La Rural Was Home to FIT 2004 with Record High of Attendants

Residents of Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital, literally swarmed over the 35,000 square yards of exposition space set up for the Ninth International Tourism Fair (FIT), one of Latin America’s major travel markets. For this year’s event, La Rural de Palermo in Buenos Aires gathered more than 1,500 exhibitors from 31 countries.

Organizers of the world’s sixth largest travel tradeshow estimate a record-breaking 61,000 people traipsed past the turnstiles this time around, a figure way above the 2003 turnout.

Under a slogan that read “Visit the World in Two Days,” participants from Latin America laid out their offers in a number of pavilions, talked extensively about their services and let visitors taste products from each and every country and Argentine region. The event was marked by a multitude of publicity documents, interactive chats and lectures.

Visitors also attended several performances and signed up for a travel package lottery in which an eye-popping amount of world-class destinations was up for grabs.

Tomas Ryan, president of the Travel Agency Association of Argentina and chairman of the FIT’s Organizing Committee, noted his country’s increasing interest in travel and pointed out tourism has stopped being a leisure industry to become a powerful creator of new jobs.

The event is sponsored by Argentina’s Tourism Department, the local government of Buenos Aires and the South American nation’s Tourism Chamber.