The 34th World Travel Market has concluded its four-day stint at Excel London with a five per cent delegate increase and invite-only visitor attendance for its Monday opening up by 12 per cent on last year’s event to 8,916 (unaudited).
The Monday of WTM is an exhibitor invite-only day with the aim of allowing exhibitors to hold discussions and negotiations with buyers they want to conduct business with.
On Tuesday 5 November 18,292 visitors came to WTM, a seven per cent increase on the second day of last year’s event. Tuesday is the busiest day of WTM as it is the first day the event is open to the whole industry following on from the exhibitor-invite only policy on the Monday. Wednesday 6 November experienced a five per cent increase in visitors to 14,324, compared to the same day at WTM 2012.
“I am delighted with the delegate attendance of WTM 2013 across the first three days,” says Reed Travel Exhibitions’ Senior Director of World Travel Market, Simon Press. “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 2013 will facilitate more than £2bn in industry deals and is poised to the best-ever attended.”
During the show, human rights activists in the Maldives hijacked the official Twitter hashtag (#WTM13) for the show, urging visitors to the show to boycott the country’s resorts and posting photos of alleged Maldives police brutality.
Travel website, 101holidays.co.uk reported: “Throughout Monday, Twitter users posted photographs of alleged police brutality connected with last year’s coup in the Maldives which led to the exit of President Mohamed Nasheed.
“For much of the day about half the Tweets using the official hashtag were from Maldives protesters.”
Almost 48,000 senior travel industry professionals, government ministers and international press, were expected to attend the exhibition.
WTM 2012 generated £1,860m of travel industry contracts, revealed independent research by Fusion Communications.
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