GPS ’16 will be 5-city show
After a successful edition of Global Panorama Showcase in Nagpur this February, Jagsons Travels is busy preparing for a bigger show next year that will travel to four other cities.
Nagpur-based Jagsons Travels is setting the stage for a bigger and better Global Panorama Showcase (GPS) next year. Starting from just one city, GPS 2016 will touch five cities in total in order to cover all regions of India.
Harmandeep Singh Anand, MD, Jagsons Travels and Hon Secretary General, Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI), reveals more. “We have short-listed the cities and have tentatively planned Ahmedabad in west, Kolkata in east, Trichy in south and Chandigarh in north. The show will start from Nagpur on January 8, 2016 and will be a three-day show – two days of trade and the last day for B2C. The other cities will be for two days and only focus on the trade,” he says.
He claims that GPS will be the first show of the year, which will travel to the four new cities back-to-back only in August 2016. He adds, “While Nagpur will be open to every- one in the trade, the other cities will be by invitation only. Of the exhibitors in Nagpur, 30 per cent of them will be from the city.” GPS will also be hosting international buyers this year from countries that have good connectivity to Nagpur on Air Arabia like Turkey and Russia.
Madhu Saliankar, Director, EntReps Solutions, says that the focus is only to reach Tier II and Tier III cities. “They are the feeder markets to bigger cities. For north it is Chandigarh, Amritsar and Jalandhar. In the west, Mumbai is the gateway even though Gujarat contributes a large chunk of numbers. So we need to concentrate on these feeder markets,” she says. The main idea behind a travelling show, Saliankar says, is to increase awareness about tourism products among the trade in smaller markets and get them in contact with the right people. “Their product knowledge is limited and they rely heavily on someone else’s experience to sell to their clients. A travel agent sitting in Jhalna, Rajkot or Mehsana does not have too much exposure and access to information, the DMCs or the tourism boards. We want to bridge this gap and bring the information and contacts to them on their home turf,” she adds.
Taking the show to multiple cities will ensure participation from surrounding regions as well. “Ahmedabad will be the host city so that we can get agents even from nearby cities like Mt Abu and Udaipur up to Jaipur thereby covering parts of Rajasthan as well. For the east, we can bring in agents from cash-rich Bhubaneshwar, Guwahati, Darjeeling and parts of the North East as well,” she says.
EntReps will start with about 40 suppliers since this is the first time it will be taking the show to four cities. “They will have the option to participate in minimum two cities and we will price it accordingly with price combinations,” Saliankar adds. There will be a post-event tour to Pench and other local sites again after Nagpur for all hosted outbound buyers.
We have shortlisted the cities and have tentatively planned Ahmedabad in west, Kolkata in east, Trichy in south and Chandigarh in north