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A Cultural Day at World Travel Market 2009 - click 'Download' to view

peterlance — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 10:35:49 GMT

5 Videos of World Travel Market trade show at the Excel Centre, London, personally filmed by Peter Lance of Lance Leisure on Thursday, 12 November (from just before 10am to 4pm). The arrival of visitors, on-stand dance performances and a selection of exhibitors are shown. These videos will especially interest those who attended on Thursday, the last day of WTM 2009, and those who also loved the captivating dance performances at some of the stands. The tour of the exhibitors' booths also gives a flavour of the show generally. Visitors and stand personnel - look out for yourself if you were at, or indeed spiritedly joined in!, those highly entertaining performances or if you were there arriving for the start of the show (10am) on Thursday and in the exhibition halls up to 4pm. I look forward to hearing your comments. The link is www.youtube.com/user/petchalan

Cyprus Naturally

peterlance — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:09:48 GMT

Cyprus Agrotourism Company stand during World Travel Market 2009 at Excel Centre

A Nice Walk To The Show

peterlance — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:47:30 GMT

View of footbridge across the River Thames connecting Excel Centre to the opposite bank at the time of hosting the 2009 World Travel Market

A Well Deserved Rest

peterlance — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:41:29 GMT

View of old dock cranes by River Thames near Excel Centre at time of hosting 2009 World Travel Market

Across the Water

peterlance — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:35:04 GMT

View of opposite bank of River Thames from Excel Centre at time of hosting World Travel Market 2009

The Dome in the Distance

peterlance — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:31:22 GMT

View of London Dome (O2 Arena) from Excel Centre at the time of hosting World Travel Market 2009

City View from Excel Centre

peterlance — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:26:26 GMT

View down the River Thames to City of London

A Tasty Experience

peterlance — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:22:43 GMT

Complimentary Buffet sample meal provided by the Korean exhibitors at 2009 World Travel Market on Wednesday

Morning Assembly

peterlance — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:12:41 GMT

Visitors wait for opening of Wednesday's World Travel Market 2009 at Excel Centre

The Gathering

peterlance — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:06:31 GMT

Visitors gather before opening of Wednesday's World Travel Market 2009 at Excel Centre

Wednesday Kick-off

peterlance — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:01:28 GMT

Visitors at the start of Wednesday World Travel Market at Excel Centre

The Early Birds

peterlance — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:53:10 GMT

Maldives Special offers.

Letsgomaldives — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:52:30 GMT

Meet us in WTM stand for special offers to Maldives resorts.

Collect DVD's and latest Map of Maldives free.

11 days to go... what's your WTM schedule?

Nathan Midgley — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:34:05 GMT

I'll be there all four days - mostly on the Travel Weekly stand, but also out and about chairing a social media session and giving one-to-one 'clinics' on Thursday (social media again).

What do group members have planned? Wall-to-wall meetings, or will you have time to take a wander round and see what's happening?

M-Bar WTM

Nicole2512 — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:11:18 GMT

Meridian Club members will be treated to leading crooner Kevin Fitzsimmons singing classic Rate Pat songs at the M-Bar from 5pm on Tuesday 10 November. Fitzsimmons (centre) is pictured with (from left to right) Meridian Club Manager Mark Jakobsen and WTM PR Manager Paul Nelson.

M-Bar WTM

Nicole2512 — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:10:31 GMT

WTM Team 2009

Nicole2512 — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:58:12 GMT

Re: Were you at WTM 2008?

DAT — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 15:08:02 GMT

Tuesday and Wednesday. Favourite moment - an unexpected encounter with a CEO of a company I had been trying to do business with for some time. Needless to say the 'trying' bit is now a 'working' relationship between the two of us.

30 Facts About WTM

craigm — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:31:23 GMT

In a previous blog, I told you all how World Travel Market is this year celebrating its 30^th anniversary.

This time I thought I’d highlight some amazing facts and statistics from the three decades of World Travel Market, taken from the 30 Facts About WTM document which can be found at http://www.wtmlondon.com/page.cfm/T=m/Action=Press/PressID=419

· World Travel Market almost didn’t take place at all. Contractors walked out before the launch event in 1980 over American exhibitors employing their own contractors

· Over the last 29 years WTM has held almost 11,000 (10,950) conference sessions

· During the last seven years of WTM more than 180,000 glasses of champagne have been toasted in celebration, 9,030 bottles of house wine and 875,000 cups of coffee have been drunk

· The total combined exhibiting floor space over the past 29 years of WTM at Olympia, Earl’s Court and ExCeL, London totals more than 1.3 million square metres (1,311,290 m²). That’s the equivalent of 325 football pitches

· A delegate visiting WTM for the four full days can expect to walk more than 100,000 steps

· World Travel Market has played host to almost half a million (493,000) exhibitors over the past 29 years

· Last year WTM smashed its participant record with almost 50,000 (49,963) exhibitors, visitors, international media attending the event – an increase of 4% on 2007.

· WTM has the largest reoccurring Press Centre in the UK. Beaten only by the largest one-off press centre in the UK, which was the Commonwealth Games in Manchester 2002.

· Almost one million (972,101) participants have passed through the doors of WTM over the past 29 years.

WTM 2009 is bound to see an array of interesting facts and statistics added to the list.

Craig Moyes

Exhibition Director

World Travel Market

WTM’s Industry Team Helps to Create Best-Ever Agents’ Programme

FionaJ — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:31:27 GMT

I am pleased to announce the Industry associations and organisations helping WTM, which is this year celebrating its 30th event, create the best-ever Travel Agents’ Programme.

They include:

ABTA
Institute for Travel and tourism (ITT)
Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA)
Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO)
Association of ATOL Companies (AAC)

The CTO, with the support of its Caribbean member countries and private sector partners attending WTM this year, is to host a large number of agents on the Thursday of WTM.

PATA is to recreate a Voyage of Discovery, which it has hosted at previous WTMs. Agents can win a host of prizes by answering the online questions. The answers will only be available at certain WTM exhibitor stands.

Furthermore, UK agents can earn Accredited Travel Professional (ATP) points for attending WTM and its conference and seminar sessions. ATP is the industry’s continued professional development programme run by ABTA in association with ITT and sector skills council People 1^st.

Agents earn two points for attending WTM and a further one point for every conference and seminar session they attend.

Travel agents can gain up to six additional ATP points by attending ITT’s Travel Agents’ Day programme, which is made up of three sessions.

The three sessions are:

Maximising Earnings - Two ATP Points
Dealing with Customers - Two ATP Points
Selling During a Recession (organised in association with Training For Travel) - Two ATP Points

Finally, the AAC is also hosting a session entitled ‘Is this the end of consumer protection as we know it?’, which sees AAC Legal Advisor Alan Bowen and Chairman David Mortimer looking at the future of consumer protection in the travel industry.

I’m sure you’ll all agree the Travel Agents’ Programme is poised to be the best yet. I look forward to welcoming a whole host of travel agents for the programme on the Thursday of World Travel Market (12 November).