Happy Holidays!

From Our Family to Your's, Best Wishes this Holiday Season!

Interactive TAS Floor Plan

New for the 2014 Travel & Adventure Show Series - the Interactive Floor Plan. Designed by Map Dynamics, this new interface allows Show attendees to find exhibitors by name, booth number, location and/or keyword search. 

Primarily an Attendee Tool, this floor plan is designed to drive traffic to your booth, allowing attendees to plan their visit before they hit the Show floor. 

What Travel & Adventure Show Attendees Want

As we enter into the year's end let me wish all of our friends from around the world, on behalf of all of us at the Travel & Adventure Shows a very Merry and blessed Christmas and Holiday Season plus a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year. 

It's hard to imagine that show season is only four weeks away with out Chicago Travel & Adventure Show leading the way. Throughout 2013 in our newsletters, we have focused on how to raise ROI for exhibitors and what's working for others and best practices. Now that show season is upon us, I thought it might be helpful to share with you what attendees want.

We recently undertook an extensive research project on Travel & Adventure Show attendees through Mercury CSC, a leading consumer research and market intelligence firm focusing on Travel. The research was both Quantitative, with over 3,000 past attendees participating in the survey, as well as Qualitative, with dozens involved in our focus groups. The results reaffirmed many of our beliefs and, more importantly, presented us with some stunning new insights.

Travel & Adventure Show Attendees Are Power Travelers:

While we will share the full report with you in weeks to come, I think some of the data I have summarized below will help you with final show planning.

TAS Chicago Bar Crawl

We hope you're getting as excited for the 2014 Chicago Travel & Adventure Show as we are. We're expecting a great turn out from both attendees and exhibitors - this should be one of our most successful Shows yet!

Although rewarding, we know how stressful and busy our Shows get. Constantly talking to attendees, passing out your destination information and working your booth is hard work. That's why we're going to give you a chance to relax and have a little fun!

The TAS Bar Crawl will take place January 11, starting at the Red Bar at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, which is connected to the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont (where the Show takes place). We'll meet up there, then brave the Illinois winter cold and make the 10 minute walk to the MB Financial Park in Rosemont where we will hop from one bar to the next!

Bars Include (and they're fun):

In Their Words

One of the goals of Talking TAS is to get you, the exhibitor, all the tips you need to have a successful Travel & Adventure Show experience. To do that, we thought it would be helpful if we got other exhibitors to give their insights and share them with the TAS community. 

Beth Ann Young, Icelandair

This edition of In Their Words profiles Beth Ann Young, Sales Executive for Icelandair. Icelandair partners with several different companies to exhibit under the name Destination Iceland. Here is what she has to say about America's Favorite Travel Shows!

On Deciding to Participate in the Shows:
Destination Iceland, a group made up of Icelandair, Icelandair Hotels, Iceland Travel, Icelandic Mountain Guides and Promote Iceland, decided to participate in the Travel & Adventure show because they are the largest Travel Show in the country and the attendees we found at the show were our target market!

TAS, Social Media and You

At the Travel & Adventure Show, we constantly preach how important it is to stay connected with your customers. Whether that means sending out daily email blasts and newsletters, sending out press releases, or coming to the Travel & Adventure Show to interact face to face, staying in contact with current and prospective customers is important to success.

In this day and age, technology has advanced to where setting up these interactions have become easier, and more effective, by using social media outlets. From Facebook, to Twitter and Pinterest, social media has taken over the marketing and advertising process. Although we believe that face to face interaction is the best way to engage with customers, social media is an effective tool in setting up more in person meetings than ever before. Combined with the quality of attendees that you'll find at each Travel & Adventure Show, social media outlets can be used to market your destination or product before attendees even hit the show floor. 

That being said, here's how to help us, help you get the best result possible out of your TAS Exhibiting Experience.

Connect With Us

We're on the sites - Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google +, and every day we're engaging with our attendees on what to expect from their experience at the Travel & Adventure Show. From our "TAS Daily Escapes," to our Twitter Chats, to Exhibitor Profiles, we do our best to get your destination's name out to our attendees so you can reach your ROI goals. 

Get to Know Us

As we get closer and closer to the 2014 Show Season, we wanted to take a minute and introduce you to our team. In this month's edition of Get to Know Us, we're talking with Travel & Adventure Show Director of Sales, John Spooner.

1. What is your favorite part about traveling for vacation?

My favorite part about traveling is the memories that we crate with my family that will last a lifetime. Just the other day my daughter and I were driving home and we were talking and laughing about some of the trips we had taken over the past years. It truly amazes me how much she remembers from each trip, including trips when she was only 5 and 6 years old! It really is wonderful to establish a tradition of vacationing together that one day will carry over to my kids when they start vacationing with their own children. 

TAS Tips

This post is a first in a series of “Talking TAS” posts that will focus on how to best prepare in the weeks leading up to the Travel & Adventure Show.

Throughout the years, we have found many exhibitors (especially first time participants) who arrive at the show without a solid event plan. This shortfall in preparation can lead them to make expensive decisions that minimize any meaningful or measurable contribution to their sales and marketing objectives.

Here are some tips that we've accumulated over the past 11 years to make sure that you prepare to put yourself in a position to achieve your goals!

Understand What You’re Really Buying

Many exhibitors believe they are buying floor space, exposure, leads and eventually sales. Successful and experienced exhibitors have learned that they are actually buying “face to face contact” with a highly qualified and motivated travel buying audience. TAS gives you everything you need to reach your exhibiting goals, but it is up to you to make those goals a reality.

Welcome to Talking TAS!

Wow what a difference a few years make!

I think we have all witnessed a global economy settling in for at least modest growth.  At the Travel & Adventure Shows, we have seen significant growth over the past two years both in terms of attendance and Exhibitors.  Overall, we have seen upwards of 19% - 37% growth across all of our shows in year over year attendance. And more importantly, we have seen significant increases in the quality of attendees.

The result of all this is a larger community of global travel marketers relying on the Travel & Adventure Shows as a critical piece of their media mix.  We have seen many new destinations adding our events these past two years as well as more tour companies, travel suppliers, attractions and marketers.  We have also heard from many of you that more information on best practices is important, more exhibitor community/networking opportunities, and more tools to help you increase your consumer reach and show ROI is needed.  We hear you!

Over the past couple of months, the team here at the Travel & Adventure Show has worked hard to improve the Exhibitor Experience. We’ve fully embraced social media to showcase our exhibitors and their destinations. We’ve created a monthly newsletter that provides tips and important TAS news. We also created a 38 page “Exhibitor Activation Guide” highlighting all the important logistics that go into having a successful show. We have put those tools, among others, in place for our exhibitors to achieve the highest level of success.

That being said, I am proud to introduce our next and newest Exhibitor tool – the Travel & Adventure Show blog. “Talking TAS” is full of the information you need to ensure that your exhibiting goals are reached. This “Exhibitors Only” tool is full of all the information you’ll need for pre, during and post show TAS initiatives, as well as tips and expert input on what we’ve learned since we produced the first show back in 2003.

One of the goals of this blog is to create a Travel & Adventure Show community – a place where exhibitors can connect with exhibitors and where exhibitors can easily access the whole TAS Team. Our hope is that we can share your success stories with us on how you are utilizing our shows and how you are generating a significant ROI. We’ve curated some interesting, informative and entertaining content for Talking TAS and we hope you’ll feel the same.

As always, thank you for participating in our shows and making them America’s Favorite Travel Show.

Until next time,

 

John Golicz

CEO, Unicomm