Representatives from ITE Travel Exhibitions have been going out to visit their clients to discuss face-to-face the unique situation in which the world finds itself today and how individual organisations and firms can overcome recent events.
Since September 11th the markets have shifted and, as the industry knows, a huge vacuum has been left where the American and Canadian markets used to stand tall. Our friends across the Atlantic are suffering badly from the events both from an inbound and outbound perspective. With regards to the Russian market alone for example, 12% of visa transactions made abroad were spent in the United States in 2000, totaling $34 million. With the majority of Russians now unable and unwilling to travel to the USA and Canada they will be searching out alternative destinations and looking to spend their money elsewhere.
As the November edition of the publication Voyage Magazine pointed out, the Russian travel professional have noticed that the events in Europe and the States have not really affected the Russian outgoing market. According to RATA, Russian Association of Travel Agents, there has been no significant decline registered in Russia on trips taken abroad since September 11th and the number of charters and flights planned for this travel season is no lower than that of the last year. All this is good news for that section of the industry involved with or planning to break into the Russian market.
The focus has, however, changed and short haul destinations in Europe are becoming more popular with the Russian and CIS tourists as well as more exotic long haul destinations of the Far East, Latin America and South Africa. ITE Travel Exhibitions has seen evidence of this through the exhibitor's participation at their Prague, Moscow, and Kiev events, Holiday World 2002, MITT 2002 and UITT 2002.
Since the 2001 events exotic destinations such as Chile, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand have all increased their stand space as well as closer European and Mediterranean destinations such as Austria, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Germany, Italy, and Turkey.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
