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City Break is an important appointment-based exhibition that brings together hoteliers, tourist boards and attractions from Europe’s major cities with buyers from tour operators, at a critical time. Business travel in Europe has slumped since the onset of the global economic downturn and the gap has created more opportunities for leisure travel and economical short breaks in European cities.
City Break 2009 is the latest event in a growing portfolio of trade workshops hosted and managed by ETOA, and follows on the highly successful Britain and Ireland Marketplace held in association with UKinbound during Tourism Week in London. City Break was started by Reed Travel Exhibitions and has been taken on this year by ETOA, with a view to bringing the professional buyers from its tour operator members to the event, so increasing the value to exhibitors, who are mostly city tourist offices, hotels and visitor attractions from across Europe.
City Break is to be held in the Gothenburg Convention Centre in Sweden, on 15-16 June. “Normally, city hotels aim to cater to the business traveller. Owing to the current difficulties in the global economy, hotels know that they are not going to get as many of these visitors as they usually do. They know that the only market likely to show a response to lower prices is the leisure traveller,” said Tom Jenkins.
The great European cities, from Amsterdam to Zurich, will be represented at the City Break exhibition in Gothenburg, including Vienna, Salzburg, Brussels, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Oslo, Warsaw, Bratislava, Ljubljana, Madrid, Valencia, Barcelona, Bilbao, Stockholm, Malmo, Dublin, Geneva, Szplit, Zagreb and many more.
“Around the fringes of Europe – such as Prague, Krakow and Budapest – there are fantastic holidays to be enjoyed. Even within the Euro zone, where exchange rates are, to say the least, challenging, some destinations such as Dublin are responding with dramatic savings,” said Tom Jenkins.
And City Break 2009 will be a golden opportunity to showcase the Swedish city of Gothenburg. The city is a perfect location for the 2009 show due to its easily accessible location in the heart of Scandinavia, the biggest outbound market in Europe, a region that is hugely popular within the short break tourism market.
The City Break exhibition is an appointment-driven trade show where senior buyers from tour operators meet face-to-face with city hoteliers, destination managers and tourist boards. There are already around a hundred cities signed up to exhibit. Buyers attending City Break 2009 represent many the leading outbound tour operators. Adhering to a strict qualification process, their representatives are serious about doing business and have the purchasing and contracting authority within their company to do so.
An innovation this year is that accredited journalists will be given an opportunity to make appointments too. For them, it will be a great place to be for a comprehensive round up of what’s new in the City Break market, which they can get in a very time-efficient manner.
For more information about City Break, please go to: www.CityBreakExpo.com.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
