Manolis and I went to the World Travel Market today – met old friends and made some new ones. In my question “so, how did you find it this year” I heard a lot of “like last year“, “it’s going to be a tough year“, “we only come to maintain contacts anyway” and similar equally subdued comments.
There was a general worried stance that you could almost taste in the air – the financial crisis is making people nervous and nervous people tend to go back to their comfort zone – for seasoned travel destinations that sadly means playing the game based on price rather than quality and engagement.
Still you have some people – and it’s usually a people thing rather than on a company or country level – who look ahead beyond the financial crises and want to be ready and engaged. For them it’s not just a retention issue but rather a qualitative turn towards visitors who are engaged and demanding. Those visitors are the ones who will make a destination better through feedback and ideas.
For SoMaFusion I have to say that it was a good experience. We had some good meetings with existing clients from Crete (more on that later) and met some new people that we’d love to work with. I was quite impressed by some discussions we had with a truly visionary hotelier from Crete who is eager to engage with his customers and business contacts beyond the old ‘brochure and business card’ model towards a more interactive type of communication. These sort of discussions make these events truly worthwhile.
Work and business contacts aside it was a good exhibition I thought with a good mix of tour operators and booking/ travel systems with country and city presences as impressive as ever. Having said that it was as big and as chaotic as ever and I would have loved to see more tech tools to make navigating the exhibition easier – but hey, I’ll write a separate blog post on that one.
