Exhibiting, selling books, and presenting conferences or book launches at the fair is free of charge for selected participants.

Guests simply stay at the hotel under special winter conditions, with rooms offered at approximately 50% of standard seasonal rates. The intention is not to create a commercial trade fair in the conventional sense, but a temporary international community centered around books, ideas, culture, and human exchange.

Hotel Ascona offers approximately 120 beds, allowing exhibitors, speakers, authors, publishers, collectors, and visitors to live the experience together in the same place throughout the event.

The real strength of the project lies in its convivial atmosphere and direct human interaction. Participants do not simply arrive for a lecture and leave — they stay together, dine together, exchange ideas, and build relationships organically over several days.

Large shared dinners, communal tables, aperitifs, evening gatherings at the bar, informal discussions after conferences, spontaneous encounters between authors, collectors, artists, researchers, and guests: these moments are considered an essential part of the experience.

The fair is designed as a living cultural environment where new collaborations, friendships, publishing projects, exhibitions, research initiatives, and creative synergies can emerge naturally through proximity and shared time.

In this sense, the project reconnects with the historical spirit of Ascona and Monte Verità: a place where culture was not separated from daily life, but lived collectively through dialogue, hospitality, art, philosophy, and human presence.

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