Why fairs are very important in Tourism?

Traditionally, fairs are the primary tool for marketing in tourism. If you want clients for your million USD worth hotel, you can’t afford to skip tourism fairs. There will be too many attendees and inevitably there will be too rough competition for tourists. But you MUST be there too.

By attending a fair, inevitably you need to be ready to rent a stand, decorate it as beautifully as you can, print a lot of catalogs (possibly will print special one in local language) prior to the fair and make them ready to distribute it to guests. You also need to bring many other souvenirs with your hotel's name, email, phone number, etc. to give to visitors.

All effort is for meeting booking agents only. To clarify which Tour Operator is the authorized one in their country so that they can find your hotel easily. And of course, to ask agents to recommend yours to their clients for their holidays.

Primary aim of attending a fair is to reach out to agents in the region where the fair is organized. So actually, fairs are being organized to reach out to agents only.

 Every attendee wishes to meet as many agents as possible during this very tight time and tries to convince them to recommend only his hotel to their clients. Fairs are enormous competition arena for tourist hunter hoteliers.

The reason for that desperate wish to meet agents is because, agent is the one (most of the time the only one) who actually meet the client face to face, who have the most impact on the clients final decision for the destination to go on holiday, for the hotel to stay, etc. This is why every hotelier wishes to meet as many agents as possible.

Hundreds of hotels participate to every fair like ITB Berlin, WTM London, etc. It's actually a kind of cacophony for participants. Because every participant says the same thing: "my hotel is the best."

Another importance of fair comes from the workflow of tourism system itself;

Very vast majority (I believe %90+) of tourism/holiday business goes through Tour Operators. This is because Tour Operators provide priceless services for clients (transportations, local guiding services at the destination, providing every assistance when needed including assistance at emergency times too, etc.) holiday and they bring massive number of tourists to destination. No hotel, or country can reject a tour operator.

Is working with Tour Operators without a price?

No. There is price of working with tour operators for hotels. Tour operators do not allow hotels to have direct contact with agents who make clients reservations.

They don`t allow hotels to make marketing to booking agents even for clients coming with itself. Tour operators decide everything by themselves. So when you make a contract with a Tour Operator for a market, you become dependent on the Tour Operator for that market.

For example, if a client wants to come to your hotel, the Tour Operator always have possibility to redirect him to another one even if half of your hotel is empty by saying "your hotel is fully booked" and you will never know about it.

What is the importance of fairs?

Fairs are exceptional possibility for hoteliers to contact booking agents. This is why you can`t afford to skip important fairs such as ITB Berlin, WTM London, etc. Meeting few agents doesn't mean that it will help a lot but at least it creates a hope.

In few weeks, there is ITB Berlin 2024 (5-7 March), we suggest all hotelier not to miss it if they have possibility to attend.

These are already known facts by every hotelier.

The negative thing about fairs is that, they are being organized in certain numbers a year (usually once a year, rare cases twice), for very short (1-2 days) duration and you can reach out to agents living in the surrounding only.

P.S. In the next newsletter (22.02.2024), we will explain what we did to bypass Tour Operators restriction about hotels marketing. How hotels can collect clients for themselves via authorized Tour Operator?