WTM under pressure to dump fourth day

Pressure is being renewed to cut World Travel Market down to three days after a noticeable drop in people at the show yesterday.

Photographs posted on Facebook last night showed unmanned stands and empty chairs at the London Excel show, despite organisers claiming that 2014 was set to be a record year.

These photos were taken at around 11.30am on Thursday morning and, according to those who stuck around, it got even quieter later on.

"By midday it was as dead as a doornail," said TravelMole’s Graham McKenzie.

Sarah Johnson at Lotus UK, who had 10 clients exhibiting at the show, said she agreed it would work more effectively as a three-day show.

"The general feeling was that the numbers were higher than expected Monday to Wednesday but Thursday was extremely quiet," she said.

"Not just visitors, but many stands were empty, exhibitors had gone!"

The Tourism Authority of Thailand London said this year’s show had once again proved how quiet Thursday is.

"It has been a struggle for some years to encourage our co-exhibitors to attend the fourth and final day as it provides little value for them when they can comfortably complete their business, and meet relevant buyers in the first few days of the show," said a spokeswoman.

"Despite various activities running on our stand we didn’t see a satisfactory increase in engagement this year. It is becoming increasingly difficult to justify the costs involved with running the stand on Thursday when we see no return on investment for either TAT or our exhibitors."

Following a similar situation on the fourth day of last year’s show, other tourist offices urged WTM organisers to cut the event from four days to three.

Their lobbying body, ANTOR, said over half of its members had voted to put pressure on Reed Exhibitions to shorten the event, based on a poll and a survey carried out just after last year’s show.

A spokeswoman for ANTOR said it had conducted a survey yesterday about the number of stand sharers and visitors attending and the reasons they were there, and was now collating the responses.

A poll by TravelMole in April showed that 70% of readers believed it would be better if the show was only three days long.

After last year, WTM organisers said exhibitors who were not at the show on the fourth day faced extra charges this year.

WTM organisers were not available for comment this morning but yesterday they 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.

They said figures pointed to a record year for the event but they have not yet released figures for the full four days.

Last week, TravelMole ran another poll asking readers if WTM was as relevant as it was 10 years.

It found a third of you agreed that it was as relevant, but two thirds of you said it was not.

** Were you at WTM yesterday? Did you think it was worth going? Do you agree that it should be cut to three days, or would you prefer to keep it as it is? Please send us your views by clicking on POST COMMENT below.