For the FITUR event, one of the largest international tourism fairs globally, held annually in Madrid, We developed a real-time interactive installation as the centerpiece of the Turismo Madrid stand. The installation took inspiration from the seven stars on Madrid’s flag, shaping seven star-like rooms within the stand. The goal was to highlight the hidden gems and lesser-known destinations of Madrid’s region, focusing on its natural landscapes, historical sites, and cultural heritage.
The installation was inaugurated by the Royal family, and receiving notable media coverage for its innovative and immersive design. The real-time 3D map allowed visitors to explore geographical points of interest, offering multimedia content and spatial audio to create a personal and engaging experience. The installation successfully captivated visitors, encouraging them to explore not just Madrid’s urban attractions but its natural beauty and heritage beyond the capital.
FITUR – the Feria Internacional de Turismo – is one of the largest international tourism trade fairs in the world, held annually at IFEMA Madrid and attended by tourism professionals, government delegations, and media from across the globe. For the 2008 and 2010 editions, ex1t.one created the centrepiece interactive installation for the Turismo Madrid stand – a real-time immersive experience designed to reframe how international visitors and industry professionals understood the Madrid region beyond its capital city.
The installation was inaugurated by the Spanish Royal Family and received significant media coverage for its innovative approach to destination marketing at trade fair scale. It represented one of the earliest large-format real-time interactive installations at a major tourism event in Spain, and established the creative and technical approach that would define ex1t.one’s work across the following fifteen years.
FITUR
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Seven Star-Shaped Rooms: Madrid’s Flag as an Architectural Concept
The spatial concept for the Turismo Madrid installation was drawn directly from the seven stars of the Madrid regional flag – translated into seven distinct star-shaped rooms within the stand, each forming a self-contained zone of the interactive experience whilst remaining part of a coherent whole.
This decision gave the installation an immediate symbolic resonance that visitors could recognise and remember: the stand did not merely represent Madrid, it was architecturally shaped by one of Madrid’s most recognisable civic symbols. At a trade fair where hundreds of destination stands compete for attention and distinction, this level of conceptual coherence between identity and spatial design created a stand that was genuinely memorable rather than generically impressive.
Each of the seven rooms served as an entry point to the broader interactive experience, with the real-time 3D map of the Madrid region serving as the connective tissue between them. Visitors can enter from any room and navigate to the installation’s geographic and cultural content, creating a non-linear visitor journey shaped by individual curiosity rather than a prescribed route through the stand.
Real-Time 3D Interactive Map: Spatial Audio and Madrid’s Hidden Destinations
The centrepiece of the installation was a real-time 3D interactive map of the Madrid region – a navigable geographical environment displaying points of interest across the full extent of the Community of Madrid, from the mountains of the Sierra de Guadarrama in the north to the plains and medieval towns of the south and east.
The strategic purpose of this map was specific: the Turismo Madrid brief was focused on Madrid’s lesser-known destinations – the natural landscapes, historical sites, and cultural heritage that lie beyond the capital and that are systematically overlooked by visitors who experience Madrid as a city rather than as a region. The interactive map made these destinations navigable and discoverable, allowing visitors to explore geographical areas of the Community they might never otherwise have considered, supported by multimedia content for each point of interest.
Spatial audio was integrated throughout, creating an acoustic environment in each room and at each point of interest that reinforced the geographical and atmospheric character of the location being explored. The combination of real-time 3D geography, multimedia content, and spatial audio created a genuinely immersive experience of the Madrid region – one that communicated the breadth and variety of what the Community offered to visitors in a way that no conventional display or brochure could approach.
Inaugurated by the Spanish Royal Family: Scale and Significance at FITUR
The Spanish Royal Family’s inauguration of the Turismo Madrid installation at FITUR underscored the project’s cultural and civic significance. It was not a commercial brand activation but a regional tourism initiative presented at the highest level of public life at one of the world’s most internationally visible tourism events.
The media coverage following the inauguration extended the installation’s reach well beyond the trade fair audience, drawing attention to both the Turismo Madrid destination proposition and the innovative interactive approach used to present it.
For an installation intended to draw attention to Madrid’s lesser-known attractions, the coverage achieved exactly the effect it was designed for: generating genuine interest in destinations that had previously existed largely outside the awareness of international visitors.
The positive reception from industry professionals at FITUR confirmed that the installation represented a genuine step forward in how destination tourism could be presented at trade fair scale – an assessment that proved well-founded as the interactive installation became an increasingly standard component of major tourism stand design in the years that followed.
- Goals:
◦ Highlight Madrid’s lesser-known attractions and natural landscapes.
◦ Engage visitors with immersive, interactive installations. - Production:
◦ Developed a real-time 3D interactive map displayed within seven star-shaped rooms.
◦ Integrated spatial audio and dynamic lighting for an engaging visitor experience. - Results:
◦ Significant media coverage and increased interest in Madrid’s hidden gems.
◦ Positive reception from industry professionals and the public.
Related Immersive and Interactive Public Installations
Explore more immersive and interactive public installations from ex1t.one:
- Monument to the Revolution Mexico City – Interactive heritage installation increasing visitor traffic by 25%
- Oceanic Core Canary Islands – Multi-installation immersive environmental experience with dome mapping and fog screen transitions
- Commonwealth Games Perry’s Trail Birmingham – Real-time motion capture interactive activation across Birmingham 2022
ex1t.one: From FITUR 2008 to the Present
The FITUR installation is where the story of ex1t.one begins – a real-time interactive experience created for one of the world’s largest tourism fairs, inaugurated by the Spanish Royal Family, and built around a spatial concept drawn directly from the civic identity of the city it represented. The principles that shaped it – conceptual rigour, real-time interactivity, spatial design that serves the content, and a genuine commitment to making complex information personally engaging – have defined every project we have undertaken in the fifteen years since.
ex1t.one is a UK-based immersive experiences studio working with global brands, cultural institutions, government clients, and live event organisations to create interactive and immersive experiences that communicate what conventional presentation cannot. Our portfolio spans automotive showrooms and government stages, heritage monuments and international trade fairs, theatrical productions and stadium activations – united by the same underlying conviction that the most effective way to communicate something important is to let the audience experience it directly.
For further context on interactive destination marketing and tourism trade fair design, visit FITUR’s official resources at ifema.es/fitur.