8 Feb 2009 Destinations Show in London

It is a real travelful week in London! Today we visited Destinations, a great fair held and organized at Earl’s Court by The Times. We spent the whole afternoon getting inspired by the hundreds of colorful and amazing proposals catered by anyone from national tourism bureaus (Switzerland, Germany, Brazil, to name a few), to travel agents, tour operators, publishers and facility owners. This edition of Destinations seemed to be revolving around the word “tailormade“. Travelers are tired of catalogues and standardized offers, and look for a service that is highly personalized to offer exactly what they are looking for. We have been speaking to many of them plus a number of interned-based businesses, and it seems a very established trend in the market right now. The crisis made everything even more so: every penny has to be used to make one’s travel experience a better one, and compromise is not an option anymore.

Publishers, too, are specializing: Lonely Planet and Rough Guides (to name two big boys in the market) are always publishing new titles to answer these needs and they have started to cover more states and territories – Giorgio got a LP Syria & Lebanon guide, already at its second edition after the 1st one in 2004. We’ve also seen the first travel guide about Iraq, an encouraging sign for the country’s new course.

To add to the balance from Destinations is: 4kg of new books with lots of inspiration and new ideas for travel, courtesy of LP, Rough Guides, Travel&Food, Responsible Travel and many others. So, now, off to read some! See you guys at Travel Technology Show next week?