WTM Latin America Unveils New Features for its 8th Edition

Caribbean News…
17 December 2019 9:47pm

The Tangará Palace was the location of choice to receive the guests of WTM Latin America for a breakfast with many firsts. The director of the event, Luciane Leite, and the marketing manager of WTM Latin America, Thais Del Ben, spelled out the programs that will be coming around and the novelties for the 2020 edition.

Luciane Leite highlighted the commitment of the team and the good results achieved in the 2019 edition, the continuous benchmark work with the other fairs of the WTM portfolio, the good practices validated by the Advisory Council and the hands-on participation of Latin American organizations with a subsequent increase of initiatives, exhibitors and alliances inside and outside the event.

The first edition of the Responsible Tourism Award, the only award of Latin American scope, was highlighted during the talk. With approximately 15 projects registered, the recurring theme in WTM's global portfolio deserves heed and will be increasingly present at the Latin American event.

According to Luciane, responsible tourism must be increasingly valued. “We are working on three pillars of sustainability: economic, environmental and social. In this sense, we have a series of sustainability actions already confirmed, such as ecological bags, recycled paper catalog, inclusion programs and alliances with various NGOs, among other initiatives that are bearing out our commitment to the issue. We know that this is a challenging path and, increasingly, we want to implement concrete actions that make our event far more sustainable,” she explains.

In 2020, the organization of the event will hire food trucks for refugees, encourage the reduction in the use of paper and seek alternatives so that, at the end of the event, the material used has an environmentally correct and conscious end.

In the 8th edition, Travel Forward -a technology event in tourism and hospitality that will have two days of specific lectures on the sector and a space to work together with startups-, as well as the Women in Travel program that, as in this year's edition, will offer mentoring to women who want to take on tourism.

Luciane made considerations on a very common question: the future of fairs. And she affirmed that the fairs continue being an important networking tool and that personal relationships, face to face, are still fundamental for the generation of business, the proposal of alliances, the alignment of interests and the generation of mutual trust. “I believe that, even with the available technologies, fairs continue at a positive rate of growth and a proof of this is the interest that people show in visiting the event.”

In this sense, the executive underscored WTM Live, an initiative that promotes business and experiences beyond the exhibition pavilion. “There are destinations that want to go beyond the stands, they want to offer experience. With WTM Live, we create tailor-made opportunities to meet this exhibitors’ demands,” she says. Costa Rica, Peru and Chile are examples of these actions that, in different ways, bring to the event a strengthened and more updated Latin America.

Another program that will continue is the Corporate Travel Area, which on the first day of the event will present content focused on travel agents. The second day will be dedicated to meeting planners, with MPI curatorship and specific content for the MICE segment.

WTM Latin America

 

The third day of the event will have an unprecedented program for students, in partnership with the Institute of Travel & Tourism (ITT), responsible for the Future You program. This will be the first edition of the program at the Latin American event, which is already consolidated at the London fair. Leading the project is Professor Mariana Aldrigui, tourism researcher at USP and coordinator of GTTP (Global Travel and Tourism Partnership) in Brazil.

“It is also our responsibility to prepare the professionals of the future. To do this, we will have a program dedicated to their careers, because soon these students will be in the market performing functions that can determine the future of the sector,” Thais underlines.

In addition to talking about the floor of the fair, other points were addressed, such as the association with the LGBT chamber, which will have special actions within the event, and the result of a poll conducted with travel agents who indicated the Asian continent as the main destination.

“I was for many years in the role of client and today I work on the other side. This experience and acute observation adds a lot to the conception of the event. We have an enormous concern with the delivery of the event and the satisfaction of our customers, and we work continuously to bring improvements, innovations and meet the demands of the market. And we see this evolution year after year,” concludes Luciane.

Read more: https://latinamerica.wtm.com/

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