The annual International Travel Expo Hong Kong, ITE, will celebrate its 30th Anniversary in 2016, which underlines its long history! In fact, ITE is among the few Asia’s earliest held travel fairs!
Since taking over from ITE 2005, the organizer TKS has been making significant enhancements which include launching the concurrent ITE MICE in 2006; expanding the overall scale to five exhibition halls since 2009 from two in 2004; re-positioning to a truly international travel fair with 85 percent of its over 600 exhibitors from abroad; highlighting travel themes such as Overseas Wedding, Eco- and Sport Tourism etc; drawing more regional buyers and trade visitors; attracting affluent travelers by, say, holding some 100 travel seminars in public days etc!
Our aim is to provide a one-stop platform so exhibitors can conduct trade promotion and channel sale in trade days, and mass promotion and direct sale in public days. The process continues!
Outbound Seminars As parts of the celebration, TKS, organizer of ITE has been holding successfully outbound seminars respectively in last September in Hong Kong and in December in Tokyo. Focusing on outbound market of Hong Kong, each seminar drew around 60 attendants and had KS Tong, Managing Director of TKS delivering the key-note speech. Quoting outbound figures of 2014 and even 2015, KS also drew on surveys this year to discuss profiles, where they went and preferences of the Hong Kong travelers etc.
Audiences in Tokyo came mainly from tourism boards of cities and prefectures, regional tourism organizations, hotels and travel agents etc in Japan interested in inbound from Hong Kong and China, while the three largest attending groups in Hong Kong seminar were respectively Consulates and NTO at 26.4%, Airlines at 24.5%, and Travel Agents at 15.1%.
Outbound Market Easily overshadowed by the giant market of mainland China and lack of regularly published outbound figures, relatively few realize Hong Kong in 2014 spent US$22.1 billion on international travel and ranked Asia’s 4th largest source market. This perhaps explains the popularity of the seminars!
In addition, Hong Kong citizens can travel to over 140 countries and regions including EU without visa! Luxury travels including in-depth, FIT and theme travels are popular. Amid roughly a 10 percent increase in outbound business, luxury tours during Christmas 2015 overall cost 6% more but no price increase for normal tours; and higher price increases for tours to Europe ranging from 6% to 17%!
ITE & MICE 2016, which combines the 30th ITE (leisure) and the 11th ITE MICE, will be held from June 16 to 19, 2016 at Halls 1A to 1E of the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre, with the first two days for trade requiring registration, and the last two days open to public. Also, TKS offers optional B2B and B2C programs to interested exhibitors.
