The Premier Tourism Event
Prague, Czech Republic
7-10th February 2002
Moscow Int'l Travel & Tourism Exhibition
Moscow, Russia
27-30th March 2002
Ukraine Int'l Travel & Tourism Exhibition
Kiev, Ukraine
3-6th April 2002


November 2001

ITE Travel Exhibitions' core markets reveal hope for the industry.

ITE Travel Exhibitions decided earlier on in the year to concentrate on their core events in Russia, the CIS and Central Europe for 2002 and, as fate has it, these are the kind of emerging markets which may help to bring hope to the travel and tourism industry. Representatives from ITE Travel Exhibitions have been going out to visit their clients to discuss face-to-face the unique situation in which the world finds itself today and how individual organisations and firms can overcome recent events.

Since September 11th the markets have shifted and, as the industry knows, a huge vacuum has been left where the American and Canadian markets used to stand tall. Our friends across the Atlantic are suffering badly from the events both from an inbound and an outbound perspective. With regards to the Russian market alone for example, 12% of Visa transactions made abroad were spent in the United States in 2000, totalling $34 million. With the majority of Russians now unable and unwilling to travel to the USA and Canada they will be searching out alternative destinations and looking to spend their money elsewhere.

As the November edition of the publication Voyage Magazine pointed out, Russian travel professionals have noticed that the events in Europe and the States have not really affected the Russian outgoing market. According to RATA (Russian Association of Travel Agents), there has been no significant decline registered in Russia on trips taken abroad since September 12th and the number of charters and flights planned for this travel season is no lower than that of the last year. All this is good news for that section of the industry involved with or planning to break into the Russian market.

The focus has, however, changed and short haul destinations in Europe are becoming more popular with the Russian and CIS tourists as well as the more exotic long haul destinations of the Far East, Latin America and South Africa. ITE Travel Exhibitions has seen evidence of this through the exhibitors' participation at their Prague, Moscow and Kiev events, Holiday World 2002, MITT2002 and UITT2002. Since the 2001 events exotic destinations such as Chile, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand have all increased their stand space as well as closer European and Mediterranean destinations such as Austria, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Germany, Italy and Turkey.

ITE Travel Exhibitions is actively helping their established clients and welcoming new destinations to their events. There is real optimism in these emerging markets and ITE Travel Exhibitions will continue to give their full support over the coming year.

For further information, please contact:
Alison Colley, Marketing Executive,

ITE Travel Exhibitions, ITE Group Plc,
105 Salusbury Road, London NW6 6RG, UK
Tel: 44 20 7596 5000 Fax: 44 20 7596 5102/5111

[email protected]
www.ite-exhibitions.com/travel