Position Guatemala as a premium destination in Europe's most competitive travel fair.
FITUR is not just a fair — it is the annual moment where every government tourism board in the Spanish-speaking world shows up to compete for European travelers, tour operators, and media. In 2025, more than 150 countries attended. Standing out requires more than a stand. It requires a clear message, a distinctive presence, and a team that can execute both without a fault over five consecutive days.
Guatemala Tourism Board had a clear brand campaign: Be True to Yourself — a positioning anchored in authenticity, indigenous culture, and natural richness. The challenge was to translate that campaign from print and digital into a physical pavilion experience that felt true to the brand, resonated with European buyers, and operated flawlessly across the full fair duration.
Authenticity as a design and operations principle.
Rather than producing a generic tourism stand, JIA LATAM worked with the Guatemala Tourism Board to make the pavilion itself an embodiment of the campaign. Materials, textures, colors, and the profile of the delegation — all were chosen to reflect Guatemala's layered identity: Mayan heritage, volcanic landscapes, colonial architecture, and living culture.
Operationally, we built the engagement around three priorities: a delegation that could hold conversations with European buyers in Spanish, English, and German; an AV suite that showcased Guatemala's destinations in broadcast quality; and a tight scheduling system for B2B meetings, press briefings, and evening cultural programming.
Five days. Every objective met.
JIA LATAM managed the full production lifecycle: pavilion design coordination with the approved builder, materials sourcing and delivery to IFEMA, equipment setup and AV installation, host briefing and uniform logistics, delegation travel and hotel coordination from Guatemala City to Madrid, and full 5-day on-site management.
On opening day, the Guatemala pavilion was operational at 8:45am — 75 minutes before fair opening. The AV content ran continuously without technical failure across the five days. Every scheduled B2B meeting was facilitated without delay.
“The JIA team understood what we were trying to say with the campaign and made sure the pavilion said it without us having to explain it to every visitor. That's hard to do.”
Guatemala Tourism Board · FITUR 2025 Debrief
Highest-traffic Guatemala stand in three FITUR editions.
The Be True to Yourself pavilion generated more qualified buyer conversations than any previous Guatemala presence at FITUR. The cultural programming on days 3 and 4 was covered by two Spanish national media outlets and picked up by three European travel trade publications. The delegation closed partnerships with 14 European tour operators during the fair.
From an operational standpoint, zero materials were delayed, zero equipment failed, and the delegation reported the smoothest fair experience in their institutional memory. The Guatemala Tourism Board renewed the engagement with JIA LATAM for FITUR 2026 within 30 days of the fair's close.