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This year’s WTM poised to be best-ever attended
World Travel Market has released encouraging visitor figures for the first two and a half days of this year’s show.
According to unaudited figures, there was a 7% increase in visitors, including buyers, on the Monday, Tuesday and up to 1pm on Wednesday.
Overall delegates, including visitors, buyers, international media and exhibitor personal, were up 5%.
In total WTM 2014 has had a total 82,213 visits compared to 78,035 at 1pm on the third day of the 2013 event.
Breaking it down day by day, WTM said Monday was a ‘resounding success’ with invite-only visitor attendance up 9% on last year to almost 9,692.
This includes a 13% increase in invited WTM Buyers’ Club members and a 3% rise in exhibitor personnel to 12,289.
On Tuesday, when the event was opened up to the whole industry, 19,706 visitors came to WTM, an 8% increase on the second day of last year’s event. Exhibitor personnel was up 5% to 12,640.
At 1pm on Wednesday, WTM 2014 welcomed 7% more visitors (12,582) than at the same time at WTM 2013. Exhibitor personnel was also up 1% to almost 10,000 (9,975) people.
WTM senior director Simon Press said: "These figures demonstrate the power and importance of WTM to the industry and the role it plays in facilitating business for sector.
"World Travel Market 2014 is predicted to facilitate around £2.5 billion in industry deals and is poised to the best-ever attended."
The four-day event at London’s Excel is due to end today (Thursday).
Last year many agents complained to event organiser Reed when they turned up on the fourth day to find many stands were empty and that many suppliers had already packed up and gone home.
A subsequent Mole poll showed that 70% of our readers believed it would be better if the show was only three days long.
ANTOR, which represents international tourist boards, agreed, saying its member could not justify the cost of attending on the fourth and final day.
WTM organisers threatened to make exhibitors who didn’t man their stands on the fourth day pay more when registering this year to try to encourage them to stay until the end of the exhibition.
However, TravelMole has already received emails from visitors to this year’s event saying they turned up last night (Wednesday) to find stands unmanned (see comment posted here).
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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