Michelle Mak
People’s lives get shaped by the mentality of the city they live in and in the spirit of the city influences the mood of its residents, creating happy or unhappy people. This year, with the “Happy Cities” theme, ATRAX brings to the forefront, attraction and recreation projects that create more opportunities for socializing and activities and focused on the happiness of the residents of the city. On February 15, ATRAX 2019 made it a success in Istanbul, a traffic hub city, as well as an international metropolis that is the core of Turkish politics, economy, culture, finance, news and trade.

ATRAX continues to enlighten the Sector via its Conference Series
The main discussion topics of the conference organized as part of ATRAX 2020 Exhibition, that brought together leaders of the sector, academicians, local governments, society presidents, directors of organizations and institutions and universities, were “Importance and Necessity of Building Happy Cities’ and “The Impact of Entertainment and Recreation on the Happiness of City People”. In addition, ATRAX took a major step for combining theory and practice with its “University Special Section”. This year ATRAX offered competition titled “University Special Section” related to “Happy Cities Project” whereby it rewarded the best ideas offered by the universities and shared these ideas with sector’s representatives via the dedicated conference.

The project was organized by Tureks International Fairs in cooperation with REKÇAD (Recreation Studies and Research Association) with the goal of building the quality of life of the future and creating value social-cultural-touristic-economic and educational sense. The project which aims to support and share with all stakeholders, municipal park projects which support the brandization and marketing efforts of cities and other right projects that would shape the future of cities contributes to the efforts for providing higher quality products and services in the recreation and events industry by bringing together theory and practice on the same platform.

The project which comprises recreation, sports sciences, communication, landscape architecture, architecture and city planning departments, helps universities meet with manufacturers, investors, event managers and service buyers (such as municipalities, hotels, shopping malls, companies etc.) by providing coordination among different disciplines. This project which we believe will make an important contribution to both the sector and ATRAX Exhibition, will be implemented with a larger scope in the coming year. We are more than delighted to hear that some of the university projects will be brought to life by certain municipalities.

ATRAX’s vibrant Gala Night and Attraction Star Awards Ceremony
The winners of “Attraction Star Attraction, Events and Recreation Awards 2020” which is organized as part of ATRAX Exhibition were announced at ATRAX Gala night. “Attraction Star Awards” which is organized with the goal of encouraging new projects and creating awareness in the sector by rewarding successful projects, resulted in a more vibrant event this year. At the competition which featured a total of 22 awards were presented. Winners were selected objectively by a jury of 16 experts comprising professionals of the sector, academicians and society presidents. We are more than happy to have received positive feedback and appreciation from our guests regarding the night. We hope to experience the same great excitement with you next year as well. Next year, ATRAX will be held on Feb. 4~6 at Istanbul Expo Center again!
※The article is published in the GTI Magazine Issue No. 185 in April 2020