This week I’m swapping Bangkok for Berlin, following an invitation to speak at the world’s biggest travel trade show. Every year ITB Berlin brings over 113,000 trade visitors from 180 countries (no wonder Berlin hotel room prices go up in ITB week!) at Messe Berlin, an enormous trade fair site in the west of the city.

ITB invited me to put together two sessions, and here’s the first:

The Rise of the Young Asian Traveller – Wednesday 5 March 2014, 10am-11am, Hall 4.1 ITB Youth Travel Centre

The rise of Asian economies and the associated boom in international travel has is grabbing the attention of the global travel and tourism community, and many other business sectors besides. This session will present the initial findings of an exciting new report to be released by PATA later this year on young Asian consumer travel trends. Our panel of experts will discuss their impressions of how young Asians’ travel tastes are shaping destination development, and looking at what tourism businesses could do better to welcome young visitors from the region.

Join us to hear what our expert panel has to say!

Moderator:  Peter Jordan, In-house consultant (Gen C Traveller), Pacific Asia Travel Association
Speakers:

Ivy Chee, Regional Director for East Asia, Pacific Asia Travel Association
Dato’ Mirza Mohammad Taiyab, Director General, Tourism Malaysia
Pyung-sup Shin, Executive Director of Overseas Marketing, Korea National Tourism Organization
Thibault Ruffat, Head of European Tourism, Chic Outlet Shopping by Value Retail
Charlie Ballard, Director of Research, TripAdvisor

If you’d like to hear about the seminar outcome or to find out more about the report, drop me an email at http://www.genctraveller.org