The second edition of Business and Luxury Travel Mart (BLTM) was held in New Delhi at Hyatt Regency, Gurugram from October 26 to 27. This year the event focused on bringing together the sellers from business, MICE, luxury travel segments from all over the world. The two-day event saw 50 seller booths and destination pavillions with 150 individual sellers. Sri Lanka Convention Bureau had the largest pavilion with 11 sellers from the country.
Speaking to Express TravelWorld, Prema Cooray, chairman, Sri Lanka Convention
Bureau, said, “Sri Lanka is keen on improving its tourism numbers from India and has broadened its approach towards marketing in the India market. We have some wonderful brands bringing in prime properties in locations that are best for both weddings and business. Through this show we hope we could showcase what we can
offer as a destination.”
Domestic tourism boards like Gujarat, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir were also present at the event along with international tourism boards like Peru, Korea, Bahrain, Taiwan among others.
The hosted buyers at the show included corporate travel planners with purchasing authority, travel companies catering to business, leisure, MICE and luxury travel, MICE travel managers and buyers, MICE organisers, business travel managers and buyers, film destination companies, associations, wedding planners and event management companies. This year recorded an increase of 75 per cent in new corporate buyers and 80 per cent new hosted buyers from travel trade agents.
According to the exit survey conduted after BLTM 2016, each hosted buyer has an average potential business worth 1.5 crore, aggregating overall business potential from the 200 odd buyers to 300 crores. The 250 corporate and trade buyers, wedding planners and MICE planners touched upon 2:1 buyer to seller ratio last year.