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Reed Travel Exhibitions

Craig Moyes, Portfolio Director, Leisure Travel Portfolio, Reed Travel Exhibitions

As Craig Moyes, Portfolio Director, Leisure Travel Portfolio, Reed Travel Exhibitions, takes over his new role, we discuss new developments and India’s growing presence at the travel exhibitions.

With two new exhibitions in the last two years, Reed Travel Exhibitions (RTE) is expanding their presence across the globe. WTM Latin America continues to provide access to South America and the recently-launched WTM Africa has opened the doors to yet another growing market.

Q Will this new expansion wave continue?

First of all, the leisure portfolio of events has grown up, to some extent, as a single event. But now, we plan to embark upon a process through which we would bring in some uniformity. We will raise the standards across

all the shows and also move some innovations from one show to another. We will take the best part of each show, and then reproduce that where it makes sense. More importantly, what we won’t do is try and force all the shows to be the same. We want the brand WTM and ATM to be known for certain things like value and customer service, but this doesn’t mean that the shows will be exactly the same. We will also continue looking for other new events as well. We have five events at present, but this is not the sum total of our ambitions.

Q How does WTM offer value to India?

While RTE’s leisure portfolio is increasing, so is India’s strong presence at these shows. India is very important to us for most of our shows; we know that India has a huge economy with a lot of growth and great destinations to offer.

India is an important part of WTM and it’s exciting to see the participation continuing to grow. While there is a discussion around prices, what we actually look at is value. No one is happy about a price, but what they talk about is the value offered at the show. At WTM, it’s about the value delivered and I think if we were not delivering that, we would not have had a show. Exhibitors would not come back and they would find other things to do. We would not have 50,000 people coming, if we did not deliver value. Our visitor numbers have also gone up in the past few years, and we work to ultimately deliver the right buyers.

Q But do regional shows take away from their flagship WTM?

Our intention is not to rob people to pay more; our intention is that each of these events should have a clear value proposition. Each exhibitor should know that by coming to a show, they would receive something different. With regards to WTM Latin America, we know that 95 per cent of the buyers are from Brazil. We will have Brazilian buyers at WTM, but not in the same scale and volume. We know that our exhibitors will not pay twice to meet the same buyers. So it has to be different and not the same as WTM.

By having these other shows we open up new markets for Reed Travel Exhibitions. We have great data as we get real travel professionals to come to our shows, and are constantly increasing our pool of knowledge and data. This gives us a huge global footprint and we are able to leverage that in different geographies.

Q What are your future plans? Do you plan to enter new markets?

At RTE, we are constantly challenged to look for new events and growth. We are looking at all eventualities all the time and this makes our jobs very exciting. We are constantly looking for opportunity, and we will go where we think we can be successful.

WTM LA is establishing a foothold in the local community, as well as the international one. We have begun to prove that we can provide the kind of audience required in the market, inbound and outbound. A lot of the international tourism boards are keen to attract this business and it continues to be a very exciting part of the world for tourists. The global travel trade is now recognising the show.

Africa Travel Week is a new concept where all three of our major events take place within a week. There is a willingness to travel in Africa, and more and more people are travelling within the continent and outside. The emergence of an African middle class has now created the market and the demand. All we are doing is getting more traffic to South Africa, and no one should view this as a threat. Our doors are always open to work with South Africa Tourism.