MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Falklands take a stand at Travel Mart

THE 30th Annual Travel Mart Latin America show was held in Panama City between September 13 - 15, 2006 (the third time Travel Mart has been held in this country).

This was International Tours and Travels Ltd's (ITT) sixth attendance at the show, and the continued "positive impact and results of our attendance encourage us to pursue exhibiting at this, the most important and productive event of the year for increasing travel to South and Central America," said ITT representative, Sally Ellis.

At the annual seminar given at Travel Mart by UK based LATA (Latin America Travel Association) of which FITB is a member, it was advised that travel to Latin America from UK has increased by 12% since last year.

Sally and Stanley Services' Falkland Islands Holidays represented by Jenny Luxton, were among approximately 300 supplier organisations representing almost every country in Latin America. The perfect match system of scheduled appointments over the two days of business (which is specific to this show) means that time is spent particularly productively in that only buyers who have a genuine interest in the Falklands product are met.

In advance of the show over 6,500 individual appointments were already scheduled between buyers and suppliers and many more will have been made on site.

Sally Ellis said this is hugely important when there are over 300 buyer organisations from all over the world.

"With each supplier having up to 45 meetings scheduled over the two days and extra meetings on a more casual basis over working lunches and at the social events, we manage to renew contact with existing clients and also make new acquaintances in the hope that it will result in the Falklands appearing on a new website or in a brochure that will reach an as yet untapped market."

Sally said that from ITT's perspective this kind of event helps to cement relationships with those operators they already deal with (making day to day working a lot easier once you have put a face to an e-mail address). She added, "we also try to identify new operators worldwide whose client base appears to fit the bill as potential Falklands visitors - i.e. operators marketing to people interested in wildlife, soft adventure, military history and generally off the beaten track destinations. We also use this forum to release new products available within the Falklands - this year we advertised a new day excursion to Pleasant Roads, personalised guiding and our coup de grace - a two week Falklands cruise in December 07 on board the yacht Pelagic Australis (under charter to ITT) visiting many of the small outer-lying islands which are otherwise inaccessible to land-based travellers.

"This is a very exclusive product as there is only space for 8 passengers."

Sally said that ITT also take the opportunity to meet with the suppliers that their Outbound Department work with in Chile, Brazil, Peru and other countries in South America, "... to ensure we continue to offer the best possible service and up-to-date products to our clients in the Falklands."

Jenny Luxton also reported a successful trip with a lot of interest in the Falklands, "...my schedule filled up from an initial 35 pre-arranged appointments to actually meeting 48 people," she said.

Most of the people Jenny spoke to wanted to have add on weeks to holidays in Southern Chile or Argentina.

"This is becoming a good spin off for us. Some cruise companies are also interested in having information for clients wanting to do a week prior to their cruise or afterwards, so land based tourism may potentially get a small percentage of those visiting on cruise ships, explained Jenny.

The Falkland Islands Holidays stand included some excellent photographs by David Osborne and Alan Henry which helped tosell the Islands and many people commented on, said Jenny.

"Overall I felt that for Stanley Services Travel it was worthwhile our attending to promote our tourism in the islands to a wide cross section of the travel industry."

Next year the conference heads to Cartagena de las Indias in Colombia. (Penguin News)