• In this second edition, 43 exhibiting companies are participating, 13 more than those that did so in the 2023 edition.
• Yesterday, the Gran Canaria-based company Twistic Digital emerged as the winner of the startup competition organized by the World Tourism Organization.

The Business Digitization Salon of the Canary Islands, DigiON Canarias, opened its doors on Wednesday, February 21st, for its second edition at Infecar, Gran Canaria Fair. This event is held over two intense days. It is filled with expert presentations on digitization, an exhibition area with over 40 stands, and an area dedicated to promoting the products and services of the exhibiting companies.

The President of the Cabildo de Gran Canaria, Antonio Morales, accompanied by the General Director of Infecar, Natalia Santana, inaugurated the salon, visiting each exhibiting company. “We open the doors to this second edition with extraordinary success, increasing from 30 participating companies last year to 43. That speaks to the importance and involvement of local small and medium-sized enterprises in the technological field,” Morales pointed out. Furthermore, Morales noted that “the transformation of our society and its economic and social development necessarily involves enhancing digitization.”

This professional meeting, promoted and funded by the Cabildo de Gran Canaria and organized by Infecar, aims to establish itself as a space that supports and drives the digitization of companies in the islands, bringing together digital solutions and the most modern technological tools in the market.

The Business Digitization Salon of the Canary Islands, DigiON Canarias, kicked off with the round table discussion ‘Boosting SME digitization: financing and entrepreneurship’, which served as a meeting point for entrepreneurs, investors, and startups. Participating in this panel was Cosme García, Managing Director of the Economic Promotion Society of Gran Canaria (Spegc); Emilio Iglesias, Head of Institutional Promotion and Territorial Cooperation at CDTI; José María Blasco, Director of ICEX and responsible for Support for the Internationalization of Technological and Innovative Entrepreneurship; Antonio Collado, Coordinator of CIDIHUB; and Anecto Falcón, Director of Innovation and Digital Transformation at the Chamber of Commerce of Gran Canaria.

“The parents of innovation are desperation and necessity.” With this idea, Javier Recuenco, CEO of Singularsolving and board member of Startups Institute, took to the stage of DigiON Canarias. As an expert in digital transformation and, specifically, in solving complex companies’ problems to become more competitive, Recuenco explained that “a complex problem has no precedent for successful resolution and arises when you don’t know what to do.”

Following him, Esther Checa, Head of Innovation at t2ó Group | Top 100 Spanish Women Leaders 2023, presented ‘AI transforms access to information: how to challenge the status quo through critical thinking’. “We find ourselves in a new digital learning ecosystem in which, for the past year and a half, general chatbots have been integrated into our routine, with changes in communication and language use compared to other search engines like Google,” Checa pointed out. She added, “We are moving towards a future of generative search engines where interaction with the machine occurs with a more natural language than what we have had so far, and the sophistication with which data is provided is substantially different.”

Complete Program

The complete schedule of conferences and roundtable discussions of DigiON Canarias for Wednesday and Thursday afternoon can be found at www.digion-canarias.es. Additionally, Infecar has provided a space where exhibitors who wish to do so will present their projects, products, and services to other exhibitors and professional visitors attending the event. Tickets to attend DigiON Canarias can be obtained free of charge by pre-registration at www.digion-canarias.es.

Gran Canaria-based company Twistic Digital, winner of the OMT competition

As a prelude to DigiON Canarias, on Tuesday, February 19th, the final of the World Tourism Organization (WTO) startup competition was held in the categories of ‘Innovations in digital hospitality and new business models’ and ‘Impact on sustainability’, which was in collaboration with the Economic Promotion Society of Gran Canaria (Spegc).

Projects from the Czech Republic, United States, United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, Indonesia, Netherlands, Canada, Kenya, and Spain competed for recognition, having already reached the finals of this competition, which received 120 applications from 70 different countries.

In the ‘Innovations in digital hospitality and new business models’ category, the winning project fell precisely on a company from Gran Canaria, Twistic Digital, presented by its director Artemi Ríos. The project aims to provide digital signage to hotels and restaurants with innovative digital labelling of buffets, featuring a platform that offers easy-to-use software and improves the user experience.

Also, finalists for this category included the Czech startup Schulering, which created a professional platform connecting hospitality through learning, and the American company Everhost, which works to make visitors feel like locals upon arrival at a destination. Also, the Emirati Sparkle Haze, with its focus on big data and the use of Artificial Intelligence applied to user experience and guest security, and the Tunisian startup Ostel Flow offer next-generation cloud-based solutions.

In the category of ‘Impact on sustainability’, the Canadian project WeavAir emerged as the winner, presented by Natalia Mykhaylova, offering a business intelligence solution for hospitality and travel centres consisting of predictive software and multi-sensor IoT devices measuring 20 different metrics (on air quality, thermal comfort, predictive maintenance, and flow of people) in real-time with 95% accuracy.

Also competing for this international award with their proposals were the finalists Senange Eco, a sustainability consultancy dedicated to helping companies achieve Sustainable Development Goals; the Dutch Hotels for Trees, which advocates planting a tree every time a guest decides to skip daily room cleaning; the Tenerife-based Effiwaste, working to eliminate organic waste from the HORECA channel through measurement via SAAS; and Purple Elephant Ventures, a risk studio based in Nairobi, Kenya, designing innovative travel technology startups from scratch, focusing on innovation in sustainable tourism.

The Business Digitization Salon of the Canary Islands, DigiON Canarias, is promoted and funded by the Cabildo de Gran Canaria and organized by Infecar. It has the official collaboration of Cajasiete the collaboration of the Economic Promotion Society of Gran Canaria; Canary Islands Technological Excellence; the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Enterprise; ICEX Spain Export and Investment; the Chamber of Commerce of Gran Canaria; the Institute of Tourism and Sustainable Economic Development of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria; the Official College of Industrial Engineers of Eastern Canary Islands; and the participation of UNWTO World Tourism Organization.