Travel

Thanks for visiting the UK’s No.1 show for group travel and leisure see you again in 2016

2015 was a stellar year for the Group Leisure Travel Show, which took place on Thursday 22nd October at the NEC Birmingham and featured stands from the top attractions, tourist boards, accommodation providers, ticketing agencies, coach companies and tour operators in group travel.

The show’s busy aisles were filled with GTOs searching for new ideas for trips and holidays and exhibitors saw substantial sales come in on the day plus leads to follow up on.

The free Seminar Theatre sessions, meanwhile, attracted capacity crowds, and saw the likes of traveller and TV presenter Simon Reeve and TV gardener Joe Swift take to the stage.

Visitors were impressed by the rich variety of exhibitors at the show. “There really was a lot of different exhibitors,” said Derek Shipley from Sheffield U3A. “Everyone has been really helpful and it’s certainly given me some good ideas. When you’ve been doing trips in the same area for four to five years you start to run out of ideas, then you come to a show like this and you think yes, I can combine new things and there’s more to do than I thought. We’ll be booking something on the back of this.”

One visitor, Kenneth Johnson from After Eight Social Club discovered so many new ideas that he’s struggling to fit everything in to his schedule. “We’ve been spoilt for choice, we fancy west Somerset, north Wales, the Lake District, Derbyshire, Matlock. We’re definitely going to book trips based on what we’ve seen today. We’ve also found out about new ways to book theatre trips, which will change where we decide to go in the future.”

Exhibitors have also had a successful show with lots of bookings made based on face to face meetings with GTOs.

“We’ve already signed up some groups for next year and we’ve had a lot of interest in places like China, India and Sri Lanka. It’s wonderful that we can have a day where we can connect with everyone, it’s great to bounce ideas off visitors,” said Glen Thomas of Travelsphere.

P J Chocolate Factory came all the way from Belgium to attend the show and have also made bookings on the day. Judy Lee said: “It’s our second year here and we’ve had a great response, people have been really interested in our chocolate workshops and we’ve seen some results in sales already.”

Put the date in your diary now for next year’s show – the big 20th anniversary Group Leisure Travel Show will take place at the NEC Birmingham on Thursday 20th October.