World Travel Market (WTM) opened its doors to the trade yesterday (4 November) and the remaining three days are expected to deliver a boost to the London economy amounting to £160m.
Meanwhile, the organiser of the 34th WTM, Reed Exhibitions, confirmed it was not running its Business Travel Knowledge Forum alongside WTM 2013.
Reed took the decision in July to cancel its 2013 Business Travel Market (BTM). The idea of co-locating a business travel forum with WTM was floated in summer when BTM was cancelled, but apparently the appetite in the market was not there to support it, despite up to a quarter of visitors to WTM coming from the business travel sector.
Yesterday (4 November) Conference News provided one of three judges for the annual WTM stand awards, with the winners to be announced later today.
As part of WTM the iconic Greenwich attraction and event space, The Cutty Sark, has hosted back-to-back fine dining events, the first time that any caterer has hosted consecutive dinners of this scale aboard the landmark ship.
Harbour & Jones Events catered for 270 at the UKinbound Gala Dinner, which was attended by key figures in the travel and tourism industry and for the WTM Ministerial Dinner for 230 guests, organised by Reed Exhibitions and in association with UNWTO World Travel Organisation.
WTM has previously hosted events at St Paul’s Cathedral, also a part of the Harbour & Jones Events venue collection.
Business deals worth more than £2bn are expected to be triggered by World Travel Market, while visitors will pump £160m into the capital’s economy through money spent on hotels, restaurants, flights and other discretionary spend. The figure tops the estimated £100m in value generated for London by The British Fashion Council’s London Fashion Week in September.
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