the United States, Portugal, Nigeria and Colombia.

This annual competition is one of the flagship projects of Wakalua, the tourism innovation hub. Solutions that combine location data with artificial intelligence can be used to identify tourism regions, associate them with nearby airports, optimize, and offer opinion mining, among others.

We talk to Patricia Parosselló Palmer, a Senior Travel Industry Professional. She has worked in the travel industry for over 20 years and is founder of several companies. She is for instance the founder of Hoppa.com (former Resorthoppa), an online transfer business that was sold to Albion Ventures and the Lowcosttravel Group in 2008. She tells us about how the bankruptcy of Thomas Cooks has changed the whole travel industry.

The countries with the highest employment rate for recent graduates are: Iceland (91.8%), Malta (90.4%), Netherlands (89.2%), Norway (89.2%) and Germany (88.7%). 50% of graduates can’t find a job in Italy and Greece. In Romania, France, Bulgaria, Croatia and Spain, around 30% of recent graduates don’t have a job after graduation. 20% of British postgraduates can’t get into the job market after graduating.

Fifteen game-changing initiatives from more than twenty countries have been celebrated as winners of the prestigious UN Global Climate Action Awards during the UN Climate Change Conference COP25 in Madrid.  Speaking at a special ceremony at COP25 hosted by the Chilean Government, Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change, said that  these award-winning projects shine a light on outstanding examples of scalable, innovative and practical climate action from around the world.

Despite the constanct conflict with the separatists and ongoing riots and protests everywhere due to the announced imprisonment of nine catalan politicans Berlin headquartered investment firm Target Global has announced the opening of a new office in Barcelona, confirming the company’s commitment to significantly increasing its activity in the city and across Spain. Over the last 12 months the Germans have invested about €40m. The  biggest stakes are TravelPerk, Badi, Doc Planner and Mediquo.