About the Event:

INCON Partner: ORTRA

Event Name: The 11th ILANIT/FISEB Conference

Date: February 23–26, 2026

Location: Eilat, Israel

Website: https://conf.fiseb.org/

Organizer / PCO: ORTRA

Background

ILANIT is Israel's largest scientific conference - held once every three years, that unites 46 Israeli societies of experimental biology under one roof. It draws researchers, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and international keynote speakers from every university, research institute and hospital in the country, making it the single most important gathering point for Israeli life sciences.

ORTRA has produced ILANIT for four consecutive editions, over which the congress has grown from roughly 1,500 to over 3,000 delegates - with the number of partner hotels and required session halls expanding accordingly. Given its scale and its three-year cycle, expectations for the event are exceptionally high - and, critically, there is no single traditional venue in Israel large enough to host it under one roof.

Challenges:

Hosting a congress of this size and growth trajectory meant confronting a logistical puzzle with no conventional solution:

■ No single venue: The scientific program and exhibition had to be split across four different hotels operating simultaneously, rather than one central conference center

■ Fragmented exhibition: With content spread across four properties, exhibitors and coffee-break traffic were divided rather than concentrated

■ A genuinely complex program: With dozens of parallel tracks - posters, satellite sessions, student-organized lectures, special sessions and more - spread across different hotels, delegates needed a way to navigate the program without getting lost

■ Accommodation at scale: Housing needs spanned 15 hotels along the Eilat hotel strip, from hostel-level to five-star

■ Constant movement: Delegates needed to travel between hotels daily for sessions, meals and social events - with a real risk of losing people to the beach, the pool, or simply "another hotel"

■ Transportation at scale: Moving thousands of delegates reliably between 15 hotels and the session venues, while tracking who was entitled to which shuttle, required infrastructure no single hotel could provide

■ Dining logistics: Feeding a multi-hotel population meant issuing meal vouchers per hotel while somehow keeping cross-hotel dining and delegate mixing possible, all while maintaining strict control over each hotel's meal guarantees

The risk was clear: an event this dispersed could easily feel disjointed, with delegates unable to tell they were "at ILANIT" once they stepped outside a session room.

Solutions

ORTRA turned the multi-hotel format from a constraint into the event's defining, differentiating experience:

■ A professional/retreat hybrid atmosphere: Daily yoga sessions and a scientists' relay/marathon competition were built into the schedule alongside the academic program, giving the congress a relaxed, retreat-like energy alongside its scientific rigor - setting the tone for an event that felt as good to be at as it was substantive to attend

■ A gastronomic competition between hotels: Rather than treating catering as a logistics problem, ORTRA turned it into a highlight - chefs from the different hotels effectively competed with one another, with daily ratings driving up food quality across the board

■ A controlled voucher exchange bank: Each delegate received a daily meal voucher tied to their assigned hotel, with an additional 10% of vouchers issued specifically for cross-hotel exchanges. This let delegates dine together across properties while keeping each hotel's meal guarantees firmly under control

■ Branding on both sides of the strip: With every hotel sitting along the beachfront and an inland road running parallel, ORTRA branded both the seafront and inland approaches - so wherever a delegate walked, the conference presence was visible and continuous

■ Hostesses at critical hours and points: Staff were deployed and carefully managed at key transition times and locations along the routes, so that even while moving between hotels, delegates always felt - and knew - they were still inside the conference

■ Distributed exhibition and coffee breaks: The exhibition itself was split across the hotels, with coffee breaks placed directly in each exhibition area - keeping engagement high at every site rather than concentrating it in one place

■ A dedicated bus station and fleet, connecting every point: ORTRA established a purpose-built bus station linking directly with the shuttle network, tying together all 15 accommodation hotels, the session venues and the central hub into a single, managed transportation system. Delegate eligibility was tracked across the entire network, and spare buses were kept on standby throughout - including for delegates who needed to head home early due to flight cancellations

■ A purpose-built central Hub, positioned between the hotels: At the heart of this network stood a dedicated structure erected specifically for the congress, positioned between the participating hotels rather than inside any one of them. It live-streamed every lecture from every location, giving every delegate - wherever they were staying - a shared, central point to experience the full program

■ A dedicated conference app, to hold it all together: With the scientific program spread across four venues, a custom app organized it into dedicated categories and tags - posters, satellite sessions, student-organized sessions, special sessions and more - letting delegates navigate a program spread across four hotels as if it were one

Outcomes

■ Despite constant temptation to wander off to the beach, pool or another hotel, ORTRA did not lose delegates to the surrounding resort environment

■ Over 90% occupancy was maintained across session halls throughout the congress

■ Over four editions, the congress grew from roughly 1,500 to over 3,000 delegates - with ORTRA's operational model scaling in step, adding hotels, halls and infrastructure without losing the cohesion of the event

■ What began as a logistical challenge — a congress with no single venue - became the event's signature strength: delegates experienced ILANIT everywhere they went in Eilat, not only inside a conference room

■ The gastronomic competition and controlled voucher exchange system turned a basic operational necessity (feeding 15 hotels' worth of delegates) into one of the most talked-about parts of the delegate experience

■ The combination of rigorous transportation management, a dedicated app, and constant on-ground staffing meant a congress spread across four content venues and 15 accommodation hotels ran as if it were a single, seamless event