Blog homeI decided a few months back not to go to the World Travel Market this year (indeed I haven’t gone for a couple of years). For those of you who have not heard of this show, it takes place in London ExCel – a massive exhibition hall in the East of London. At the show you can find:
- Representatives from nearly all hotel chains, car hire firms and airlines
- Every destination and country represented (often with wonderful stands)
- A few travel technology providers chucked in the corner
In other words, lots of people. Maybe that is why I don’t like it!
It is one of the largest travel trade shows in the world – and as it takes places within 100 miles of where I live and work – should I have made the effort to go?
Previous experiences of WTM
In previous visits I have had some unusual experiences – for example one year I ended up in a central London bar in discussion with a CEO of a large travel dot com – and as a result took up a contract for a couple of months doing hotel online marketing. Maybe I wouldn’t have got that work if it hadn’t been for WTM. Who knows.
Another year I saw at the show a presentation of the launch of the .travel domain names. Yeah. Exciting stuff.
Most of the time though I tend to wander aimlessly around, drinking expensive coffee, and trying to read everyone’s name tags from 5 metres – to try and work out if I should say hello or not. Occasionally I meet people that I have worked with in the past – and then go and drink more expensive coffee.
Is WTM for product & commercial people only?
I believe that WTM is relevant to travel agents looking for new suppliers – and for product and commercial people looking to meet up with existing suppliers etc.
I know that WTM is positioned at the time of the year when new contracts for the forthcoming seasons can be negotiated – and by having everyone in the same place – you can streamline the product contracting process.
However what relevance does it have to IT / web centric people?
What industry am I in?
I think I am in the travel industry. The travel industry is now an online phenomenon – and I am at the online end of the industry. Therefore WTM should be for me as well as for product and commercial people.
I was at a TTI conference (London) a few months ago and listened to Hugo Burge, from Cheapflights / Howzat Media, talking about online distribution. At the end I asked a question which was along the lines of “Does he consider himself to be in the travel industry?” (because he had stated that although distribution was moving online – the travel industry was not losing control of travel distribution – which is true – if you count his websites as being part of the travel industry!). Anyway as I recall his answer wasn’t very clear. I believe though that he is in the travel industry – just like I am.
Final thoughts
Maybe WTM will never be relevant to web / IT people within the travel industry because of the time of the year. November is pretty much the toughest month for us lot (in Europe) because peak sales for summer holiday travel start in January. Therefore November is the month that projects need to be completed in – in order to be live and operational for December.
Even if you did add lots more interesting workshops and exhibitors relevant to web and IT people – you wouldn’t probably see the entire web team from a travel company going to the show (unlike product teams – where you can often see the entire team go to the show for the entire week – and they tell us that the show isn’t long enough).
Over the weekend a couple of customers and potential customers have emailed me asking if we can meet up at the WTM. Ummm….. perhaps I should have gone!
Maybe next year we will take a stand…. ! At least I can choose the coffee then.
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should’ve gone to phocuswright, alex…
Gutted.
I was going, hotel booked, train ticket booked, and on Sunday night I started to pack.
Went into work today, asked if I would cancel my leave, won’t explain why, but I’m not going now
There were a number of people who I wanted to catch up with, and spend 2 days in the exhibition.
Last year I was in the Travolution conference [great conference!] and only had a few hours to get around the huge Excel centre.
There’s always next year…
I agree that WTM is not intended for IT people. although i saw there ratetiger, travelclick, and many more.
But which conferences would you recommend for an IT guy to attend?
regads,
xavier
Hi Xavier,
Very good question.
I go to non-travel ones (like Future of Web Apps – both in Miami and London)
I also go to, in the UK, TTI (Travel Technology Initiative) – which is one day every 3 months. Paul Richer does a great job of keeping that one interesting.
Personally I prefer conferences / exhibitions that are about ideas and problems – rather than about software and services. I get enough people telling me about software and services all day every day. Also I read plenty of blogs…. which helps…. I also love talks that are inspiring.
I also really hate paying large fees for conferences as the return on investment just doesn’t add up. As a consultant / solution provider I get paid to sit in meetings talking with people about solving their real problems (with real data – not public data) – So I am not going to pay to hear the same executives talk about the same issues – but in a filtered, and shortened way. I appreciate however that not everyone is in the same position as me.
Of course, if someone gave me a free press pass (!), I would probably go to more travel conferences. Goodness knows if I could get away being classified as press. I don’t really see this blog as a “press endeavour”.
Ummm
http://www.traveltechnologyshow.com/Default.aspx
I’m a bit of a geek, and it’ll make a change from consumer/wtm type exhibitions.
I’m hoping to go to this.
I was invited to an holiday exhibition in Dublin in January but a blogger doesn’t get paid that much to go gallivanting around the UK and Ireland to exhibitions.
[...] Should I have gone to the World Travel Market? – Alex Bainbridge se plantea si debiera o no haber asistido a la World Travel Market. Muchos lo hacemos, respecto a otras ferias de turismo. [...]
I guess travel industry will be even more web centric in future. I didnt know of this event. looking to the next one.