The Prince and Princess of Asturias this afternoon led the official opening of the new ESADE campus in Sant Cugat del Vallès (Barcelona). The state-of-the-art facilities, home to over 1,500 students, have been designed and built to satisfy the criteria of the European Higher Education Area, more commonly known as the Bologna Process.

In his address at the official opening of the ESADE-Sant Cugat Campus, the Prince of Asturias said, "It is vital that all areas of activity contribute towards creating new entrepreneurial initiatives that act as seeds for the future with which to further advance the task of modernising business structures". 

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 The Prince highlighted that: "This educational project is based on foundations that will turn ESADE into an international centre of excellence," and went on to emphasise that we need "to adapt and innovate if we are to deal with a constantly changing scenario". 

Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia chatted with a hundred-strong group of students, who shared their "Bologna experience" with the guests of honour. ESADE has been offering Bologna-adapted programmes for several years now and attracts students from 38 different nationalities. These courses include the Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) and Masters programmes, such as the CEMS Master in International Management – recently voted the world's best masters in management by the Financial Times.

A campus with firm future vision

As the Chairman of the ESADE Board of Trustees, Pedro Fontana, pointed out, "at uncertain times like today's, more than ever we need facilities that inspire futures and offer entrepreneurial vision and active support to companies".

Given the current economic difficulties, Carlos Losada, Director General of ESADE, also highlighted that the investment in constructing the new campus and the ESADECREAPOLIS building is "an example of ESADE's firm and deep commitment to the future of our country and to the improvement of our society".

> Remarks by His Royal Highness the Prince of Asturias during the opening ceremony of the new campus

> News items of the Royal Family related to the inauguration of the campus

Wide representation of political, social and business leaders

The event was also attended by leading figures from Spanish politics, society and business. They included the Catalan Minister of Education, Ernest Maragall; the Secretary General of Universities, Màrius Rubiralta; the Mayor of Sant Cugat, Lluís Recoder; the Delegate of the Spanish Government in Catalunya, Joan Rangel; the Dean of the Universitat Ramon Llull, Esther Giménez-Salinas; the Archbishop of Barcelona, Lluís Martínez Sistach; and the Provincial Superior of the Jesuits in Catalunya, Lluís Magriñà, to name just a few.

Business leaders attending today's opening included Joaquim Borràs (ISS Facility Services), Xavier Brossa (PricewaterhouseCoopers), Benet Carbonell (Copcisa), Enric Casi (Mango), Antonio Esteve (Esteve), Jordi Miarnau (Comsa), Mariano Puig (Puig), Xavier Puig (Flamagas), Xavier Queralt (BBVA), Manuel Raventós (Raventós & Blanch),  Manel Rossell (Caixa Manresa), Joan Manuel Soler Pujol (Quadis). Josep Maria Serra (Catalana Occident) and Joan Uriach (Laboratoris Uriach).

The publishing industry is facing major challenges and upheavals, which many already consider akin to those experienced by the music and film industries in the last few years. What will be the tide of change? To what extent will the switch from paper formats become real and how will this affect books? Will there be hybrid versions? To discuss these and other questions, the ESADE Alumni BIT Club, in collaboration with the ESADE Alumni Cultural Industries Club, organised a round table debate titled "The present and future of the e-book".

Managing Director of the Grupo Planeta Books Division, Jesús Badenes, explained at today's event that - contrary to popular belief - publishers do not take a dim view on the evolution of e-books, but the truth is that "right now there still isn't a market because demand and content are still lacking". Along these lines, he added that "we're getting ready for this market, which will become important within the next five years or so". The Director of Google Books Spain, Luis Collado, also pointed out that "technology is little more than a tool and what's really important is content, but this is still missing".

To publish works in electronic book format requires the handover of intellectual property rights and, as of now, this is not a widespread occurrence. According to Badenes, "technology has taken a giant leap with the creation of the e-book format, but now it's necessary to establish a suitable legal framework to protect content and that chapter hasn't been opened yet". On a similar note, Collado pointed out that "a total of 1000 e-books exist by authors who no longer have intellectual property rights, but there are no new releases and that's what people want to read". Another obstacle preventing the development of e-books, as the CEO of Bubok.com Ángel María Herrera highlighted, is that "there are publishers who see our website, where books can be self-published, as a threat, whereas other have already started to publish with us, for example SM already has a channel on Bubok".

Today's round table session also tackled the risk of bootlegging faced by e-books. The Director of Google Books Spain vouched that "bootlegging will never disappear so we must fight to reduce it to a minimum, to avoid it becoming a social curse and not let it be decriminalised as happened within the music industry". Nevertheless, he added, "I believe the publishing industry is reacting faster than the music industry did". The Bubok.com CEO suggested "innovation in how content is protected" in order to address the problem "because DRM technology, for instance, is no fail-safe guarantee". From a publisher's point of view, Jesús Badenes stated that "although there's little we can do against bootlegging, governments should take a stance and regulate this practice".

With reference to how the publishing industry will adapt to forthcoming changes, Ángel María Herrera insisted that "Bubok.com dares to do things that publishers don't and we only want to work with people who understand the changes in sight, there's no place for anybody else". Opposing this opinion, the MD of the Grupo Planeta Books Division defended the publishing industry by stating, "we publishers were able to foresee the change and the same will happen with regard to electronic books". Badenes went on to stress that "not only are we going to adapt to the change, we're also going to demand respect for intellectual property, offer content at market value and provide more interesting products for readers".

Josep Francesc Valls, Professor of the ESADE Marketing Department, and Mauricio Benavides, CEO of Bancotel, today unveiled the report "The ESADE-Bancotel Comparison of Spanish Tourism Websites".

The study reveals that the Internet is a business opportunity to improve traditional holiday reservation channels in an ever-changing globalised world. Given this, as well as the vast array of tourism webs and portals already available, the idea for the report was born. It aims to help redefine the role of the Internet, pinpoint the new functions of industry middlemen and foster strategic change in tourism-focussed companies.

The report highlights that transport websites are the highest-rated amongst all the sectors of the tourism industry (transport, hotels, travel agents, destinations, restaurants and the leisure industry).

Said websites bank on design (8) and user-friendliness (6), with particular emphasis on e-commerce and security levels. More specifically, the highest ratings of all the transport sub-sectors are awarded to airline websites: design (8.67), user-friendliness (6.89) and customer value (6.50), even though price transparency is on the whole rather low.

Hotels, on the other hand, generally use the Internet as a marketing tool and the top rating they notch up (6.24) is for web design. Interestingly, there is a big gap between how major chains and small-scale hotel operators are perceived.

Travel agency portals receive a less positive classification. As for destination websites, the report concludes that "they are very well-designed, the sites tend not to be user-friendly and customer value is fair-to-middling". Another noteworthy finding is the difficulty to distinguish between official and non-official websites.

Restaurant websites are amongst the lowest rated (4.71) in the report, with a marked difference between modern and traditional eateries. Finally, the leisure industry -which comprises amusement parks, casinos and ski resorts- receives an overall rating of 5.47, with its low level of personalisation being particularly criticised (2.96).

Following yesterday's announcement of the planned British Airways-Iberia merger, the ESADE Marketing Department professor and airline industry expert Josep Francesc Valls identified the merge as the result of flagship airlines needing to create alliances with each other following the 1997 airline deregulation and the take-off of low-cost carriers.

In fact, analysing the current whereabouts of the international airline industry, Valls believes that this is "the first of many a merger" which will prompt a "Euro-American market". He continued, "we're on board a process of mergers and set-ups of worldwide airline alliances ready to unfold in the near future and which will pilot international connections". According to Valls, these alliances will be led by European companies because, despite lower revenue and passenger numbers, credit groups are taking a stance in favour of European airlines. The outcome? The advent of two or three  mega-alliances in Europe within the coming years.

A well-balanced merger

As for the merger between Iberia and British Airways, Josep Francesc Valls considers it to be a fairly well-balanced merger between both parties, which will give rise to the world's fifth largest airline group by revenue and passenger numbers, and the third in Europe.