The 31st KOSMIMA, a resplendent event, ended yesterday at Thessaloniki International Exhibition Centre, with a 12% increase in the number of visitors, as compared to previous event, and trade visitors from 14 countries.

Trade visitors from Albania, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Egypt, FYROM, Germany, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine and the USA visited the annual meeting of the sector of jewellery and clocks & watches, held every autumn.

This year’s exhibition was expansive both in terms of exhibitors (80 participating enterprises) and area covered (3,700 sq.m.), compared to last year’s event.

During the exhibition, the awards of the 27th Jewellery Design Competition were presented.

The theme of this year’s competition required creators to draw inspiration from the 1913 poem ‘For the Shop’ by Constantine Cavafy.

The results of the competition are as follows:

In the 1st category, for gold and silver-smithing school students, 1st Prize was awarded to Anna Latoussaki (Municipality of Nea Smyrni – Gold and Silversmithing & Metal-working Department), 2nd Prize to Haralambia Hitou (IEK of Stemnitsa), and 3rd Prize to Minas Markakis (Mokume Private IEK).

Awards were also presented to Anna Farmakidi (IEK of Stemnitsa), Myrto Ioannidi (IEK of Stemnitsa), Archondia Vassila (IEK of Stemnitsa), Evangelia Bliatsiou (IEK of Stemnitsa) and

Maria-Christina Arvaniti (Municipality of Nea Smyrni – Gold and Silversmithing & Metal-working Department).

In the 2nd category, for professional jewellery designers and manufacturers, an award was presented to Elpida Kamitsi.

The competition was organised by the Hellenic Jewellery Federation (POVACO), in cooperation with TIF-Helexpo.

The next meeting of the jewellery sector will be the ‘Hellenic Jewellery Fair’, to be held from 3 to 6 March 2017 at the Metropolitan Expo exhibition centre in Attica.

31/10/2016 – 10:37

Every latest development of the sectors of hotels, restaurants and coffee-making will be presented at this year’s Hotelia, the international hotel equipment exhibition organised by TIF-Helexpo from 18 to 20 November at Thessaloniki International Exhibition Centre at the same time as the Philoxenia exhibition. Hotelia will serve as an entrepreneurial meeting point for the abovementioned sectors, given the particularly positive performance of the last event. It is addressed to hoteliers, architects, decorators, technical firms, as well as professionals belonging to the sectors of restaurants, coffee-making and tourism. The design, construction and renovation of hotels, coffee and new technologies are just a few of the categories that the exhibition will include.

This year’s organisation will also host DPOINT SPACES, an innovative hotel architecture and decoration event, aiming at highlighting aspects related to the professional activity of every hotelier, architect, decorator, technical firm and professional that is directly or indirectly related to tourism. This year’s DPOINT SPACES will feature the presentation of the green zero hotel project (the first modular ecological bungalow), the future boutique project (the boutique hotel of the future) and the rent a design room project (a rented room that ‘speaks’ the language of design).

Visitors to this year’s Hotelia will have the opportunity to become acquainted with THE ART OF DRINKING ‘ALL ABOUT CAFÉ’, a special thematic event dedicated to the art of coffee, focusing on the evolution and culture of the most popular drink of our times. Focusing on quality and enthusiasm for making an excellent cup of coffee, acclaimed baristas and roasters will present their techniques through a series of seminars and presentations, giving visitors the opportunity to become informed and acquainted with the wonderful world of coffee. Seminars will take place during all three days of the exhibition.

Hotelia will also include parallel colloquiums on the latest and most prominent issues, with one important event being the cooperation between the exhibition and ECO WEEK, as well as the special Google programme titled ‘Grow Greek Tourism on line’.

The architectural firms that cooperated with TIF-Helexpo on DPOINT SPACES are MAKRIDIS ASSOCIATES ARCHITECTS, MINAS KOSMIDIS-Architecture in Concept and NOMEN ARCHITECTS.

25/10/2016 – 16:48

The vision of creating and establishing a new, pioneering and multi-aspected Art Fair becomes reality with the organization of the 1st Art-Thessaloniki International Contemporary Art Fair to be held at Thessaloniki International Exhibition Centre from the 1st to the 4th of December 2016.

The exhibition is organized by TIF-HELEXPO, and its artistic director is Mr Pantelis Tsatsis.

Art-Thessaloniki aspires to play a catalytic role in reinforcing dialogue and artistic mobility, highlighting challenges and innovation, promoting artistic neighbourly relations and exchanges and, mainly, facilitating understanding the diversity of cultural phenomena.

At the same time, this new exhibition invests in the long history and multi-cultural identity of Thessaloniki, underlining the deep bonds the city has with the countries in the broader region of the Balkans, the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East.

Believing that art and culture are fundamental tools for dissemination of knowledge, economic growth and communication, the 1st Art-Thessaloniki International Contemporary Art Fair is to be a pioneering meeting point for art galleries from around the globe.

Participation has already been confirmed by Russia, Italy, Turkey, Japan, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Israel, Germany and Serbia; this fact alone is going to attract numerous visitors to the exhibition event, including collectors and art work buyers from Greece and abroad.

The Artist of Honour at this Art-Thessaloniki event is sculptor Theodoros, while the exhibition is to be supplemented by a dynamic and rich programme of parallel events, among which the following three Museum Exhibitions stand out:

• Jewish Museum – curator Drorit Gur Arie (Director and Chief Curator Petach Tikva Museum of Art, Tel Aviv)
• Outsider Art/Eccentric Art- curators: Pavlos Vaseiliadis and Sania Papa.
• Collector’s View – A. Stoidis’ Collection.

The 1st Art-Thessaloniki International Contemporary Art Fair is organized under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of the Interior & Administrative Restructuring (of Macedonia-Thrace). The event is hosted with the support and cooperation of the Municipality of Thessaloniki and numerous city agencies, which join their forces in the effort to promote the exhibition so that it may become an annual institution.

17/10/2016 – 12:30

This year, the ‘heart’ of Greek tourism is beating at the 32nd Philoxenia, the largest and most comprehensive tourism exhibition. Acclaimed companies of the sector, hotels, travel agencies and the country’s 13 regions will be dynamically present at this year’s event, which is supported by the Greek National Tourism Organisation (EOT) and the most important tourism bodies. Philoxenia will be held from 18 to 20 November at Thessaloniki International Exhibition Centre, concurrently with ‘Hotelia’, the major exhibition of hotel and professional equipment.

This year, the 32nd Philoxenia is the absolute destination for the sector, with emphasis being placed on upgrading its professional character. In this direction, there is continuous improvement and enrichment of the ‘Philoxenia Hosted Buyers’ programme, in the context of which over 120 distinguished foreign tourism professionals will be hosted and will attend B2B meetings with exhibitors.

The parallel events of Philoxenia include the International Tourism Conference titled ‘[Re]Branding Destinations: Image making’, where numerous destinations will be presented and branding strategy techniques will be developed, so that each destination can be promoted in the right way and acquire the tourism value it deserves. The conference focuses on the methods and means that must be developed in order for a tourism destination to be developed according to the realities of our time.

At the same time, a number of special events titled ‘Philoxenia Happenings’ will be held by participants, which will consist of celebrations to provide a comprehensive presentation of each individual area through local music, cuisine and other customs.

Furthermore, TIF-Helexpo, having grasped the importance of the Chinese market for Greek tourism, will be hosting a seminar at this year’s Philoxenia titled ‘Outgoing tourism from China: (almost) everything you always wanted to know”. It is noted that China will be the Guest of Honour at the 82nd TIF.

At Philoxenia 2016, tourism professionals will have the opportunity to learn about new trends in the sector and increase their knowledge through the seminars organised by Google and the ‘Grow Greek Tourism Online’ action, as well as the presentations of ‘Study in Thessaloniki’ to be held at a specially created area within Pavilion 13.

17/10/2016 – 11:51