The Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2021 opens its doors in Barcelona this Monday after the cancellation of the 2020 edition due to the pandemic, but this year’s event is a shadow of that of 2019 and its organizers present it as a transitional edition to return to “normal” in the congress already scheduled for February 2022.
The fair is much smaller this year, without major product presentations and with an eminently local public, which will also minimize the economic contribution to the city. With a hybrid agenda between face-to-face and virtual, in which the big firms are absent or with telematic intervention, the international participants will be much less than other years and will connect online. In fact, the star of the congress will be part of the virtual agenda: Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, this Tuesday afternoon.
The still limited international mobility and the change of dates of the congress to save this year’s edition without compromising the next one has placed MWC 2021 at a time in the calendar when the stars of other years, the new models of mobile terminals with the latest developments in the market, are already presented or pending presentation, and without the influx of high-level exhibitors and congressmen from all over the world, the impact of the show will be concentrated mainly around the three pavilions that it will occupy in the Gran Via de Fira venue of Barcelona, including in this space the parallel fair for entrepreneurs 4YFN, while other years between both events they took over both the eight pavilions of the Gran Via venue and a good part of Montjuïc.
There will be a thousand exhibitors, although a third will be virtual, so that there will be between 700 and 800 face-to-face exhibitors, according to the figures detailed to elEconomista by the CEO of the GSMA, John Hoffman, which represents a third of the 2,400 stands that participated in Barcelona at the 2019 MWC.
Expected field attendees range from 25,000 to 35,000, up from 109,000 in 2019, and will be mostly local. In previous editions, the Spanish congress participants were around 28,000, and this year the organization put 30,000 tickets on sale at 21 euros -compared to the standard pass that costs 700- to encourage the participation of local professionals from sectors in which mobile technology is gaining ground, but even so it has not managed to exhaust the offer, and in the last week it has even distributed additional free invitations, although whatever the origin of the pass, all attendees must take viral tests and meet the detailed health requirements to being able to access the fairgrounds, which discourages many, considering that they will not find the best-known firms in the sector inside.
There will also be no major events outside the fair, which, added to all of the above, affects the demand for transport, spaces for parties, accommodation and restaurants. This year there are no foreign rental vehicles with drivers, nor extra flights at El Prat Airport, and the city’s nightlife establishments, hotels, apartments and restaurants have hardly registered an increase in reservations for Mobile week.
More than half of the hotels in Barcelona are still closed, and those that are open have an occupancy rate of 30% and prices below half the average for 2019. The hotels closest to the fair are at 50%, something never seen in previous editions, when all types of accommodation in the Catalan capital hung the full sign and some congress participants had to sleep in towns up to 40 kilometers away, such as Sitges. And lunch and dinner reservations for large groups are also conspicuous by their absence.
However, both the Hotel Guild and the Barcelona Restaurant Guild consider the return of MWC 2021 to be positive as an incentive for the return of international fairs to the city, and for the name of Barcelona to appear again on the agenda world of business events and can capture those who prepare for the post-pandemic.
Both of them already have their sights set on the 2022 MWC, for which the GSMA already has space reservations for several of the big international brands that will not be present in Barcelona this week.
Institutional support
King Felipe VI; The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and that of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, shared the main table of the inaugural dinner of the congress this Sunday night, and in two speeches they highlighted its importance as a stimulus for the post-pandemic reactivation despite their version reduced this year.
Aragonès and the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, refused to take part in the Monarch’s welcoming hand kiss, but they greeted each other inside Fira Montjuïc, where the act took place.
Colau was also part of the presidential round table of only six people for health prevention measures. Aragonès stood in front of Sánchez, and separated him from the King -who had the Spanish president to his right- the director general of GSMA, Mats Granryd.
Among the attendees, in addition to several ministers and ministers, were the directors of national and international companies participating in the congress, as well as other local political and economic leaders. Among the Spanish directors, the president of Telefónica, José María Álvarez-Pallete, and those of CaixaBank and Banco Sabadell, José Ignacio Goirigolzarri and Josep Oliu, respectively, attended.
I return on Thursday
Felipe VI will return to Barcelona this Thursday, but the Catalan president has then refused to participate in the delivery in the Catalan capital of the 2020 and 2021 awards of the Princess of Girona Foundation, which will be attended by Reyes, Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofía.
The Catalan president argued that the Government will attend any act in which the interests of the citizens of Catalonia can be defended, but not those that are “to praise the Monarchy.”
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