2. The client and their context
Turespaña is the public body responsible for promoting Spain as a tourist destination internationally. Its presence at FITUR is not simply that of another exhibitor: in practice, it is the reference stand of the entire fair. The space has to function simultaneously as an institutional showcase, a sector debate platform, a hub for high-level meetings and an open experience for the general public.
In 2024, an additional layer of significance was at play: the Miró Sun, the iconic logo that has identified Spain’s tourism brand since 1984, was turning 40. This is no small milestone — it was the first time in history that an abstract work of art had been used to represent a country’s tourism identity. That made FITUR 2024 an occasion with emotional, historical and brand positioning implications that went far beyond the square metres.
Added to all of this was the strategic axis Turespaña wanted to reinforce that year: Spain’s leadership as a sustainable tourism destination, recently recognised by Lonely Planet as the best sustainable destination for 2024.
3. The brief and the real constraints
The commission that came to TARS Design had several layers of complexity worth naming clearly.
The first was conceptual: the various sub-brands and communication lines within the Turespaña ecosystem had to be brought together under a single visual and narrative concept. The brief was not to build a good-looking stand. It was to ensure that a visitor entering the space would understand immediately, without reading a sign, that they were standing in front of something that celebrated a past and committed to a specific future.
The second was functional: the stand had to operate in several modes simultaneously. During the professional days (24–26 January), the space hosted round tables with the Minister for Industry and Tourism, presentations by the Secretary of State for Tourism, institutional meetings with 32 overseas tourism counsellors and high-profile political engagements, including a visit from the President of the Government on Friday the 26th. Over the weekend (27–28), the same space transformed into a celebration and activation hub for the general public.
The third was technical and sustainability-related: Turespaña had an explicit commitment to reducing the environmental impact of its fair participation. This could not be a communications claim — it had to be embedded in the materials, the structure and the production decisions.
And the fourth, the hardest to manage, was scale. More than 1,150 m² between the stand and the Sala Retiro, five days of fair with a packed programme, multiple institutional stakeholders with their own timelines and needs, and a concept that had to hold up equally well for an official inauguration and a cupcake workshop.
4. The design decisions: the reasoning behind each element
The first internal debate was about the central symbol. We could have built the stand around a timeline, around the Miró Sun, around Spanish tourism data. All were valid options. We chose the birthday cake because it was the only thing that condensed the character of the celebration into a single object: it was popular, universal, emotional and functional as a trigger for interaction. A cake needs no explanation.
But the cake had to do more than simply be there. The solution was to make it the entry point for the entire technological experience of the stand.
At the centre of the space, a giant cake with physical candles was installed. The visitor approached and blew, as at any birthday. What happened next was not predictable: the breath activated, through movement detection and airflow technology, a sequence of animations on the LED screens of the Ágora. Umbrellas flying, pine trees swaying, Castellers tumbling in the wind. The intensity of the breath determined the intensity of the reaction. The screen responded to the person, not the other way around. That is exactly what distinguishes an interactive installation from passive content.
The second key technological element was the podium with a Leap Motion sensor. This contactless motion capture technology allowed visitors to navigate decades of Spanish tourism data using only hand gestures, without touching any surface. In the context of an institutional tourism stand — where most elements tend to be information panels or looping videos — an installation like this creates a mandatory stop. People pause to watch whoever is using it before daring to try it themselves.
The third axis was the tactile timeline “Tourism Through Time”: a horizontal scrollable screen that traced the main Miró Sun campaigns from 1984 to 2024, with texts, photographs and videos from each era. It was not a passive display element: it was navigable, explorable and customisable according to each visitor’s interests.
The combined screen surface across the stand exceeded 130 m², including the LED floor, four 5.5-metre-tall totems and the touchscreens distributed throughout the space. At that scale, content no longer decorates the stand — it is the stand.
Alongside these elements, the retro photo booth and the time capsule (both physical and digital) closed the narrative arc: the visitor arrived, experienced the celebration, and left having deposited something of themselves in the space.
5. The technical solution in figures
The stand occupied 605 m² in Hall 9 at IFEMA, with the Sala Retiro workspace adding a further 550 m² dedicated exclusively to sector meetings.
The audiovisual installation was the most technically demanding element. The more than 130 m² of LED screens included the complete floor of the central Ágora area, four 5.5-metre perimeter totems and additional touchscreens distributed across the exhibition zones. Integrating the LED floor, the totems and the cake breath detection system required real-time synchronisation between capture hardware, animation software and content management: any perceptible latency broke the illusion of the interaction.
The Leap Motion sensor on the central podium was integrated with a tourism data visualisation interface developed specifically for the project, enabling gestural navigation through historical series of Spanish tourism indicators.
On sustainability, the stand was built to the following parameters:
- 65% of timber-based materials with sustainable certification
- HONEXT panels without melamine as the cladding solution
- Reusable aluminium systems in the structure
- 100% low-consumption LED lighting
- Plastic use reduced to 1% of total materials
- Carbon footprint of the construction process calculated and offset through tree-planting initiatives
The stand featured two auditoriums operating in parallel: the Ágora (capacity 90) for round tables and high-profile institutional events, and the Presentation Room (capacity 40) for technical and sector sessions. Both spaces streamed simultaneously via tourspainfitur.es.
6. The execution: what never makes the press release
A stand of this scale is not a sum of elements: it is a logistical operation where the margin for error is measured in hours. FITUR 2024 opened on 24 January. What never appears in any press release is what happens in the days before.
Integrating the interactive cake installation with the LED system was the highest point of technical tension during the build. The behaviour of the breath sensor varied according to the visitor’s distance, the height at which they blew and the intensity of the airflow — which meant calibrating the system with response ranges wide enough to work equally for an eight-year-old and an adult. That adjustment was made with the stand already built and the opening window closing in.
The stand’s programme during the professional days also imposed a very strict space management discipline. The Ágora had to transition from an interactive visitor experience to a protocol room for events with the Minister for Industry and Tourism within minutes, without the space losing coherence or the visitor experience being abruptly interrupted.
Over the weekend, the same space was converted into a popular activation environment: the baker and entertainer distributed anniversary cake four times a day, cupcake workshops drew families, and showcooking sessions added a gastronomic content layer to the 40-year narrative. The flexibility of the construction solution was what made that transition possible without any structural intervention.
7. Results
Over the five days of the fair, the Sala Retiro hosted more than 1,000 working meetings between Turespaña’s 32 overseas tourism counsellors and representatives of destinations, companies and tourism associations. That volume requires a coordination logistics for spaces, timings and people flows that goes far beyond stand design.
The Ágora and the Presentation Room hosted more than twenty sessions over three professional days, with the Minister for Industry and Tourism present at several of them and a visit from the President of the Government on Friday 26 January. The collaboration agreement between Turespaña and Lonely Planet, publicly announced at the stand on 24 January, received coverage in national and international specialist media.
The stand also served as the venue for the announcement of the collaboration between ACEVIN and Radio Exterior de RNE, and hosted presentations from organisations including Ciudades Patrimonio de la Humanidad, Patrimonio Nacional and Red Natura, reinforcing its function as a top-tier institutional platform within the Spanish tourism sector.
As Nacho Rodríguez Isoba, Project Manager for the project at TARS Design, recalls: “It was incredibly rewarding to see how the challenge of bringing five distinctive brands together under a single concept and design came to life in such harmony.”
8. Three lessons for large-format institutional stands
Interaction has to be immediate or it does not exist. The cake with the breath system worked because the visitor understood the mechanism in under three seconds, without instructions. If an interactive installation needs an explanation, it loses half its audience before it begins. The experience design has to be so intuitive that the visitor’s own body knows what to do.
Sustainability at a trade fair is a brief decision, not a materials decision. Reducing plastic use to 1% or specifying certified timber are not adjustments made at the end of the process — they determine the structural choices, the suppliers and the timelines from the very first meeting. In the case of Turespaña, sustainability was in the contract before it was in the design. That is what makes it real rather than cosmetic.
A dual-use stand requires thinking about two stands. The leap between “institutional protocol” mode on Wednesday and “cupcake workshop” mode on Saturday is not a programming question: it is a design question. The construction solutions, furniture, circulation flows and screen content management all have to be conceived from the outset to support that transformation without any structural intervention between one day and the next.
9. Does your brand need a stand that is more than just a stand?
The Turespaña project at FITUR 2024 is a good example of what happens when physical space and brand narrative are designed simultaneously, from the same starting point.
If your company or institution participates in large-format trade fairs and you want the stand to do more than simply show up, let’s talk.
Tell us about your project and we will put together a proposal with no obligation.
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