Today is day one of the three day World Travel Market (WTM) and this year's event is being held at ExCeL in London's Royal Docklands.
This annual gathering brings together anybody's that's anybody in the travel industry, including tour operators like Destinology along with airlines, tourist boards, hoteliers, suppliers and ground handlers (plus lots, lots more) for the purpose of networking and business relations.
For many companies this is a great opportunity to see and be seen' and schedules are often packed full with appointments from the moment you arrive to the moment you leave. Certainly that's true here and the phones did not stop ringing last week.
Destinology's Product team are attending the event in staggered stages over the three days and will be meeting with many of their featured hotel represuentatives during that time. This gives them an opportunity to sell the very best luxury hotels to clients helping to keep fingers firmly on the button of what's hot in the industry.
Likewise, for smaller hotels the event offers a great opportunity to market their business to tour operators like ourselves and gain wider exposure. WTM lends that networking opportunity to hotels not owned by a larger chain, who perhaps don't have the budget to partake in lots of annual international visits.
The event is principally for those in the industry but on the Thursday and Friday of this week the event morphs into a more sales related trade show where members of the public can attend and gleam information on desirable exotic locations for their luxury holidays.