Visitor Surge for World Travel Market 2016 Events

The World Travel Market  portfolio of events for 2016 has received a phenomenal 35% increase in travel trade visitors – totalling an impressive 37,651 – attending the array of leading events around the globe, compared to 2015. 

One of the latest events in the calendar, Arabian Travel Market 2016, took place from 25-28 April at Dubai World Trade Centre, and attracted more than 28,000 trade visitors to the show representing a 7% year-on-year rise and marking a record turnout for the event. Leading with a topical mid-market theme, the 23rd travel and tourism industry showcase, which has grown to become the largest event of its kind in the region, also recorded a 9% increase in the number of Buyers’ Club members compared to the previous year. This allowed for excellent business opportunities and meetings to take place on the exhibition floor over the four days. As such, ATM 2016 is poised to top last year’s record US$2.5 billion in business deals facilitated.

The news builds on results from the fourth WTM Latin America, which took place from 29 – 31 March in São Paulo, Brazil, and was responsible for bringing the world to Latin America. Its 5,900 travel trade attendees, which was a 5.4% increase on 2015 and a 26% increase on 2014, made the exhibition the busiest and liveliest yet and firmly cemented its market-leading position and need for tourism despite economic uncertainty in Brazil. 

The third WTM Africa – which took place in Cape Town, South Africa as part of Reed Travel Exhibition’s Africa Travel Week between 6 – 8 April – recorded an outstanding 23% increase in travel industry attendees, taking the number of visitors to 3,322, by far the largest growth area. WTM Africa continues to be the leading exhibition for the inbound and outbound African travel and tourism markets, growing at a substantial rate and gaining increased interest globally.  

More recently, May saw the successful launch of WTM connect Asia, which took place in Penang on 18 – 20 of the month. This pod-format event brought together hosted buyers and suppliers from more than 30 countries including China, Malaysia, Mexico, USA, UK, Philippines, Germany, Indonesia and Thailand.The new pod-format provided quality meetings and an exclusive one-to-one ratio community offering excellent business opportunities. 

WTM events collectively facilitated more than $7 billion (£4 billion) in travel and tourism industry deals in 2015 and it is anticipated that even more business deals will take place in 2016 as a result of the increase in travel trade visitors which includes those with direct purchasing responsibility who make up our WTM Buyers’ Club.

The World Travel Market events consist of the four leading business-to-business travel trade events in the world; 

• WTM Latin America
• WTM Africa
• Arabian Travel Market, and
• WTM London

Along with niche events; 

• WTM connect Asia, and
• International Golf Travel Market

The flagship event, WTM London is the next event in the calendar, this year moving from a four-day event to a three-day event, taking place at ExCeL London between Monday 7 – Wednesday 9 November. This is closely followed by International Golf Travel Market, which this year is taking place in Son Termens, Mallorca from 14 – 17 November. 

World Travel Market, Director, Craig Moyes, said: “The World Travel Market events that have already taken place in 2016 have been a great success. Feedback from all participant groups across all events has been universally positive. This massive increase in travel trade visitors across the World Travel Market events so far means we are on track to facilitate even more business than in 2015 when $7 billion worth of contracts were signed due to negotiations at our events.”