BERLIN, 4 March 2020: ICS Travel Group, a leading destination management company in Southeast Asia, turned ITB Berlin’s last-minute cancellation into a positive through an initiative it called “Bringing ITB to You.
“It was extremely disappointing that ITB cancelled as this is one of the largest travel shows in the year – but it was understandable and not unexpected,” said Red Elephant Reps’ communications manager Mary Eden, who represents the ICS Travel Group.
“As ITB requires a lot of forward planning and work, we decided to turn the situation around and use it to our benefit. Therefore we decided to go ahead, and our team flew to Berlin as planned.”
Over the weekend ICS launched an impromptu ‘Bringing ITB to You’ campaign a move that was quickly adopted by other companies facing the same downtime dilemma in Berlin.
“We were actually overwhelmed with requests for appointments from travel agents and tour operators based in Germany, so much so our sales team will also be travelling to Hamburg in addition to Berlin,” she told TTR Weekly.
ICS confirmed direct costs linked to attending ITB Berlin “are being refunded”. The ICS team kept its hotel bookings and flights unchanged.
