Another trade show ticks over
BANGKOK, 14 June 2011 – Observing the business flow at the Thailand Travel Mart, last week, from one of the comfortable buyer-lounge chairs was an easy enough task. Almost too easy.
Despite having 335 registered buyers, TTM was quiet. Perhaps it was the wide aisles and a considerable vacant patch of real estate at the back of the hall where another 100 booths could have been assembled with ample space to spare.
There were 368 seller organisations according to the Tourism Authority of Thailand’s official count, but was the turnout representative of the best Thailand and its Mekong Region neighbours have to offer? Read more
TTM buyer brash about selling
BANGKOK, 10 June 2011 – A siren over the booth should have gone off when a Thailand Travel Mart buyer started selling his wares to TTM exhibitors known as sellers in popular travel mart parlance.
It didn’t because most hoteliers have learned to ignore inappropriate behaviour. It’s one of the downsides of travel marts. It begs the question, just who is a buyer and a seller these days?
But there was no doubt in my mind that the guy sitting right across from me at one of the mart’s coffee corner tables was a buyer. He had a badge to prove it and he sat down sighing like a senior citizen claiming he was bushed; walked off his poor feet such was the pressure of doing the buyer’s rounds at the TTM. Read more
SMALLL PRINT: An assortment of scams
BANGKOK, 8 June 2011 - Never look a gift horse in the mouth. That’s what grandma always said and no one wanted to look her in the mouth either as she had lost her toothsome smile decades earlier.
All good horse traders knew that it was easy to spot a fine horse by checking its gums and teeth, hence the advice that if someone gave you a horse it was just not kosher to look too closely.
That advice doesn’t apply to emails we receive everyday telling us that there are gifts and cash awaiting us if only we reply with a few choice details. We definitely need to check out the teeth. Usually the gift horses are phoney. Read more
Zips and tree top travel
PAKSE, 1 June 2011 – If you have dreamed of flying through the trees with the greatest of ease, or you fancy yourself as a modern-day Tarzan, the Green Discovery Tours of Laos has just the right product to make dreams come true. You should take out insurance, but if you are a member of the seniors brigade take heart, at least one 68 year old mum sailed around the circuit and returned to tell the tale.
Opened last January, Tree Tops Explorer, is the first zip-line resort in Laos, located in an ancient volcanic crater on the Bolaven plateau, near Pakse a small town on the banks of the Mekong River in southern Laos.
It bears a close resemblance to Thailand’s two popular Flight of the Gibbon zip line ventures, but those Mekong Tourism Forum delegates who joined the survey trip to the Tree Tops site and know the Thailand version claim Tree Tops is a notch or two higher in thrill ratings.
No stamps, return to sender
PAKSE, 31 May 2011 – There are scads of rules in commercial aviation and possibly even more to govern the conduct and privileges of those who sit in the flight captain’s seat.
One International Civil Aviation Organisation rule indicates flight captains do not need to stamp their passports in and out of immigration checkpoints when on duty. It kind of saves them a couple dollars on new passports every few months.
So when Asian Trials and VIP Jets CEO, Luzi Matzig, handed over the flight manifest to the immigration counter at Don Meuang Airport’s international terminal, he was the only one of the five people boarding the Cessna twin-jet who didn’t need a departure stamp. He was on duty. Read more
Making of a Star
PAKSE, 30 May 2011 – When travel show host Dale Lawrence ploughed into his closing remarks at the Mekong Tourism Forum Saturday, he asked delegates to promise never to raise the issue of a single visa ever again.
But it will take more than that to ensure this day dreaming concept disappears from the memories of the region’s tourism architects. You can bet it will sneak back no matter how vigilant we are at future forums.
Mr Lawrence surprised MTF delegates by claiming the single visa was dead and should be banished as a topic. He obviously thought there were better things to do with our time that pontificate on matters best left to the gods in heaven.
“Chiang Rai (MTF 2012) should be a visa free zone,” he told 250 delegates attending the event’s closing session. “It will never happen, it is not a runner. There is more chance of me playing cricket for England.” Read more
ATF: 30 years is it love or money?
BANGKOK, 17 February 2011 — When Cambodia hosted the 30th Asean Tourism Forum, last month, for the second time in 10 years, ASEAN’s oldest trade show shone bright; a world-class winner in a highly competitive travel mart environment.
So no surprises when the Singapore-based exhibition company assigned to manage Cambodia’s show announced it was also a sell-out event. An estimated 500 booths sold at around US$2,500 a shell. Then there were at least 438 buyers from 50 countries that we are told have oodles of business ready to drop into our laps, if we had the foresight to invest in a booth.
PATA hesitates but is it lost?
BANGKOK, 15 February 2011 – Pacific Asia Travel Association’s 10-person executive board convenes this week in Honolulu for a meeting that should have been routine, but will now have to hurriedly decide on who should fill the CEO vacancy after Greg Duffell leaves at the end of this month.
Headed by association chairman, Hiran Coorey, the board has been in no hurry so far to name a replacement after the job was turned down by Visit Britain executive Keith Beecham in early February.
Mr Beecham got cold feet after he allegedly read comments on the TTR Weekly website that challenged the wisdom of the board’s choice in offering him the job. A Pata insider said it was a “whimpish” reaction.
ATF officials fudge media opportunity
BANGKOK, 4 February 2011 – ATF 2011 is a fast fading memory for most of travel industry professionals who grind out a living chasing new business on the annual travel mart circuit. They are now in full attack mode preparing for a host of shows in Europe that will soon converge on ITB Berlin early March.
ATF kicks off the the three-month sales routine and in its 30th edition, it can justly claim to be Asia’s top trade show outside those of India and China.
But despite the millions spent by Cambodia and its generous sponsors, including CNN, how many lasting impressions were made with travel buyers and how much business was actually contracted over the two days of sales appointments?
Party plane: Pai in the sky
BANGKOK, 26 January 2011 – Like most airline travellers I’m quite content to leave the business of flying to those who know better. Less I know, the less I fret. So what am I doing sitting in the co-pilot’s seat in a private jet heading to Thailand’s far North? Simply put, I’m hitching a lift to Pai on the privately owned VIP Jets’ very posh Citation Mustang.
