Charo Trabado, President of Gsar Marketing

The 17th edition of MITM Euromed, held in Spain’s Seville, came to a close with major figures in terms of business deals, appointments and congrats to the organizers on the part of buyers and exhibitors from 23 nations. Just another edition for a great and successful fair that Charo Trabado, president of Gsar Marketing, talked about with Caribbean News Digital.

How have these two days of MITM Euromed faired in Seville?
It’s been just great. There have been many appointments, and both buyers and sellers are pretty excited and pleased. They have congratulated us on that. And as far as I’m concerned, I’m very pleased.

This is the 17th edition of MITM Euromed. How has this fair evolved in this span of time?
There was a time long ago when people thought this fair model was doomed, that there was no way a fair like this could succeed. Yet time has been on our side and at the end of the day, look how many fairs have taken on the same format of ours!

Do you believe this fair format meets the needs of both buyers and sellers in these ongoing times?
I’ve always believed strongly in this kind of fair. We didn’t make it up, but rather introduced it in Europe and whipped it into shape as an incentive-and-convention model, just like MICE travel. This concept already existed in the U.S. on a holiday level and we copied that model from them. The fact of the matter is, though, that the workflow is the name of the game, the fact of managing the hosted buyers well, which is exactly what we do thanks to the experience-oriented knowhow of Convenco, our main house that harbingered in incentive travel back in 1973. It’s 40 years of experience under its belt now. Based on that incentive travel experience, we could lay the groundwork to eventually plan this kind of fair.

How many buyers from how many countries have attended this year’s edition?
This time around we had buyers from 23 countries: Albania, Germany, Argentina, Belgium, Denmark, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, United States, France, Netherlands, Hungary, India, Jordan, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, United Kingdom, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland and Ukraine. The objective we pursue for this year’s fair is to bring buyers mostly from Europe, since exhibitors are basically European as well. Therefore we try to meet their demands.

What about the feedback?
It’s been very positive. There’ve been over 2,850 prearranged appointments between buyers and exhibitors, and that’s supposed to generate over 63 million euros worth of business in the mid-to-long run.

This uptick in the number of appointments and sales is highly important to us because quality is what we target. We’ve never lowered the quality of the buyers. On the contrary, we’ve always put our smart money on stepping it up, and that turns out to be a big help for us whenever the fair’s host is a tremendously attractive destination. In this case, Seville is no doubt a highly luring destination and all attendees are very excited.

Let’s talk about the future. What’s in store for MITM Euromed 2014?
The 18th edition of MITM Euromed will take place in a fantastic destination, Cadiz, on June 11-13.